The legacy of Luther’s conscience cannot be understated—it is the impetus for all manner of religious and philosophical developments that have defined the modern world. It also had political and cultural effects, ones relevant to our current American distemper, much of it driven by one particular element of that Saxon monk’s conscience: its scrupulosity. From the tearing down of monuments, to dietary fads, to foreign interventions, America owes much to Luther’s scrupulous conscience.
.. By his own admission, his was a tortured soul, wracked by feelings of guilt and unworthiness before a righteous God. One imagines a Luther who confesses his sins, receives absolution, and within minutes of leaving the confessional is overwrought with self-hatred over some perceived personal failure. Luther himself characterized these years as ones of profound spiritual despair, later observing, “I lost touch with Christ the Savior and Comforter, and made of him the jailer and hangman of my poor soul.”
.. Luther’s confessor and superior, Johann von Staupitz, urged Luther to direct his gaze not to his own sin, but to the merits of Christ. He exhorted the monk to remember that true repentance comes not from outward signs of piety, but primarily and fundamentally from the heart:
For thou hast no delight in sacrifice;
were I to give a burnt offering, thou wouldst not be pleased.
The sacrifice acceptable to God is a broken spirit;
a broken and contrite heart, O God, thou wilt not despise. (Psalm 51:16-17)
This ultimately was insufficient for Luther. His conscience continued to ravage him.
.. Or consider the obsession of one strata of American society with the ethics of food. Is it organic? Grass-fed? Free-trade? Single-origin? Artisanal? We can always find something to feel guilty about, regardless of what food or drink we’re consuming
The upside of Trump’s moral abdication
ordinary Americans are waking up to that reality and rather than looking to the alleged conscience-in-chief to beat back the rising tide of racism and bigotry, they are taking matters in their own hands. This may well prove to be a healthy development that will strengthen national morality by decentralizing it.
.. The two fixed lodestars in America’s moral map were set by its great struggles against slavery and Nazism. One can question the means that the nation deployed against these two evils but not that they were worth fighting. After all, they represent an affront to every sacred principle this country stands for — equality, liberty, and justice. America sacrificed over 750,000 soldiers (not counting the Confederate casualties), more than all its other conflicts combined, in the service of these two causes.
.. Moreover, he implied that there was no big moral divide between Thomas Jefferson and George Washington, on the one hand, and Robert E. Lee, on the other — never mind that Jefferson and Washington despised slavery whereas Lee, the confederate general, fought to preserve this cruel institution nearly a century later. Nor was Trump simply making a slippery slope argument when he warned that tearing down Lee’s statue would inevitably visit the same fate on America’s slave-owning founders. Indeed, since his original comments, he has gone even further, lamenting on Twitter the removal of “our beautiful statutes and monuments.”
.. Stunningly, he is no longer even claiming — as some Southerners have the decency to do — that Lee’s statues are warts that need to be preserved to remind us of our ugly history. No, they need to be maintained because they are “beautiful.”
.. PayPal has invoked a clause in its contract that reserves the right to deny access to anyone who promotes “hate, violence, and racial intolerance” to cut off outfits like Richard Spencer’s National Policy Institute, a white separatist think tank. Meanwhile, the Cheyenne Mountain Resort in Colorado Springs cancelled a conference that VDARE, a nativist outfit, was planning to hold there next April.
.. But precisely because there is a cost to businesses themselves when they shun someone, they have an inherent incentive in not going too overboard in quashing dissenters, unlike ideologically motivated Social Justice Warriors.
All the President’s Advisers
Steve Bannon all but dares Trump and Kelly to fire him.
Some conservatives deride Mr. Cohn as a Wall Street Democrat, but he has assembled a first-rate policy team with free-market views. They are crucial to pulling off tax reform in the autumn and to holding off destructive ideas like withdrawing from Nafta.
.. Then there’s the national-security team that is trying to navigate the dangerous world they inherited from Barack Obama. Jim Mattis at Defense, National Security Adviser H.R. McMaster, CIA Director Mike Pompeo and U.N. Ambassador Nikki Haley are clear-eyed about the threats posed by Russia, Iran and North Korea. Whatever their policy differences, they know the value of alliances and diplomacy backed by military power.
