Warner discusses "virtue" as an element of character that is a "public value" -- that is, when practicing public virtue we are "the same as citizen and as man"
a form of "self-unity" that held roughly "from Rousseau to Reagan"
we "adopt the attitude of the public subject, marking to ourselves its nonentity with ourselves," theoretically ignoring "particularities of culture, race, gender, or class"
Warner notes, however, that the originators of this scheme likely had in mind that "lesser subjects--non-citizens such as women, children, and the poor--were equally to remain continuity across [the public and private] realms, as nonactors"