Virtue Lost: A Journey Back to America's Founding Ideals
Author Bill Brown
In Virtue Lost, author Bill Brown takes readers on a thought-provoking journey through America’s past, present, and future, asking a vital question: How did America stray from its founding virtues, and what will it take to bring them back? With a keen eye on history and philosophy, Brown examines pivotal moments—from the Revolutionary War and Constitutional Convention to the turbulent waves of modern cultural and political shifts. Through topics as varied as faith in democracy, secular humanism, cultural equivalency, and the role of Christianity in governance, Virtue Lost offers a comprehensive lens on the core values that once defined the nation.
Organized into four insightful sections, the book explores the erosion of societal morals, challenges to free speech, and rising political tensions while also proposing a path forward in “The Way Back.” With a call to restore unity, integrity, and purpose, Bill Brown provides readers with both a history lesson and a roadmap for a virtuous future—reminding us that, as history has shown, America was once great because it was good.
Bill Brown
About the Author
The writer is a retired FBI Agent. His second office of assignment was San Francisco, California. Autumn of 1969 was a tumultuous time in the Bay Area. The Free Speech Movement had started in nearby Berkeley in 1964, and students (mostly sympathetic to the Black Panthers and the Third World Liberation Front) were clamoring for San Francisco State to offer classes in areas of interest to them; Black studies and ‘Ethnic’ studies. Colleges everywhere were under intense pressure to conform, and the war in Vietnam added fuel to the fires of discontent. Brown attended most of the ‘peaceful’ demonstrations in the Bay area over the following three years and marveled at the level of hatred and rebellion in these young people. In retrospect, the demonstrations of that day were mild compared to the lawlessness of the highly organized demonstrators and rioters of today. A major effort is underway in America to change our government from a Democratic Republic to a form of socialism, which the organizers fervently hope will eventuate in communism. This book affords a guideline—a GPS, if you will—to help Americans find their way back to the America of which Alexis de Tocqueville wrote, when he said America was “…great because she is good.”—the nation our Founding Fathers established.