Alternative take: The Never Trump crowd is not primarily manipulative. They have a gut reaction, a revulsion, triggered by Trump, that they are trying to turn into rational arguments against Trump.
But the rational arguments don't really work, because the same people, as GOP and/or conservative leaders, urged us to vote for morally repugnant GOP pols like Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain.
The difference between that group and Trump is a matter of degree. Each of them betrayed one former wife and divorced her. Trump did the same, in spades, and makes morally repugnant statements from time to time as well. So, the Never Trump crowd reached their limit of what they could take in Donald Trump, as a matter of degree.
A common human instinct is to claim the moral high ground by making a difference of degree sound like it is a difference in kind, with the writer/speaker being moral while those who disagree with him are immoral. This is what David French is doing, for example. But the immorality is on his side, as well. I reached my limit with Gingrich and Giuliani when the Con Inc. crowd was still urging us to vote for them. Giuliani was considered the front runner for the GOP POTUS nomination at one point in the 2008 cycle. So, French et al. had a higher tolerance for immorality than I did at the time! And this was during the Neutral World years, when concern for morality of our politicians was expected to be higher than today.
None of the Con Inc. Never Trump crowd has EVER addressed their prior support for swine like Gingrich and Giuliani. They probably never will.
I don't have receipts, but my impression is that most of the Never Trump Christians are the same people who claim it's immoral, quasi-heretical to impose morality on non-Christians in society.
I find this post quite helpful. Thinking clearly about everything that is happening is not all that easy. Thank you for your work Aaron. I appreciate you!
Personally I think becoming a "moral mafia" is the only way evangelicalism as a social unit will be able to exist in the future. Evangelicalism has never had a keen sense of division from the secular world (contra its fundamentalist forebears) and has been too spongy. But the solution can't be found in a return to separatist, ghettoized fundamentalist culture.
Evangelicals basically need to cultivate an identity as a cosmopolitan minority with an ethical code stricter than the common people, a code that makes them more desirable as workers and even as elites, but nevertheless is firmly committed to in-group loyalty. My paradoxical term for it is "evangelical aristocratic cosmopolitan tribalism" -- none of which are things that you would expect to go together.
Failure to use the Shift key is an assault on the reader and on the English language. Maybe that is cool in your age group. It just looks lazy to most of us.
As I said, these are rambling thoughts that I was hastily jotting down on my blog. I was not aiming for professionalism here. Why not appear lazy? Too many bloggers take themselves too seriously. I'm going for sprezzatura here.
This article makes a strong case for small moral communities and offers an operating principle for them that is both insightful and encouraging. By operating principle, I am referring to Nassim Taleb's "minority rule," which for me was an eye-opener.
In the "negative world" it is clear, from what Aaron has argued, that we cannot make Christian principles, or a program fully consistent with them, the centerpiece of a social movement. Society simply won't tolerate it. We've arrived at 2 Tim 4:3: "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions"
Instead, we should vigorously pursue Biblical truth through our religious observances while separately striving to establish an organized moral community which annunciates basic principles that most people can accept. Examples might be marital fidelity and responsible government. I believe this is Aaron's position at least in part. With a large enough list of imperatives, each chosen with the minority rule in view, it might be possible for this moral community to become a social movement with a comprehensive program that appeals to both conservatives and liberals. It would offer an alternative to the chaotic and deeply injurious path that the Left offers and the out-of-touch platform that the Right cannot advance.
And perhaps, just perhaps, if and when such a movement were to dominate elite thinking, more substantive principles (i.e., Christian) could be introduced.
As a retired Army officer, I would argue that the culture war has always been the wrong war to primarily fight. As Breitbart said, "politics is downstream of culture" and I continue to argue that the headwaters of culture are theology and our nation's theology has been polluted and poisoned for a long time. Therefore, we get people like Trump as the Christian conservative standard bearer.
I was willing to hold my nose and vote for him because his policies were on the right track, but since his recent negotiating a deal with the party of Evil on infanticide, he has crossed my redline.
"The best example of this is in fact the election on Donald Trump as President. In the Positive and Neutral Worlds, it is unlikely that someone like Trump could have won the presidency. "
What year was it that horndog (and allegedly worse) Bill Clinton was elected? Asking for Gary Hart...
