Let's start with a working definition of virtue: "Behavior showing high moral standards," comes from Apple's included dictionary.
The other word is signal: "A gesture, action, or sound that is used to convey information or instructions, particularly between the parties concerned."
With that out of the way, let's look at virtue signaling by the left's wannabe totalitarians as it is employed in their coup against Donald Trump and middle America.
We begin with the indictment. No one who advocates the premeditated killing of one human being by another has any virtue to signal. None. Their words are meaningless, silenced by their actions.
No one is more dependent upon another human being than a baby developing inside the mother's womb. From what I can see, the left in its entirety not only supports premeditated murder with unrestricted abortion, if forces the rest of the nation to violate its own conscience to pay for this barbaric way of postponing "a woman's right to choose" until after she becomes pregnant.
It doesn't stop there. It never does. Abortion providers moved into selling fetal tissue to morally compromised researchers, with a premium for whole, live babies. If it's OK to torture and kill them, why not an older child? Why not a homeless person? Why not anyone? What's the difference? Does anybody believe the U.S. Supreme Court had the moral authority to issue death warrants for 65 million American babies? How about to certify Planned Parenthood as their executioner?
Virtue signaling? You're sure signaling something to America, but virtue ain't it. Maybe the celebrities and their PR agents should spend more time on social media, explaining to self-identified school shooters why it's OK to kill a baby before it's born, but it's a "no-no" to kill children walking around inside the school. Or other people for that matter. It isn't "wrong" only if the target has a personal security force. It's wrong because murder is wrong.
Lawmakers love virtue signaling. It lets them appear virtuous, without all the bother of the necessary actions that reflect virtue. "Let's ban firearms. Then our constituents can be as virtueless, corrupt and evil as we are, but they won't be able to shoot other people."
That's really it, in a nit, isn't it? Virtue signaling lawmakers don't want to govern a just, civil and responsible society. They just want to get re-elected by appealing to people who think there are no restrictions on the "virtue" of their own lusts and evil desires. Once re-elected, they just want to rape and pillage the entire nation, like the people who voted for them.
The media? Now there's a virtue signaling crowd! Media members supported almost in their entirety the most corrupt woman ever to run for public office in the history of America! Not only that, they lied about her challenger's positions on nearly everything. They have continued to attack her opponent even after he became president, by virtueless signaling with Russia investigations, organized by the prior president.
The clue to the leftists' dilemma is the first word in the definition of virtue, at the start of this column: behavior. Agreeing with trite phrases and useless legislation demands nothing of the virtue signaler. That person doesn't have to alter his behavior, and neither do the thousands of his followers who feast on these celebrity and media Tide-pods across social media and television screens around the country.
Virtue signalers want to build themselves up without any cost, and tear down those they disagree with, even if they have to lie about the evidence. The problem is, virtue signalers do nothing to change people, themselves included. They are enabling hypocrites of the highest order. They signal they are virtueless every time they open their mouths. If we listen to them and emulate them, we become like them. The nation can't survive more virtue signalers.
When the virtueless signalers repent of their sin of murder, perhaps they can begin to engage the nation in a conversation about virtue.
Earth's Final Kingdom. What does it look like?