The practice of proclaiming virtue while amassing wealth and power is not new

What do Elizabeth Holmes, Sam Bankman-Fried and Al Capone have in common? No, they are not all convicted felons. Capone did serve time for tax evasion, and Holmes was recently sentenced to 11 years in prison for defrauding the public through her blood-testing company Theranos. But Bankman-Fried, founder of the now-bankrupt cryptocurrency exchange FTX, has not yet been charged with anything, although regulators and investigators are sorting through the financial carnage. The answer to what they have in common is that each one employed a time-honored strategy to win public approval — the “virtue...