I don't think the three worlds model maps well onto national politics in the 20th Century. For Republican Presidential ticket nominees alone, Eisenhower, Dole, Reagan and Bush all either cheated on their wives or were divorced. Dole's was a fairly recent divorce when he was put on the ticket with Ford in 1976. For Democrats, some huge scandals were completely brushed aside, while in other cases like Hart, it was considered a career killer. To be certain, the media protected some politicians and helped bury others, while having no concern for Christian morality at all.
To identify the society wide breakdown in moral standards, I would go back to Charles Murray's argument in Coming Apart that elites were no longer preaching what they practiced. Although in many cases elites have stopped practicing it as well, especially the younger generations.
As you note, the media ran cover for the sexual misbehavior of Presidents (and, I suppose, Presidential candidates) prior to the late 20th century. So I think the point is that someone broadly known to have committed Clinton-like scandals would have been sunk in an earlier age. The fact that JFK's scandals didn't sink him was entirely due to the cover the media ran. The fact that Clinton survived his scandals -- and even more so, that Trump became President in spite of both his scandals and his Trumpiness -- is due to changes in our political culture.
But an important point missing in this narrative is polarization. If the political parties are barely differentiated in terms of policy, as in America circa 1960, then an obvious difference in character can sway a lot of voters. In the opposite extreme -- say, a Christian in Lebanon -- then there is literally no level of poor character on the part of Christian leaders that will cause you to start supporting Hezbollah over them. We're somewhere in between now, and by the Clinton era we were well on our way, as was made obvious in the 2000 election.
A political culture in which only a tiny section of the population has any real chance of being persuaded by both parties is one in which corruption and misbehavior thrive.
I was thinking as much about Ted Kennedy's challenge to Jimmy Carter in 1980 as his brother's run in 1960. He still lost, but based on what I have read about the campaign, the primary issue was always Carter's job performance, not Ted's totally degenerate personal life and Chappaquiddick.
It may have had more to do with news coverage being controlled by a small number of players and no outlets for people to get alternative narratives. If they didn't focus on the moral scandal, neither did voters even if they had heard rumors about it. Interestingly, South Dakota press has completely ignored the Kristi Noem - Lewendoski affair story since the Daily Mail article broke. I have not seen a single article about it either from the biggest newspaper websites or local TV news. I am curious what percentage of the state has even heard the story. I am assuming local press simply doesn't want to cross her and lose access to the office.
Ted Kennedy *couldn't* win national office because of Mary Jo though. Probably worth highlighting that the dead body involved made this an unusually disqualifying event, and one that couldn't be suppressed like an ordinary sex scandal.
A primary challenge against a sitting President is considered both stupid and counterproductive (therefore, bad form that will make enemies in your own party). This is why more qualified candidates (i.e. those who couldn't be directly implicated in the deaths of young women) didn't attempt it. Ted tried it because he was already kryptonite, as was Carter at that point, and he saw it as his only chance. And it still wasn't a real chance, but I think the votes he did receive mostly represent a middle finger to Carter rather than support for Ted.
Interesting point about SD media though. The argument that it's about access makes sense to me.
As usual, a lot to like here. Certainly there has been a rejection of traditional Judeo-Christian morals regarding sexuality, which has tremendous consequences for politics and society, as Aaron outlines. That being conceded, in my experience, we still live in a highly moralistic era--though many of the specific morals have changed. Adultery may not affect a politician's career, but it will still end most marriages. And there now are hyper-strict rules now about behavior between the sexes, and much of what used to count as friendliness (a pat on the back) or innocent flirting (a wink) are now often considered sexual harassment. And as the one quote above notes, many in our society are highly legalistic and judgmental about how we talk and act about a host of subjects, especially race. Or take the policing of language. At one point, the F word was nearly unspeakable in public--now it appears as the adjective/adverb/noun of choice. At the same time, the N word is basically the new F word, something we whites anyway should not say out loud (I'm not suggesting we should be free to say it out loud, just that we still have language morals, only they've shifted.) So I'm not sure we are any less moral, but we are certainly less concerned about some traditional moral issues and more concerned than ever about others. An interesting exercise would be to list what people are judged for or shamed for today--that would be the beginning of an outline of ethics in "the negative world." I think Christians would agree with some of the new standards, and disagree with others and--hopefully--would frown on judgment and shaming as a solution :-)
I am much more cynical. The morality of today is unlike that of the past in that much of it is enforced as a power play to control others, not out of a legitimate belief in the correctness of the morality. E.g., the deathly fear of Nazis around every corner in America while the regime funds actual Nazis in Ukraine.
