“America has gone too far in legalizing vice.” So argues Matthew Loftus in a recent, thoughtful piece in the Atlantic. Loftus makes the point that, in our laws, “vice and its lobbyists have an unfair advantage that needs to be taken away.” He refers, in particular, to the growing legalization (and normalization) of gambling as well as recreational use of marijuana. He asks for a modest policy response, one that gives some guardrails on these activities to limit ease of access for the young and other vulnerable persons.

Loftus hints, though, at a much deeper, wider need in our society: moral education . We all agree that education includes instilling knowledge of facts and skills. People are born with the capacity to reason but need it developed so that we can act as productive citizens, community members, and workers.

However, education cannot stop there. It must involve cultivating the will in light of what we consider morally good and how our desires react to that good. This cultivation builds off the belief that such a good exists and that human beings do not naturally, much less easily, conform to that standard. Call it vice or sin or whatever else, a gap exists between how we think and act and how we ought to think and act for the betterment of ourselves and others. This gap, and the possibility of closing it, forms the foundation of a moral education. Just as human beings are not born knowing the facts and skills they need, so they are not born with a fully formed moral compass required for the healthy ordering of one’s life as an individual, family member, and citizen.

Loftus rightly categorizes this kind of education as grounded in the cultivation of virtue, which involves the combination of a disposition and habit that not only does good but wants the good it does. But, since Loftus says the laws play only a small role in forming virtue, where could we go to find that education? Here, we must turn to the education we receive in our formal schools, whether public, private, or at home. And we must ask hard questions regarding what that moral education must involve.

These questions are hard because we do not fully agree on their answers. Our society has split on how we define the good, the true, and the beautiful. And, in too many places, the deck is stacked in favor of vice here as well.

One way to see this split is in the concept, found in the Declaration of Independence , of the “pursuit of happiness.” A fundamental right endowed to us by God, what do we mean by happiness and the means of seeking it? Many today see that pursuit as grounded in a kind of therapeutic self-actualization. This autonomy, by extending to the depth of self-definition, tends to deny the existence of objective goods or truths, except that one must not question, much less inhibit, individual expressions of self-definition. Much of our “woke” articulations of justice stem from some form of this perspective.

The American founders understood happiness and its pursuit quite differently. John Adams wrote in 1776 that “the happiness of man, as well as his dignity consists in virtue.” Virtue is comprised of an objective standard of moral characteristics, summarized in the cardinal virtues of courage, temperance, prudence, and justice. The more we conform our pursuits to these particular virtues, the better our chance for happiness and the fuller it will be in our lives. Through these virtues, we enhance our own lives and better serve those around us.

These virtues, though, require self-government because human beings are not “angels,” as James Madison famously said. “Follow your heart” is bad advice; for self-actualization according to self-definition only asks for the eventual destruction of self and the oppression of others.

We need to recover this older view of virtue and prioritize it in our various forms of education. We must teach in our classrooms what is good, true, and beautiful. Confusing or partial attempts won’t do it. Instead, we must take seriously Loftus’s statement that virtue is a “habit,” which takes not only articulation but long-standing cultivation to work.

In education as well as policy, the deck has been stacked too much in favor of vice. For the good of our children , our country, and ourselves, we need to tip back the scales.

Adam Carrington is an associate professor of politics at Hillsdale College.