A new moral sheriff in town

[DavidOdden]

NYT released this (yesterday, I guess), and I suppose Gus will have commentary on Monday. I thought I would get things started today. Unedited excerpt from the NYT interview with Trump:

 

(NYT)“Do you see any checks on your power on the world stage? Is there anything that could stop if you wanted to?” (DT)“Yeah, there’s one thing: my own morality, my own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me. And that’s very good. I don’t need international law. I’m not looking to hurt people.” (NYT)“Do you feel your administration needs to abide by international law on the global stage?” (DT)“Yeah, I do. I do, but it depends what your definition of international law is.”

This is a historic moment, though it may be lost in a cloud of political noise. Past presidents have no doubt relied on some moral code (good or bad) to regulate their actions, only Reagan directly invoked the concept of morality (“Our laws represent the collective moral voice of a free society – a voice that articulates our shared beliefs about the rules of civilized behavior, and reflects our basic precept that men and women should be treated as free individuals, responsible for the consequences of their actions”). Now, with Trump, we have a level of at least temporary clarity regarding morality. There is one factual details that he got wrong: the morality of Congress and the Supreme Court of the United States can also stop him. If only he had this moral epiphany before the election, he could have laid out his moral code to voters, and his moral code could have been embodied in the law. We have not had a morally-clear candidate for POTUS since forever, and it would have been quite refreshing if he had had his come to Jesus moment 18 months ago.

So now we have to infer what his moral code must be, based on what he says and does. If we assume (being fair) that the virtue of integrity plays some role in his moral code, we can assign a a significant meaning to the oath of office, given his actions. To wit: “I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will faithfully execute the Office of President of the United States, and will to the best of my Ability, preserve, protect and defend the Constitution of the United States”. Observe that the oath does not require him to carry out the various acts of Congress, therefore it is consistent with his oath of office to find a congressional act to actually be in conflict with the Constitution, whereupon ignoring the law is defending the Constitution. If a majority of SCOTUS holds that he has overstepped his authority, they can specifically say exactly how he has done so, and presidents will thereafter have their power correspondingly limited, at least until another instance of SCOTUS re-interprets the law.

All of the available evidence suggests that he intends to wield whatever power he can in order to do what he thinks is right, regardless of tradition or laws passed by Congress. This may be what is necessary to clarify to voters the need for Congress to do its job. Trump has been exploiting the cowardice of Congress (past mostly, present partially), which passes vague and weak laws that allow POTUS to do whatever he deems to be necessary. If Congress cares, it will stop passing such open-ended laws, and it will start closing those holes. Otherwise Congress will bear primary moral responsibility for whatever tragedies befall the US, as the trend towards an unrestrained dictatorship accelerates.

Remember: “ my own morality”. Not objective morality, but personal, subjective morality.

 

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

9 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

All of the available evidence suggests that he intends to wield whatever power he can in order to do what he thinks is right, regardless of tradition or laws passed by Congress.

There were a whole lot of Judicial orders made of president Trump last year.  A lot of them were right out of left field, too (low-level district judges making blanket demands of the POTUS) and as far as I can remember, I think he complied with them all.
This did not win him popularity points among his base.  However, it does demonstrate some regard for the American system of checks and balances.  This feature seems to be quite new for Trump (it certainly wasn’t present on January 6th) but is most welcome, even if it does sometimes allow leftist nuts to make insane demands.

[DavidOdden]

7 hours ago, Harrison Danneskjold said:

There were a whole lot of Judicial orders made of president Trump last year.  A lot of them were right out of left field, too (low-level district judges making blanket demands of the POTUS) and as far as I can remember, I think he complied with them all.
This did not win him popularity points among his base.  However, it does demonstrate some regard for the American system of checks and balances.  This feature seems to be quite new for Trump (it certainly wasn’t present on January 6th) but is most welcome, even if it does sometimes allow leftist nuts to make insane demands.

I would be surprised if you could identify three lower-court rulings that he immediately complied with, in this term (it took him a few years to establish the legal infrastructure that would enable his ascendancy to the throne, so he was more compliant in DT 1.0).

I think he may have found some trustworthy advisors who can tell him that his defiance of the law will not stand, which means that his initial orders are more likely to be at least plausibly acceptable to SCOTUS (esp. with the new super-majority). In his plainest illegal move, where he overturned the 14th Amendment w.r.t. citizenship, lower courts agree that he broke the law, but SCOTUS has yet to rule on that question. So I don’t see where there is any recognition by him of the system of checks and balances. I don’t even see any evidence that he understands the concept. He probably has some low-level awareness of the concept of “popularity” and knows that Congress is elected based on popularity, plus he does need Congress to be willing to acquiesce to his demands. Maybe that is what checks and balances means to him. Not unlike the administration of George III.

[Harrison_Danneskjold]

5 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

I would be surprised if you could identify three lower-court rulings that he immediately complied with, in this term (it took him a few years to establish the legal infrastructure that would enable his ascendancy to the throne, so he was more compliant in DT 1.0).