I think that the reason that the N word is the new F word is that it is not seen as personal morality, but political morality. Thus your example actually fits what Aaron wrote, and the observation that in a revolutionary age, personal morality takes a back seat to having the right views about the revolutionary topics of the times.
Thank you, sir. In most of these cases, I think the new morality is not really more but ideological, which is why it changes all the time. There's nothing to anchor to that won't be up for grabs tomorrow.
"Speaking of getting indignant, we will see that those who continue to pontificate about the importance of moral standards in political affairs or voting will increasingly be doing it out of a desire to manipulate the portion of the electorate that still cares about such things."
I recall seeing that tweet and thinking it was the worst thing French has written that I can remember. Just a mean-hearted slam towards what was once supposedly his in-group, worthy of any anti-Christian leftist, and he never walked it back. And I'm someone who has tried to give the man the benefit of the doubt. But I think of him now as primarily an NYT opinion columnist who happens to identify as evangelical. Unlike Douthat, whom I'd still describe as an unconventional conservative Catholic who happens to write for the NYT.
Though while French is the topic, he did write this piece, pertinent to Aaron's discussion, and in my opinion maybe the best thing he's written in recent times (requires a free account signup I believe):
To make it even worse, French's wife, who has a holy fit anytime she is even mildly criticized jumped in to back it up and amplify it. She also made it clear the target wasn't Noem directly but Republican voters who the French family believes should demand complete moral purity from their politicians or withhold their vote. It isn't just the money and connections to elite circles driving David and Nancy French they truly look down their noses at the people and communities they grew up in and now despise. They are the modern day personification of the publican in the parable Jesus told in Luke 18.
Alternative take: The Never Trump crowd is not primarily manipulative. They have a gut reaction, a revulsion, triggered by Trump, that they are trying to turn into rational arguments against Trump.
But the rational arguments don't really work, because the same people, as GOP and/or conservative leaders, urged us to vote for morally repugnant GOP pols like Newt Gingrich, Rudy Giuliani, and John McCain.
The difference between that group and Trump is a matter of degree. Each of them betrayed one former wife and divorced her. Trump did the same, in spades, and makes morally repugnant statements from time to time as well. So, the Never Trump crowd reached their limit of what they could take in Donald Trump, as a matter of degree.
A common human instinct is to claim the moral high ground by making a difference of degree sound like it is a difference in kind, with the writer/speaker being moral while those who disagree with him are immoral. This is what David French is doing, for example. But the immorality is on his side, as well. I reached my limit with Gingrich and Giuliani when the Con Inc. crowd was still urging us to vote for them. Giuliani was considered the front runner for the GOP POTUS nomination at one point in the 2008 cycle. So, French et al. had a higher tolerance for immorality than I did at the time! And this was during the Neutral World years, when concern for morality of our politicians was expected to be higher than today.
None of the Con Inc. Never Trump crowd has EVER addressed their prior support for swine like Gingrich and Giuliani. They probably never will.
I don't have receipts, but my impression is that most of the Never Trump Christians are the same people who claim it's immoral, quasi-heretical to impose morality on non-Christians in society.
I like most everything you write, but this is great.
I find this post quite helpful. Thinking clearly about everything that is happening is not all that easy. Thank you for your work Aaron. I appreciate you!
Worth recalling here: Daniel Patrick Moynihan’s essay 30 years ago on “Defining Deviancy Down.”
Personally I think becoming a "moral mafia" is the only way evangelicalism as a social unit will be able to exist in the future. Evangelicalism has never had a keen sense of division from the secular world (contra its fundamentalist forebears) and has been too spongy. But the solution can't be found in a return to separatist, ghettoized fundamentalist culture.
Evangelicals basically need to cultivate an identity as a cosmopolitan minority with an ethical code stricter than the common people, a code that makes them more desirable as workers and even as elites, but nevertheless is firmly committed to in-group loyalty. My paradoxical term for it is "evangelical aristocratic cosmopolitan tribalism" -- none of which are things that you would expect to go together.
I go into more (rambling) detail on my blog here: https://aworldinglass.com/2023/08/18/evangelical-cosmopolitan-aristocratic-tribalism-or-the-coming-crisis-in-evangelical-leadership-or-why-i-reject-white-nationalism/
Failure to use the Shift key is an assault on the reader and on the English language. Maybe that is cool in your age group. It just looks lazy to most of us.
