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Morality and Politics: Do You Try to Make Moral Choices?
I am cringing while I write this post, in a way I never have. I don’t trust that we can have a civil conversation about this topic; that I may open old wounds and create havoc. I’ve asked myself over and over whether I can trust all of you to be decent, moral human beings. I think I can trust you; I hope I can because this question has been nagging at me for months, and I need your help to resolve it. Let’s make this an opportunity to do it together, in our search for truth and understanding. That means putting aside the need to win or be right; I don’t think either of those efforts will be successful.
All that said, I have been struggling with my own morality related to politics.
First, if you know anything about me at all, you know I strive to be a moral person. I’m not bragging about it; I feel compelled to do it. Most of the time, I think I do that with ease; I have clarity about my values in relation to how I act, what I do and how I treat others.
I bring up these questions as I’m nearly finished with a book by Charles Lane, called Freedom’s Detective , a book about Hiram Whitley, the man who began the Secret Service. That organization was originally started to find counterfeiters but eventually was key in rounding up the Ku Klux Klan during and following Reconstruction. It was a fascinating story, but I was especially struck by Whitley himself. He was an excellent manager and strategist, but he was also a liar, thief, finagler, and also showed many other disreputable attributes. Eventually, he was fired, but he did great things under the Grant administration. He was both celebrated and condemned in his time. He made me think of Donald Trump.
That led me to the issue that has been bothering me the last couple of years, particularly after 2016: how to frame and comprehend and hold true to my own morality, particularly in relation to politics. Part of my problem is that I hold people I connect with or feel connected to, to a high moral standard. If you want to be my friend, you have to be a decent person. Figuring out what a “decent person” is might be a key part of this discussion.
I also believe that most of you who participate on Ricochet are moral and principled people. I can’t think of a better place to initiate this discussion. So here it is:
In terms of morality, Donald Trump is a mixed bag. In fact, I guess I could say that most of us are. Some of you believe that G-d will be the final Judge of whether we pass muster on the morality measure.
I wonder how you weigh the question of who to support in any area of life when the person is far from the perfect person. Regarding Trump–
-I realize that many of you might have decided that you would vote for just about anyone who could “clean out the swamp,” no matter their moral attributes or limitations.
-You may have decided that morality was not an issue, that the country was in such dire straits that the questions about the morality of the person you voted for were irrelevant.
-Since we are all a mixed bag, you may have decided that Trump was sufficiently moral, given how he treated his family, how he cared for our veterans, how he loved America and wanted to help us, and the other moral traits he showed.
Please do not use this post as an opportunity to defend Trump or yourself, or to bash others who do not. And for those of you who don’t like Trump, this post may not be for you.
This post is primarily about the moral choices you make regarding politics and politicians, not necessarily attacking or defending particular officeholders or candidates. As a point of information, I didn’t vote for Trump or support him before the election (and I say that without judgment of those who did); I made judgments about his character and reputation. But the simple fact that he is president means for me that I will support him when he does good things, and criticize him when I think he doesn’t. On balance, I think he has done a good job.
To me, supporting him is a moral choice, because the country elected him.
In that vein, what did you think of Hiram Whitley mentioned earlier? What role, if any, does your morality play in your political choices? Does morality play a different role in the policies you support versus the persons for whom you vote?
Published in Culture
I guess if you start at 400 and drop to 350, indulge for one night. After that, get back on the weight loss wagon.
I am a latecomer to this conversation. I would support the sheriff in holding off the lynch mob, but not when it comes to prosecuting him for his bribery activity. As for the virgins, how young? Pedophilia needs to be prosecuted.
My point is that support of someone does not need to be all in. support the good and denounce the bad.
Understanding the Trump analogy, I look at Nadler, Schumer, and Pelosi and am hard-pressed to find anything worth supporting.
It isn’t about agreement, but about effect. I guess the morality that counts is my own: if I think that choosing a particular candidate will have a bad effect on the country then to make that choice would be morally wrong, even if the only alternative is to vote for someone whose morality and personality disgusts me.
And what if you think both candidates will have a bad effect on the country?
I’d go with the least bad. Hopefully it wouldn’t come to that.
I don’t know. Most of the time it seems to me that is exactly what it comes down to.
This is my view. There is too much general civic stupidity and there are too many bad incentives and structural issues from top to bottom in this country.
Or as St. Paul said, All our righteousnesses are as filthy rags. (In the bowlderized translation.)
This is a great discussion of Trump that relates to this thread.
Ep. 843 The Roots of Political Correctness, with Angelo Codevilla https://tomwoods.com/ep-843-the-roots-of-political-correctness-with-angelo-codevilla/
Last time, in 2016, I went with the candidate that would have the least bad effect on the county. It was not Hillary!(TM). I could not see any choice worse than that one. So, I did what grown-ups do. Held my nose and voted for Trump. I thought he was an illusion whose time had come, but he was still a lot the better choice.
Turns out he has made a pretty descent President, so I am pleased with my vote. But I would not have regretted my vote, even if he was bad as I feared he would be. Still miles better than only other possible choice.
If you are a child, you have the luxury of stomping your feet and screaming, “No fair! No fair! No fair!” But you become an adult if you are willing to suck it up and make difficult choices. And in this case, the horse sang.
I started listening to that, some great insights there.
I love that guy.
I want to read Character Of Nations.
