The upside of Trump's moral abdication

How moral Americans are springing into action to counter immoral Trump

President Trump.
(Image credit: AP Photo/Pablo Martinez Monsivais)

One big danger with modern-day presidents has been that they are too eager to improve the nation's moral health. They either hector the country to atone for its past sins (Barack Obama). Or they aggressively push it to the promised land of moral perfection (Teddy Roosevelt who declared that he would do "battle for the Lord" to improve mankind during his term). But President Trump's antics since the neo-Nazi rally in Charlottesville confirm that with him we face the opposite danger: He will destroy the moral progress this country has made over the last 250 years.

Fortunately, 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.

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Shikha Dalmia

Shikha Dalmia is a visiting fellow at the Mercatus Center at George Mason University studying the rise of populist authoritarianism.  She is a Bloomberg View contributor and a columnist at the Washington Examiner, and she also writes regularly for The New York Times, USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, and numerous other publications. She considers herself to be a progressive libertarian and an agnostic with Buddhist longings and a Sufi soul.