It’s not as though I think that on the whole military members are more virtuous than libertarians. I just find that there are virtues that generally military members possess that generally libertarians lack. However the majority of libertarians I’ve come in contact with are keyboard jockey/tough-guy forum-elitist prima donna anarchist types, which likely skews my point of view.

I agree with you about speciesism; some cetaceans and nonhuman primates seem likely to have reached the critical intellectual mass to be capable of acheiving mindedness, while some humans (e.g., fetuses, human vegetables, and Troy Southgate) lack this capacity.

I thought it likely that you has something conservative in mind when speaking of ‘virtue’ as you suggested that American soldiers are more likely to possess it than libertarians, and the virtues of American soldiers are way off the scale towards the rightward side of the ethical spectrum.

Anyway, this has been an interesting discussion, but I have soooooooooo much werk to do this week.

I can exclude their ideals from what I understand virtue to be depending upon what their ideals are.

I certainly think that some sets of virtues are better than others, but even where I disagree with (say) Christians or soldiers I can’t exclude their ideals from my definition of ‘virtue’. Personally I favour cosmopolitan and life-affirming virtues, but this can encompass many specific mutually incompatible lives and ideals; a good economist and a good poet are unlikely to think or act alike, nor should they.

While libertarian circles meet a minimum threshold of having some virtue (mainly stemming from the commitment to non-aggression), I find that largely these circles aren’t the repositories of virtue that libertarians prefer to think of them as.