Classical virtue is relevant even in an era of mass media social conditioning and commercialism. If one learns anything from history it is that societies function best with virtuous citizens. One should work for the ideal state regardless of one’s personal longevity or lack of. Socrates didn’t fear death, he was concerned about acting without virtue and truth. Public debt is not good though many would rationalize it away.
John Calvin, the reformer, acquiesced with the idea of loaning money, yet felt that interest should only be charged on the rich that can afford it. The public cannot well afford vast public debt one-third of which is held by foreign entities. It is the poor that lose out to pay for the debt. The British American Revolutionary war loans and interest thereof were not paid off until nearly the start of the 2oth century. Social spending in England was minimized to pay the debt down, and Marx wrote the Communist Manifesto in those poor English circumstances.
Though one cannot accomplish construction or maintenance of the ideal state alone, citizens should work as best they can toward those social ends that best serve the people, the democracy, and the well being of others. Concern for others as well as oneself are not only Christian values they are classical values that pre-exist even Hellenic Greece.
To live a life without pursuit of virtue or truth if one can, is in a sense to fail at life Being a good citizen and human being concerned with working for virtue in even a small way may not get one to heaven, for one needs the Lord to enact that, yet it does make humanity itself a little better, and human works brighter and more honorable.
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