When morality was still couched in the language of virtue it carried a sense of shared gravity and authority that values do not. For example, we thought we knew what the classical virtues of courage, truth, justice, and tolerance were. We were familiar with the Christian virtues of faith, hope and love.
Virtue was not a matter of opinion, attitude, or feelings or whatever an individual or a group happened to value. Virtue was what we discovered and shared about our own nature and the world.
Because virtue was shared in belief and practice it enabled cultural cohesion. It gave meaning and confidence to the "We" of nationhood. We thought we were all in the national enterprise together. Immigrants were welcomed and absorbed into that enterprise.
It wasn't possible to say of the virtues, that my virtues are as good as yours, or that I have a right to my own virtues. It simply wouldn't have made sense to speak of New Zealand virtues.
Now we all have our own values, none of which can be judged superior to another. But in order to get along we can't live like that. Consequently morality has become politicised.
The individual conscience is now shaped by the prevailing political consensus rather than each individual virtuous conscience contributing to that consensus.
The consequence is an almost total loss of confidence in our history and culture. Social cohesion becomes difficult and we feel divided. Consequently we hunt around for some kind of glue.
New Zealand First is not alone in its attempt to discover and pass on "New Zealand Values". Former British PM David Cameron talked of British Values, and Justin Trudeau talks of Canadian Values. Even the Australians are at it.
These attempts are at once ironic and probably vain because they are essentially an attempt to restore a shadowy understanding of nationhood that has been rejected.
For example, we no longer have the confidence to absorb immigrants into a shared culture because we have become tribalised by cultic multiculturalism.
The desire to discover New Zealand Values is an exercise in nostalgia and a fraught grasping after reality. It's an attempt to return to some kind of understanding of old-fashioned virtue without naming it. We know the contemporary preoccupation with moral and cultural relativism is a shibboleth, but don't know what to do about it.
We remain obsessed by the values of self-esteem, self-fulfilment, self-realisation and an increasing discovery of new human rights. The old virtues of self-discipline, self-control, self-respect are not well understood; perhaps even despised by some.
The individual is no longer deemed to have responsibilities as well as rights, duties as well as privileges.
That is the problem. Implicit in the search for New Zealand Values is the unspoken longing to return to some kind of permanence; to eternal truths that can hold us together. But no government can take us there. It will have neither the vision nor the balls. To paraphrase St Paul. We can't get what we want, and we'll get what we don't want.
• Bruce Logan is a former teacher and director of the Maxim Institute.
