A Free Country Can Do Without a Conscience in Chief
Otherwise, with Trump as president, America would never recover from the moral damage
The Founders were worried about "progressive" presidents like Teddy Roosevelt, Woodrow Wilson and, more recently, Barak Obama using their perch to

play moral hero. Obama, in particular, wanted to be a transformative president looking for great causes to reshape the country's moral landscape like Martin Luther King and Abraham Lincoln.
But the Founders never imagined that the country would one day be led by a moral moron with a sixth graders' capacity for moral reasoning and no feel for this country's history of moral progress. That, sadly, is exactly what Trump is, as his fake moral equivalence between the neo-Nazis and protesters—and Thomas Jefferson/George Washington, on the one hand, and Confederate General Robert E. Lee, on the other, suggests.
Fortunately, in a free country, people don't have to wait for the conscience in chief for direction. They think and act on their own and that's exactly what Americans have now started doing to restore the moral balance in their country, I note in my column at The Week.
Go here to read the piece.
Editor's Note: As of February 29, 2024, commenting privileges on reason.com posts are limited to Reason Plus subscribers. Past commenters are grandfathered in for a temporary period. Subscribe here to preserve your ability to comment. Your Reason Plus subscription also gives you an ad-free version of reason.com, along with full access to the digital edition and archives of Reason magazine. We request that comments be civil and on-topic. We do not moderate or assume any responsibility for comments, which are owned by the readers who post them. Comments do not represent the views of reason.com or Reason Foundation. We reserve the right to delete any comment and ban commenters for any reason at any time. Comments may only be edited within 5 minutes of posting. Report abuses.
Please
to post comments
The Neo-Nazis are reprehensible in their views is a given, but they had a right to demonstrate peacably, and to the extent that they were not is terrible. Why are the "protesters" beyond reproach in either their views or especially their methods?
A large portion as to why that demonstration devolved into viollence can be laid at the counter-protesters feet in their self-rightous conviction that their cause makes their actions moral and just, whatever they are.
Including violence, as advocated by the author of this piece no less.
You know, when I commented in the other thread about a group e-mail at the Reason offices urging the writers to regurgitate Media talking points in order to put some ideological distance between libertarians and Trump, I was just joking. I didn't really know there was such an e-mail.
Reading Shikha's article, I'm not so sure.
Spare us the lecture about "moral equivalence". I'm perfectly capable of determining morality without your hectoring and social signalling.
"Go here to read the piece."
Hell no.
This is Shikha's weekly shtick. Unfortunately for her, 95% of us know her far too well.
How many people have we murdered overseas in the last 16 years? And this is the moral outrage?
^^ This ^^
I saw some outrage 8 or 9 years ago. The moral outrage against war went way when Obama took office.
The left are living in a post-retard world and we get to watch them burn down any shred of moral decency and intellectual currency they had left.
What a sad sack bunch of pathetic, dangerous, violent, illiberal losers and assholes.
You know things are bad when:
-Democrats and the left keep calling for Trump's assassination based on the most trivial of things. Can anyone point to me a single public official or prominent person on the right ever say this about Obama?
-Antifa can provoke and commits acts of violence (while preposterously and infuriatingly comparing itself to WWII vets), while attacking speech it doesn't like without criticism or consequences. Worse, they're perceived as 'open and tolerant' for their thuggish and degenerate behaviour.
-People over-react to word and phrases believing them to be 'dog whistles' for racism, violence etc.
How is this not factors that contribute to an anti-humanist dark age again?
How is their blind faux self-righteous rage not a danger to peace, prosperity and liberty?
'Cuz if you ask me, it seems to me this petty band of illiberal, dilapidated delusional clowns are a direct danger to liberal values.
""Antifa can provoke and commits acts of violence"'
Then whines like a bitch when they get their but kicked. It's the I get to treat you how I want, and you shouldn't be allowed to respond in kind.
-Antifa can provoke and commits acts of violence (while preposterously and infuriatingly comparing itself to WWII vets), while attacking speech it doesn't like without criticism or consequences. Worse, they're perceived as 'open and tolerant' for their thuggish and degenerate behaviour.
Remember how "scary" the Tea Party was?
When those evil bastards...didn't assault anybody.
They...cleaned up the sites for their protests afterwards.
They...yelled at Congresspeople.
Yup, those Tea Party "Jihadists" sure were terrible people.
Unlike antifa. Who are pure as the fucking snow.
People over-react to word and phrases believing them to be 'dog whistles' for racism, violence etc.
What about virtue signaling? You left out virtue signaling.
Yeah, like she cares about 'morals'.
""But the Founders never imagined that the country would one day be led by a moral moron with a sixth graders' capacity for moral reasoning and no feel for this country's history of moral progress.""
Yes they did. That's why the President has limited authority. They also imagined a country where moral morons would populate Congress.
They imagined a country where the media would also be led by moral morons. The Founders got a lot of things pretty accurate.
Yup. They considered history in their process.
The thing that gets my goat is kids today live under freedom that other people had to fight for. They really have no clue about the Magna Carta and what it took to get there. They are spoiled brats that are will to piss away freedom because they have no clue what went into earning it.
Magna Carta? It was about a spat between some barons and the king. It had nothing to do with ordinary people (commoners). People in later centuries projected their ideas onto it.
The Founders never imagined a country where the President had unilateral authority over a standing army either.
You write this...but this site seems QUITE upset that Trump isn't being the conscience-in-chief they demand.
"Yes, he condemned racists...but he ALSO condemned antifa and, as Libertarians, we can't do the same. For reasons."
But he condemned them 2 days too late, buddy. And then he said not everyone at the protests was bad people.
Wait, what happened to the Shikha Dalmia Rule of Equivalencies?
I'm not going to go back and look up the exact wording from back then, but applied to this situation it would be something like "you can't criticize the white supremacists who ran over a woman in a car without condemning the leftist anarchists who enabled them".
I need some guidance here. When does the Rule of Equivalencies apply and when does it not?
his fake moral equivalence between the neo-Nazis and protesters
how do you know it's fake? I ask as someone who is so apathetic to all "sides" of the entire situation (outside of the girl who died), it's possible "moral equivalence between the neo-Nazis and protesters" is real
My capacity for moral reasoning was pretty advanced by the sixth grade, I'll have you know.
very nice post. I like it. Thanks for sharing this information.
Tinder is the best online chatting application. Try it.
http://www.tinder-pc-download.com/ tinder for pc
http://www.tinder-pc-download.com/ tinder download