Make a difficult choice? Doesn’t seem like you think it was difficult choice, because you saw Hillary as the worst choice. So what kind of adulting is that really? Seems a difficult choice would mean you wouldn’t know who would turn out worse. If you see no lesser of two evils, what is the moral choice then? And of course the question should be asked why the moral choice is to choose an evil when you can walk away. Is morality simply utilitarian endeavor where we can sum up the good and sum up the bad and pick the option with the highest sum?
That’s nice.
I think for some of the Trump-adverse going forward (who are not daydreaming about a successful Bill Weld, John Kasich or Larry Hogan primary challenge), the 2020 question is — out of the field of two-dozen or so Democratic hopefuls, which one if they win the nomination would make you:
A.) Vote for them over Trump;
B.) Vote for Trump over the Democrat;
C.) Vote for neither or for a third party candidate.
C might be a tad more viable if Howard Schultz and his coffee money gets into the race, but if he doesn’t, then A or B are the only serious options, especially swing state voters. You already have seen some of the #NeverTrump people trying to sell themselves on President Biden, which you’d think if Biden tacks left in the primary may complicate things (or maybe not, if they also convince themselves that Uncle Joe is lying to the progressive voters). But it’s going to be far harder to tell people you’re still a conservative if you’re asking people to elect Bernie, Liz or any of the other hardcore progs in the race.
Who cares about being conservative anymore? I thought we killed that off when it was pointed out that Trump wasn’t much of a conservative, back in 2016, and the response from MAGA land was what good is conservatism if it doesn’t conserve anything? Well now that it is dead, let it be dead.
I’d consider voting for Biden, just because he is so darn unimpressive, but the reality is I dont see myself bothering to vote for anyone. Why bother?
This was over in about 1991. 2004 at the latest.
Because Biden is more conservative than Trump?
But it is those who chose Trump over Hillary that killed conservatism!
Discuss
Thank you for thoughtful post that has generated quite a bit of beneficial discussion. Just one of the many aspects that have been brought up for me is using the concept of “religious” or religion in general. This becomes problematic because many consider the description of someone as religious as a positive attribute, but religion itself has become a blank slate upon which throughout history the best of us and the worst of us has written. So I prefer to consider the direction of what someone’s spiritual convictions leads them i.e. display humility or destroy opposition.
This is a very big deal.
I don’t believe that people can be moral by observation. They need religious values to do it consistently and in a widespread way. The threat of eternal damnation or whatever. I’m not an expert on this, but I think the Jews had a much more productive and civil society way before everyone else because of it.
On the other hand some religions have bad results. The Vikings, or whatever. The prosperity gospel. I really think that Protestantism made the bad dynamics in my family worse, but that’s a unique situation, that required a critical outside observer.
I mostly get all that from Dennis Prager.
Back to the question about making the moral choice, it seems to me that the right moral choice is the person who will lead the country in a moral direction. Murdering babies is not moral. Neither is robbing the rich to make yourself popular with the poor.
President Trump’s moral failings, so far as we know, are not the corrupt cronyism we have seen with both the Democrats and the Republicans in the past.
As for the sexual morality problems, I hope he is old enough to be past that sort of thing while in the Oval Office, unlike some of his predecessors (W.J. Clinton and J.F. Kennedy, to name two of the most notorious).
The tax code is progressive enough. How can it be any more progressive? Now they are talking about crazy crap like wealth taxes and head taxes. I think it’s immoral that they don’t talk about how it came to this. Something should have been done decades ago, and it’s not wealth confiscation.
When a millionaires after tax income is equal to the guaranteed minimum income it will finally be ‘fair’. Otherwise, there will be the deadly sin of ‘income inequality’.
Of course, they still have to deal with wealth outside of income. Divide it equally. Fair!
No those who chose Trump over anyone else in the Republican field killed conservatism, or at least revealed it to be the dead hollow husk it is. Those who chose Trump over Hillary were just the Amen Choir to the former.
Discuss!
How would you know when Trump’s supporters refuse to look into his business dealings? How is it less cronyistic to say you will use tariff revenues on Chinese goods to buy up US soy crops to prop up farmers your economic policy is hurting because you need their votes? Or to make demands that so much energy be generated with coal to keep coal mining in business because natural gas is killing it off? Seems to me with Trump you are getting the normal corruption and all his own extra personal issues. But again, the public incentive for supporters of Trump (or really any supporters of a politician) are to not look too closely at them lest they see the corruption. There is no looking the truth squarely in the face, but maybe just glancing at it from the corner of your eyes, so that you can still think yourselves moral, or at least relatively more moral.
And this is the essence of the age, moral relativism has won, on the left and the right, but we did not know it on the right until we ended up with Trump. We don’t have to make moral decisions because there is no absolute morality. It is all personal feelings and perception. We only have to do what makes us feel good or less scared or not bad.
Government is inherently immoral unless it’s shrunk massively. Public goods only.
Watch any speech by Representative Massey of Kentucky or the interview of Representative Ken Buck of California on full measure news, and everything else I always harp on.
Given that the 2016 choices were between this, and a candidate whose own cronyism involved selling US tech to China, what gives you the right to make such aspersions? Do you really think that no one who voted for him understood him to be cronyist, and to have weighed that in the balance? It seems to be that, for you, the only “moral” choice was to sit it out entirely while deriding any who did vote as immoral, or at least as moral hypocrites. Yet how much moral weight can anyone bear for a single election?
Time and again you repeat these arguments, in comment thread after comment thread, and to what end? At this point it’s just repeated moral castigation.