In The Republic, Plato says that “the virtue of a thing is that state or condition that enables it to perform its function well.” The virtue of a knife is its sharpness. The virtue of a racehorse is its speed on the track. Lately, I’ve been asking myself about how to find and maintain that Platonic ideal. Whether you believe in a higher power or just want to live the good life the question is always lurking around the edges of consciousness.

Last year I wrote about leaving the US for Vietnam during the Republican primary debates and how good it felt to be out of the seemingly endless loop of right-wing one-upmanship delivered by Romney, Gingrich, Santorum, Perry, Bachman, Cain, and Paul on the nightly news cycle. In Vietnam I was free to tap into it by reading the International Herald Tribune or looking on the web but it didn’t dominate my connection to world news. That changed when we returned to the US in the middle of the Presidential campaign and were deluged with super-pacs, candidate ads and sound bites from Romney, Ryan, Obama, Biden and all the local pols for the next five months. After the election it was the Fiscal Cliff and now it’s the Debt Ceiling and Sequestration. ENOUGH ALREADY! I sense that the republic is in danger, but I also sense that it is durable enough to survive in spite of the blockheads in Congress. Stop talking and do something. read more