The older concepts of civic virtue emphasized self-mastery, conquering your impulses to serve a higher cause. Today’s politics treats self-mastery as suspect, a form of fakery or selling out, while asinine self-exposure is proof of depth and authenticity. The older republican tradition asked whether a man could govern himself before entrusting him with power. The new authenticity politics asks whether he seems sufficiently ungoverned to be trusted. [See, e.g., Graham Platner]
“Confirm thy soul in self-control, Thy liberty in law” is the line from “America the Beautiful.” That idea is a joke…, increasingly, in Washington.
N.B. The next line, “Thy Liberty in Law,” is also a (cruel) joke in Washington these days.