As I said, these are rambling thoughts that I was hastily jotting down on my blog. I was not aiming for professionalism here. Why not appear lazy? Too many bloggers take themselves too seriously. I'm going for sprezzatura here.
This article makes a strong case for small moral communities and offers an operating principle for them that is both insightful and encouraging. By operating principle, I am referring to Nassim Taleb's "minority rule," which for me was an eye-opener.
In the "negative world" it is clear, from what Aaron has argued, that we cannot make Christian principles, or a program fully consistent with them, the centerpiece of a social movement. Society simply won't tolerate it. We've arrived at 2 Tim 4:3: "For the time is coming when people will not endure sound teaching, but having itching ears they will accumulate for themselves teachers to suit their own passions"
Instead, we should vigorously pursue Biblical truth through our religious observances while separately striving to establish an organized moral community which annunciates basic principles that most people can accept. Examples might be marital fidelity and responsible government. I believe this is Aaron's position at least in part. With a large enough list of imperatives, each chosen with the minority rule in view, it might be possible for this moral community to become a social movement with a comprehensive program that appeals to both conservatives and liberals. It would offer an alternative to the chaotic and deeply injurious path that the Left offers and the out-of-touch platform that the Right cannot advance.
And perhaps, just perhaps, if and when such a movement were to dominate elite thinking, more substantive principles (i.e., Christian) could be introduced.
As a retired Army officer, I would argue that the culture war has always been the wrong war to primarily fight. As Breitbart said, "politics is downstream of culture" and I continue to argue that the headwaters of culture are theology and our nation's theology has been polluted and poisoned for a long time. Therefore, we get people like Trump as the Christian conservative standard bearer.
I was willing to hold my nose and vote for him because his policies were on the right track, but since his recent negotiating a deal with the party of Evil on infanticide, he has crossed my redline.
"The best example of this is in fact the election on Donald Trump as President. In the Positive and Neutral Worlds, it is unlikely that someone like Trump could have won the presidency. "
What year was it that horndog (and allegedly worse) Bill Clinton was elected? Asking for Gary Hart...
I don't think the three worlds model maps well onto national politics in the 20th Century. For Republican Presidential ticket nominees alone, Eisenhower, Dole, Reagan and Bush all either cheated on their wives or were divorced. Dole's was a fairly recent divorce when he was put on the ticket with Ford in 1976. For Democrats, some huge scandals were completely brushed aside, while in other cases like Hart, it was considered a career killer. To be certain, the media protected some politicians and helped bury others, while having no concern for Christian morality at all.
To identify the society wide breakdown in moral standards, I would go back to Charles Murray's argument in Coming Apart that elites were no longer preaching what they practiced. Although in many cases elites have stopped practicing it as well, especially the younger generations.
As you note, the media ran cover for the sexual misbehavior of Presidents (and, I suppose, Presidential candidates) prior to the late 20th century. So I think the point is that someone broadly known to have committed Clinton-like scandals would have been sunk in an earlier age. The fact that JFK's scandals didn't sink him was entirely due to the cover the media ran. The fact that Clinton survived his scandals -- and even more so, that Trump became President in spite of both his scandals and his Trumpiness -- is due to changes in our political culture.
But an important point missing in this narrative is polarization. If the political parties are barely differentiated in terms of policy, as in America circa 1960, then an obvious difference in character can sway a lot of voters. In the opposite extreme -- say, a Christian in Lebanon -- then there is literally no level of poor character on the part of Christian leaders that will cause you to start supporting Hezbollah over them. We're somewhere in between now, and by the Clinton era we were well on our way, as was made obvious in the 2000 election.
A political culture in which only a tiny section of the population has any real chance of being persuaded by both parties is one in which corruption and misbehavior thrive.
I was thinking as much about Ted Kennedy's challenge to Jimmy Carter in 1980 as his brother's run in 1960. He still lost, but based on what I have read about the campaign, the primary issue was always Carter's job performance, not Ted's totally degenerate personal life and Chappaquiddick.
It may have had more to do with news coverage being controlled by a small number of players and no outlets for people to get alternative narratives. If they didn't focus on the moral scandal, neither did voters even if they had heard rumors about it. Interestingly, South Dakota press has completely ignored the Kristi Noem - Lewendoski affair story since the Daily Mail article broke. I have not seen a single article about it either from the biggest newspaper websites or local TV news. I am curious what percentage of the state has even heard the story. I am assuming local press simply doesn't want to cross her and lose access to the office.
