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Michelle Togut's avatar

"...a man addicted to the intoxicating thrill of his own righteous indignation, and eager to view politics through its distorting haze."

This phrase sums up my problem with so many thinkers on the right these days. They're full of anger and indignation and so morally certain of their views that they're eager to impose them by any means necessary on the rest of us. They see the politics as an arena to achieve total victory rather than one where reasonable compromise is necessary to sustain the republic. There's no small irony in the fact that the morally indignant right embrace a corrupt, serial liar like Trump and ascribe to an ends justifies the means political philosophy.

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Judd Kahn's avatar

I loved this section:

There is, therefore, such a thing as natural right, but its content changes in different circumstances, and its very rightness often can’t be definitively established at the moment it is articulated. People disagree about who is truly wise. It’s often possible to know only in retrospect, after the consequences have unfolded, whether one course of action or another is right.

Welcome to the world of the pragmatists. Not sure you feel comfortable here, but consequences do matter.

And why on earth did Mansfield vote for Trump in 2020? The character of Trump was not visible by then?

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