Just some general musing about this stuff.
As I think back about it, the moral instruction that had the most resonant political significance when I was growing up was derived most immediately from the American civil rights movement.
I went to public school in New York City in the 1970s. Lord knows the NYC school systems in the 1970s had their faults, but one thing they were not wrong in at least attempting to do was to teach that Racism is Bad. Northeastern Queens, you may be shocked to learn, contained quite a few racists in the 1970s -- I myself know it did, because many of them were my relatives. The rest were my neighbors. I had no clear sense of this as a kid, but yeah, there were racial tensions where I grew up. So as messed up and sloppy as it may have been, in my case at least, public schooling's firm insistence that RACISM IS BAD was influential.
My parents of course did not teach otherwise. But it's a funny thing. Racial bigotry is easy to teach, racial tolerance takes work. Most of the instruction I got from my folks about how to relate to black people consisted of the following: "Don't listen to Grandpa!" See, it's not like they didn't have all the other stuff to teach, like "don't steal," how to tie my shoes, how to talk and poop, etc.
Shit. We just didn't have black people in the cupboard for me to practice not hating. No. Those black kids were provided by the government. I met black kids at my school and it was there that I learned black kids were as weird and unlikely as my own moony-pale cousins (at last count I have 329 first cousins -- whoops, 330!). And it was reinforced to me by every teacher I had, that we were not to hate each other because of race. And we didn't. We hated each other because of the brands of sneakers we wore, as is far more sensible.
Whatever. Even today many people in Northeast Queens remain racist assholes. So the indoctrination remains incomplete. But the point is, that my public school teachers in the 1970s helped me not be a racist today. Also, they convinced me that racial tolerance was a fundamental American value.
Oh, they fucked up in a lot of other ways. But I sure didn't get that message of tolerance from the Catholic priests of Sacred Heart. And my parents were not laserlike focused on tolerance as a value -- how could they be? Isn't that a matter of social consensus? And you know, shouldn't a government of the people, by the people, do right... by all the people? So good for you, New York City and New York State!
My ideological and moral inheritance does not derive from The Terror, motherfucker.