Trading morality for a good economy

Michael Gerson
www.dailyherald.com
Originally posted May 28, 2019

Here is an excerpt:

Bennett went on to talk about how capitalism itself depends on good private character; how our system of government requires leaders of integrity; how failings of character can't be neatly compartmentalized. "A president whose character manifests itself in patterns of reckless personal conduct, deceit, abuse of power and contempt for the rule of law," he wrote, "cannot be a good president."

Above all, Bennett argued that the cultivation of character depends on the principled conduct of those in positions of public trust. "During moments of crisis," he wrote, "of unfolding scandal, people watch closely. They learn from what they see. And they often embrace a prevailing attitude and ethos, and employ what seems to work for others. So it matters if the legacy of the president is that the ends justify the means; that rules do not apply across the board; that lawlessness can be excused. It matters, too, if we demean the presidency by lowering our standards of expectations for the office and by redefining moral authority down. It matters if truth becomes incidental, and public office is used to cover up misdeeds. And it matters if we treat a president as if he were a king, above the law."

All this was written while Bill Clinton was president. And Bennett himself now seems reluctant to apply these rules "across the board" to a Republican president. This is not unusual. It is the political norm to ignore the poor character of politicians we agree with. But this does nothing to discredit Bennett's argument.

If you are a sexual harasser who wants to escape consequences, or a businessperson who habitually plays close to ethical lines, your hour has come. If you dream of having a porn-star mistress, or hope to game the tax system for your benefit, you have found your man and your moment. For all that is bent and sleazy, for all that is dishonest and dodgy, these are the golden days.

The info is here.

How Trump has changed white evangelicals’ views about morality

David Campbell and Geoffrey Layman
The Washington Post
Originally published April 25, 2019

Recently, Democratic presidential candidate Pete Buttigieg has been criticizing religious conservatives — especially Vice President Pence — for supporting President Trump, despite his lewd behavior. To drive home the point, Buttigieg often refers to Trump as the “porn star president.”

We were curious about the attitudes of rank-and-file evangelicals. After more than two years of Trump in the White House, how do they feel about a president’s private morality?

From 2011 to 2016, white evangelicals dramatically changed their minds about the importance of politicians’ private behavior

Back in 2016, many journalists and commentators pointed out a stunning change in how white evangelicals perceived the connection between private and public morality. In 2011, a poll conducted by the Public Religion Research Institute (PRRI) and the Religion News Service found that 60 percent of white evangelicals believed that a public official who “commits an immoral act in their personal life” cannot still “behave ethically and fulfill their duties in their public and professional life.” But in an October 2016 poll by PRRI and the Brookings Institution — after the release of the infamous “Access Hollywood” tape — only 20 percent of evangelicals, answering the same question, said that private immorality meant someone could not behave ethically in public.

The info is here.

Trump Has Officially Made ‘Conservative Ethics’ an Oxymoron

Jonathan Chait
New York Magazine

The conservative intelligentsia initially greeted the rise of Donald Trump with revulsion. After some of them peeled off, a minority remained within the party tent on the grounds that they could support Trump’s policy goals without endorsing his grotesque character. Mitt Romney’s op-ed attacking Trump’s lack of virtue, however, has put this question squarely on the table. And the conservative response seems clear: Republicans will not abide attacks on Trump’s character, either.

A couple of recent columns nakedly illustrate the moral depravity into which conservatives have descended. It would be easy to mock some blow-dried Fox News bobblehead, but I’m going to focus on two samples from a pair of the more esteemed intellectuals the conservative movement has produced. The first is a column by Roger Kimball, and the second by Henry Olsen.

Kimball is an esteemed, long-standing conservative critic, who writes for a wide array of literary, scholarly, and pseudo-scholarly journals, and is frequently photographed in a bow tie. Like many conservative intellectuals, Kimball once devoted himself to the evils of moral relativism. “What a relativist really believes (or believes he believes) is that 1) there is no such thing as value and 2) there is no such thing as truth,” he wrote in one such essay, in 2009. Kimball explained that by attacking fixed truths, relativism allows the strongman to impose his own values. “Relativism and tyranny, far from being in opposition, are in fact regular collaborators,” he wrote. And also: “Relativism, which begins with a beckoning promise of liberation from ‘oppressive’ moral constraints, so often end in the embrace of immoral constraints that are politically obnoxious.”

The info is here.

‘The New Paradigm,’ Conscience and the Death of Catholic Morality

E. Christian Brugger
National Catholic Register
Originally published February 23, 2-18

Vatican Secretary of State Cardinal Pietro Parolin, in a recent interview with Vatican News, contends the controversial reasoning expressed in the apostolic exhortation Amoris Laetitia (The Joy of Love) represents a “paradigm shift” in the Church’s reasoning, a “new approach,” arising from a “new spirit,” which the Church needs to carry out “the process of applying the directives of Amoris Laetitia.”

His reference to a “new paradigm” is murky. But its meaning is not. Among other things, he is referring to a new account of conscience that exalts the subjectivity of the process of decision-making to a degree that relativizes the objectivity of the moral law. To understand this account, we might first look at a favored maxim of Pope Francis: “Reality is greater than ideas.”

It admits no single-dimensional interpretation, which is no doubt why it’s attractive to the “Pope of Paradoxes.” But in one area, the arena of doctrine and praxis, a clear meaning has emerged. Dogma and doctrine constitute ideas, while praxis (i.e., the concrete lived experience of people) is reality: “Ideas — conceptual elaborations — are at the service of … praxis” (Evangelii Gaudium, 232).

In relation to the controversy stirred by Amoris Laetitia, “ideas” is interpreted to mean Church doctrine on thorny moral issues such as, but not only, Communion for the divorced and civilly remarried, and “reality” is interpreted to mean the concrete circumstances and decision-making of ordinary Catholics.

The article is here.

Have some evangelicals embraced moral relativism?

Corey Fields
Baptist News Global
Originally posted February 16, 2018

Here is an excerpt:

The moral rot we’re seeing among white evangelicals has been hard to watch, and it did not start in 2016. Back in 2009, an article in the evangelical publication Christianity Today bemoaned a survey finding that 62 percent of white evangelicals support the use of torture. Despite a supposed pro-life stance, white evangelicals are also the most likely religious group to support war and the death penalty. Racism and sexual predation among elected officials are getting a pass if they deliver on policy. Charles Mathewes, a professor of religious studies at the University of Virginia, put it well: “For believers in a religion whose Scriptures teach compassion, we [white evangelicals] are a breathtakingly cruel bunch.”

Here’s a quote from a prominent evangelical author: “As it turns out, character does matter. You can’t run a family, let alone a country, without it. How foolish to believe that a person who lacks honesty and moral integrity is qualified to lead a nation and the world!” That was written by James Dobson of Focus on the Family. But he wasn’t talking about Donald Trump. He wrote that about Bill Clinton in 1998. Is this principle no longer in force, or does it only apply to Democrats?

As Robert P. Jones noted, the ends apparently justify the means. “White evangelicals have now fully embraced a consequentialist ethics that works backward from predetermined political ends, refashioning or even discarding principles as needed to achieve a desired outcome.” That’s moral relativism.

The article is here.