They’re also reassuring to a world that doesn’t know how to read Mr. Trump’s Twitter outbursts. There’s no evidence they plan to leave, but if they did it would send a political shock that would ignite calls for Mr. Trump’s resignation.
.. Mr. Bannon has a Manichean view of politics, at home and abroad, that is sure to become destructive. “To me,” he told Mr. Kuttner, “the economic war with China is everything.”
.. Most striking is Mr. Bannon’s willingness to undercut Mr. Trump’s policy of pressuring China by saying there’s “no military solution” on North Korea. He said he’d consider a deal in which North Korea freezes its nuclear program with verifiable inspections in return for U.S. withdrawal from the Korean peninsula. But this would be a strategic windfall for China and North Korea, leveraging the nuclear threat to push the U.S. out of East Asia.
.. Mr. Bannon says he didn’t realize his chat with the journalist was on the record, which is hard to believe given his years of media experience. We almost wonder if it’s a dare to Mr. Kelly to fire him.
If Mr. Trump retains Mr. Bannon after such a public declaration of disdain for his colleagues, the President will risk other departures. And if Mr. Trump rejects such a request from Mr. Kelly, the chief of staff will have to wonder whether he can do his job.
- They see a rare moment of united Republican government to move in a better direction on domestic policy.
- Or they want to correct the erosion of American power and influence that accelerated during the Obama years.
Every person has to decide how long he or she can serve in good conscience. But we hope the best stay as long as they can for the good of the country.
Trump’s Tangle of Rhetorical Inadequacy
A gifted leader might make the case for building more statues rather than tearing down the ones we have.
The political aspect of the president’s failures this week is to reveal him as increasingly isolated. He is not without supporters, but it’s down to roughly a third of the country and one senses soft around the edges. That is not a base, it’s a core. A core can have an impact, but a president cannot govern if that’s all he has.
.. Donald Trump is binding himself down with thick cords of rhetorical inadequacy. People felt let down, angry and in some cases frightened by his inability to make clear moral distinctions when he addressed the events in Charlottesville, Va. There were neo-Nazis, anti-Semitic chants, white supremacists; a woman was killed and many people injured. It’s not hard to figure out who and what needed to be castigated—clearly, unambiguously, immediately.
.. In times of stress and fracture, people want a president who’s calm in the storm, who speaks to the nation’s moral conscience, recalls first principles, evokes what unites us, honestly defines the contours of an event, and softly instructs. Mr. Trump did not do any of that.
If a leader is particularly gifted he could, in a moment of historical stress, succeed in speaking to the nation’s soul and moving its heart by addressing its brain. This kind of thing comes from love—of the country, our people, what we’ve been.
.. It struck me this week as he spoke that his speeches and statements are peculiarly loveless. The public Mr. Trump is not without sentiment and occasional sentimentality, but the deeper wells of a broader love seem not there to draw from. Seven months in, people know they can look to him for a reaction, a statement, an announcement, but not for comfort, inspiration, higher meaning.
.. After the church shootings in Charleston, S.C., two years ago, the great and immediate moral leaders were the victims’ families, whose words at the shooter’s bond hearing spread throughout the country within 24 hours. “I forgive you.” “We are praying for you.” It was the authentic voice of American Christianity, of Wednesday night Bible study, of mercy and self-sacrifice. It quieted the soul of a nation: We’ll be OK. This is who we really are.
.. When a nation tears down its statues, it’s toppling more than brass and marble. It is in a way toppling itself—tearing down all the things, good, bad and inadequate, that made it. Or, rather, everyone. Not all of what made America is good—does anyone even think this?—but why try to hide from that?
.. Condi Rice said it well, before the current controversy. She did not agree with the impulse to tear down. “Keep your history before you,” she said. Keep it in your line of sight.And once the tearing down starts, there’s no knowing where it will end. On this the president is right. Once the local statues are purged the Tear-Downers will look to Statuary Hall, and the names of military bases, and then on to the Founders, to the slave-holding Washington and Jefferson. Then, perhaps, to their words and ideas. In what way will that help us?.. Leave what is, alone. Be a noble people who inspire—and build—more statues. I’d like one that honors the families of the victims in the Charleston shooting.More statues, not fewer; more honor, not more debris. More debris is the last thing we need.