Pragmatism & Principle

I read two articles on Wednesday that caught my attention and made me think about this topic.  What particularly caught my attention was that these are two opinion pieces from the same publication with pretty dramatically different understandings of the same set of issues.

Now I've heard that in the internet age people don't have the attention span to click on multiple links let alone read multiple articles, but that is stupid, and we are 'raising the level' here on Arrogant Musing, so put on your big boy/big girl pants and take 10 min to go read these articles so we can talk through this....

                                                  Nolte                                Shapiro

Now that you have read those, a couple caveats to start off.  Yes, I realize that these articles are from the Daily Wire.  Yes, I read the Daily Wire.  No, I am not endorsing any positions taken by that publication or any of its contributors.  Yes, I know Shapiro has a bit of a controversial reputation.  No, I don't agree with everything Ben Shapiro says.  No, I don't think Shapiro is an idiot and dismiss anything he says out of hand.

It's important to expose yourself to a variety of opinions, actually seek out people who disagree with you, and then listen to what they say and why they say it.  I'm tired of the tendency I see recently to look at where a particular article, opinion, or comment comes from, and then without even reading it decide whether or not it is correct, or biased, or crazy.  Read stuff.  Let yourself be surprised.  Admit when you find yourself agreeing with something that doesn't come from your 'tribe'.  That little rant is going to show up again on here...

Ok, so now hopefully we have dispensed with distracting questions regarding the provenance of these articles.

The basic question that I have in my head today is this, Pragmatism and Principle, what is the right balance?

I realize that this is a basic ethics question, and hardly an original one.  I'm sure if all the philosophy seminar term papers in the world of which this was the  required topic were stacked up, it would be a big pile.  Though it's not new, and though I know we wont answer it definitively here, I do think it's interesting to think about what this question means in our current political context.

Nolte essentially argues that in the most recent election (and in the current political climate generally) that the ends justify the means.  He specifically says that a team "...  who will do anything — ANYTHING — to win, and as long as it remains legal, those are my kind of Republicans."

Implicit in the Nolte article are two basic premises on which I strongly disagree. Namely, that the election of Hillary Clinton would have represented an existential threat to values like individual liberty, religious freedom, and the institution of western civilization, and that the election of Donald Trump will serve as a victory in the fight to preserve those same values.

I'm definitely interested  to hear opinions on this specific case, but I also want to think about the generic question.  In a political context, when IS the right time to do 'ANYTHING'?  To what standards should we hold those who would lead us?  Is there an ethical 'no-go' zone short of illegality? Or, like Nolte asserts, should we applaud our candidates for getting as close as possible to that line of illegality in pursuit of victory? If there is an ethical zone that we should'nt venture into, are we willing to back it up with our voice and our vote? Are we still willing to cast that vote when it's 'our guy/girl' who has stepped into the zone?

It seems to me that the the behavior of both presidential campaigns in 2016 pushed those ethical zones (if they even exist) much further than they have been pushed before.

Shapiro argues (and I agree) that using the kindergartenish “but he did it, too”  defense can easily devolve into a club to destroy the principles that we love rather than a shield to defend them.  I appreciate Shapiro's argument here even more because I know that he is strongly conservative and is calling out other conservatives to be honest with themselves.      

I also find it very interesting to think of how different the question looks when applied on a personal level vs. on a national/political level.

I know many people who would consider themselves 'on the Right' who would hold themselves to an incredibly strict understanding of this ethical question on a personal level.  These people would say that the ends NEVER justify the means, that any attempt to argue that means should be compromised based on an outcome is a step onto the slippery slope of 'moral relativism'.  However, these same people when confronted with this question on a national/political level tend to be much more flexible, supporting a muscular foreign policy, military solutions sooner than later, and, like Nolte, cheering that all available means were used to defeat HRC in 2016.

On the flip side, I know many people who would consider themselves 'on the Left' (more on 'Right' and 'Left' in a later post) who entertain a much more flexible 'morally relativistic' outlook in their personal life, but when confronted with this question in a national/political context are incredibly rigid.  These people tend to hate the idea of anyone making a 'moral judgement' toward anyone else on a personal level, but are then incredibly rigid with respect to the moral obligations that the believe the country has. How dare the US defend it's interest with it's military? How dare policy makers shirk their moral obligation to mankind by even considering anything less than 'throwing open the gates' to any refugee, economic immigrant, or asylum seeker?

How do we separate these contexts? Why are we willing answer the ethical question of the ends and means so differently in different contexts?

E