Ted Kennedy *couldn't* win national office because of Mary Jo though. Probably worth highlighting that the dead body involved made this an unusually disqualifying event, and one that couldn't be suppressed like an ordinary sex scandal.
A primary challenge against a sitting President is considered both stupid and counterproductive (therefore, bad form that will make enemies in your own party). This is why more qualified candidates (i.e. those who couldn't be directly implicated in the deaths of young women) didn't attempt it. Ted tried it because he was already kryptonite, as was Carter at that point, and he saw it as his only chance. And it still wasn't a real chance, but I think the votes he did receive mostly represent a middle finger to Carter rather than support for Ted.
Interesting point about SD media though. The argument that it's about access makes sense to me.
Best essay I've read on this topic in quite awhile. Bravo, Aaron.
Thanks, Tim.
As usual, a lot to like here. Certainly there has been a rejection of traditional Judeo-Christian morals regarding sexuality, which has tremendous consequences for politics and society, as Aaron outlines. That being conceded, in my experience, we still live in a highly moralistic era--though many of the specific morals have changed. Adultery may not affect a politician's career, but it will still end most marriages. And there now are hyper-strict rules now about behavior between the sexes, and much of what used to count as friendliness (a pat on the back) or innocent flirting (a wink) are now often considered sexual harassment. And as the one quote above notes, many in our society are highly legalistic and judgmental about how we talk and act about a host of subjects, especially race. Or take the policing of language. At one point, the F word was nearly unspeakable in public--now it appears as the adjective/adverb/noun of choice. At the same time, the N word is basically the new F word, something we whites anyway should not say out loud (I'm not suggesting we should be free to say it out loud, just that we still have language morals, only they've shifted.) So I'm not sure we are any less moral, but we are certainly less concerned about some traditional moral issues and more concerned than ever about others. An interesting exercise would be to list what people are judged for or shamed for today--that would be the beginning of an outline of ethics in "the negative world." I think Christians would agree with some of the new standards, and disagree with others and--hopefully--would frown on judgment and shaming as a solution :-)
Thanks, Aaron, for prodding out thinking!
I am much more cynical. The morality of today is unlike that of the past in that much of it is enforced as a power play to control others, not out of a legitimate belief in the correctness of the morality. E.g., the deathly fear of Nazis around every corner in America while the regime funds actual Nazis in Ukraine.
I think that the reason that the N word is the new F word is that it is not seen as personal morality, but political morality. Thus your example actually fits what Aaron wrote, and the observation that in a revolutionary age, personal morality takes a back seat to having the right views about the revolutionary topics of the times.
That's a good point. Thanks.
Thank you, sir. In most of these cases, I think the new morality is not really more but ideological, which is why it changes all the time. There's nothing to anchor to that won't be up for grabs tomorrow.
"Speaking of getting indignant, we will see that those who continue to pontificate about the importance of moral standards in political affairs or voting will increasingly be doing it out of a desire to manipulate the portion of the electorate that still cares about such things."
Paging David French!
https://dougwils.com/books-and-culture/s7-engaging-the-culture/sexual-shenanigans-in-high-places.html
I recall seeing that tweet and thinking it was the worst thing French has written that I can remember. Just a mean-hearted slam towards what was once supposedly his in-group, worthy of any anti-Christian leftist, and he never walked it back. And I'm someone who has tried to give the man the benefit of the doubt. But I think of him now as primarily an NYT opinion columnist who happens to identify as evangelical. Unlike Douthat, whom I'd still describe as an unconventional conservative Catholic who happens to write for the NYT.
Though while French is the topic, he did write this piece, pertinent to Aaron's discussion, and in my opinion maybe the best thing he's written in recent times (requires a free account signup I believe):
https://thedispatch.com/newsletter/frenchpress/remembering-what-repentance-looks-like/
To make it even worse, French's wife, who has a holy fit anytime she is even mildly criticized jumped in to back it up and amplify it. She also made it clear the target wasn't Noem directly but Republican voters who the French family believes should demand complete moral purity from their politicians or withhold their vote. It isn't just the money and connections to elite circles driving David and Nancy French they truly look down their noses at the people and communities they grew up in and now despise. They are the modern day personification of the publican in the parable Jesus told in Luke 18.