I am a person of strong moral beliefs who has always been troubled by lack of religious or philosophical grounding for my beliefs. Rather I judge religious and philosophical doctrines by my pre-existing morality. For example, I can't believe there can be such a thing as a loving, all-powerful deity who condemns sinners to an eternal Hell.
Alasdair MacIntyre, in his book, AFTER VIRTUE: A Study in Moral Theory (1981, 1986), says that this dilemma reflects the failure of modern philosophy. I read his book over a period of months as part of a reading group hosted by my friend Paul Mitacek.
In the first part, MacIntyre indicts modern philosophy and culture. In the last part, he tries to recover the lost ancient Greek idea of virtue and apply it to our own times. It is an extremely rich book, ranging over literature, philosophy, psychology and the social sciences.
Most modern philosophy consists of algorithms for generating moral rules, he wrote. Immanuel Kant said you should always act according to rules that you would want all of humanity to follow. Jeremy Bentham said you should always act in a way that would generate the greatest happiness for the greatest number.
G.E. Moore, in his Principia Ethica, wrote that there is such thing as "good" that exists independently of human beings, but which human beings can detect through their moral sense; that a moral action is the one that does the most good; and that the greatest goods are personal affection and aesthetic enjoyments. As MacIntyre pointed out, there is no evidence at all for any of these things.
That is why thinkers such as Bertrand Russell adopted the idea of "emotivism"—that moral judgments are simply a matter of personal preference, like preferring ice cream to baked beans. You can discuss morality only with people with whom you already hold certain moral beliefs in common, including the belief that morality matters at all.
Political philosophy has the same weakness. John Rawls such a just society reflects a just distribution of wealth and income. Robert Nozick said a just society is based on property rights that have been legitimately acquired. These conflicting philosophies offer no basis for proof or disproof, and, even worse, no basis for compromise, MacIntyre noted.
He attempted to debunk most of modern thought in wide-ranging commentary that I won't even try to summarize.
For an alternative, he returned to the culture of ancient Greece, where Aristotle and other thinkers sought excellences to be achieved rather than rules to follow. The alternative, he said, was Nietzsche, who taught that there is no God and superior people have to create their own morality out of their own self-will.
Bill Black, an expert on banking and white-collar crime, described how Donald Trump's appointees to the Federal Reserve Board are revising "stress tests" to free Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley from a requirement to prove they are solvent enough to weather the next recession.
To pass the "stress test," they'd have to put a larger fraction of their profits into capital reserves. Black said they could easily do this, but it would cut into bonuses and dividends.
He also noted that Germany's Deutsche Bank in Germany can't even pass the easier stress test. Deutsche Bank is Germany's largest bank and, according to Black, the only large bank willing to lend to Donald Trump's businesses.
Fed Lets Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley Off Hook, Investors Profit Billions, a transcript of an interview of Bill Black for the Real News Network.
I underestimated Donald Trump. I didn't think he would be elected. Although I knew the figures that showed declining support for Democrats, I thought they had enough residual strength to elect a President one last time.
I thought that his election might be a blessing in disguise from the standpoint of progressives. Trump rather than Hillary Clinton would get the blame for failure to deal with the coming economic crash and ongoing quagmire wars.
I didn't think that Trump could govern effectively because he was ignorant. I forget how progressives ridiculed Ronald Reagan and George W. Bush for their supposed ignorance, and yet Reagan and Bush were transformational presidents while Jimmy Carter, Bill Clinton and Barack Obama were not. Trump is on track to be a transformational president, and not in a good way.
President Trump is transforming the Supreme Court so as to reverse all the pro-labor and pro-civil liberties decisions of the past 40 or 50 years. The religious right was disappointed that Ronald Reagan and the two George Bushes never advanced their goals. But I don't think Trump will have any qualms about giving them what they want.
Trump is crippling the ability of the federal government to perform its lawful duties to regulate and provide public services. He has raised corruption to a new level, which, strangely, works to his advantage because there is so much of it that I can't keep track of it.
Nancy Pelosi, Chuck Schumer and other top Democratic leaders are not an effective opposition. They are too wedded to pleasing their wealthy donors and to a pro-military foreign policy and pro-corporate economic policy.
What I hear from liberal Democrats are (1) a claim that Donald Trump is a puppet of Vladimir Putin and (2) outrage at the latest comment that Trump has made on Twitter.
They let Trump set the agenda. They have no program of their own. So even though an overwhelming majority of Americans disapprove of Donald Trump, that will not in itself bring victory.
Increasing numbers of Americans decline to vote in national elections. They don't think the leaders of either the Republican or Democratic party represent them.
When Ronald Reagan was elected in 1980, it seemed to me that, since the Republicans had become an ideological party of the right, the Democrats would become an ideological party of the left. The result, I thought, would be a real political debate based on issues.
This didn't happen. Instead the Democratic leaders became more pro-corporate and pro-military.
Now, nearly 40 years later, a true left-wing movement is emerging in America. Politicians such as Bernie Sanders and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez even call themselves socialists.
I see that emerging movement as Americans' only hope because the alternatives are the status quo, which does not work for most Americans, and Donald Trump's blood-and-soil nationalism, which also will not work.
Why Trump country is unfazed by the child separation crisis by Matthew Walther for The Week.
This Political Theorist Predicted the Rise of Trumpism | His Name Was Hunter S. Thompson by Susan McWilliams for The Nation.