Off the top of my head, no, I couldn’t.  Google named several examples - although not one was immediate.  He’s been stalling and appealing the decisions pretty uniformly, but when the appeals don’t go his way he does comply.
 

5 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

I think he may have found some trustworthy advisors who can tell him that his defiance of the law will not stand, which means that his initial orders are more likely to be at least plausibly acceptable to SCOTUS (esp. with the new super-majority).

Probably.  In which case the better advisors are a good thing.
 

5 hours ago, DavidOdden said:

In his plainest illegal move, where he overturned the 14th Amendment w.r.t. citizenship, lower courts agree that he broke the law, but SCOTUS has yet to rule on that question.

Yeah; I think we all know which way that one’s gonna be decided.  And hopefully he’ll continue his compliance streak and just accept that he’s not allowed to unilaterally modify the constitution.

And yes, trying to unilaterally modify the constitution is pretty good evidence against him having developed any clear grasp of the limits of his power.  If it is a really good advisor who just keeps telling him “you can’t do that” every single hour of every single day then that man is a saint and we all owe him a drink.

[necrovore]

On 1/9/2026 at 6:38 PM, DavidOdden said:

Remember: “ my own morality”. Not objective morality, but personal, subjective morality.

Peikoff described a “primacy of existence” metaphysics and three variations of the “primacy of consciousness” metaphysics depending on whose consciousness had primacy: God, society, or oneself.

Since God doesn’t exist, the “primacy of God’s consciousness” inevitably “decays” into one of the other three forms (although it may not decay consistently into one of the other three, but rather can tilt into any of them depending on the person, or the question being asked).

So for example a Christian religious person may interpret religious questions according to their church group (e.g., church-lady gossip), which is an instance of the social variant.

Or the religious person may be willing to look at reality concerning an issue (since the Bible doesn’t tell you, e.g., how to milk cows). Technically everything good about Christianity has actually come from looking at reality, which means it could have been obtained without Christianity, but Christians will think that God gave them that information.

Or the religious person may think that he is uniquely qualified to interpret the word of God for himself according to his own “conscience.” So in effect such a person, with regard to that issue, is creating and following his own private denomination. But sometimes this is called a “personal relationship with Jesus.”

As for the “conscience,” Christians believe that a person’s “conscience” is a mystical faculty which automatically tells them whether something is right or wrong. Actually, a “conscience” is merely an emotional appraisal. Many Christians claim that all knowledge comes from God – that if an idea or emotion pops into your head, like a Eureka moment, it’s actually because God put the idea into your head, so your brain is just like a radio for such things. The only way you know that it was God, and not Satan, that put the idea into your head, is by means of your “conscience.”

Christians believe that the “conscience” is the same in every person, but that some people choose to ignore it. It would never occur to them that a “conscience” is merely an emotion that can be “programmed,” and that somebody else’s “conscience” may have been programmed differently (e.g., by Islam or Nazism or Buddhism or even a different denomination of Christianity). According to Christians, “conscience” is provided by God and therefore is always Christian. Anybody who would follow another religion (or belief system) has to be going against their “God-given conscience” and can be judged accordingly.

And they regard that, rather than reality, as the root of morality. (They also regard it as “objective,” which goes along with the argument you sometimes see that “objective morality is only possible by means of God,” when the truth is actually the opposite.)

The idea that morality can be based on objective reality is historically very new. It was implied by the Founding Fathers but never identified explicitly until Ayn Rand. I think it’s too new to expect Donald Trump to be aware of it.

Even though I don’t think Trump is a devout religionist, it’s completely unsurprising that he would have picked up various aspects of the religious view of morality (since it’s everywhere these days) and that he might have picked and chose the parts that suit him. Lots of people do that. Given that he has not studied Rand, when it comes to moral questions, he doesn’t really have anywhere else to go except his own personal relationship with Jesus…

[Doug_Morris]

From the New York Times email newsletter a week ago:

 On Monday night, Stephen Miller, a top Trump policy adviser, gave the rawest expression of the idea in an interview with Jake Tapper of CNN. “We live in a world, in the real world, Jake, that is governed by strength, that is governed by force, that is governed by power,” he said. “These are the iron laws of the world that have existed since the beginning of time.” 

[DavidOdden]

 

There is a natural progression.

To here

and here

culminating in

 

[tadmjones]

Is  Miller , wrong? Notwithstanding what we wish were true?

[necrovore]

On 1/9/2026 at 6:38 PM, DavidOdden said:

Remember: “ my own morality”. Not objective morality, but personal, subjective morality.

I had another thought about this: the idea that nobody can think for another man, and that therefore any President, with any ideology, would have to rely ultimately on his own judgment.

Dagny Taggart wasn’t advocating personal subjectivism when she insisted on exercising her own judgment with regard to the affairs she had power over.

Even if you had Leonard Peikoff as President, making decisions about whether to send troops or not, whether to sign executive orders or not (and which ones), how to interpret the laws of Congress, and so forth, he’d have to rely on _his _own judgment, and try to do whatever he thinks is the right thing.

Relying on one’s own judgment is not the same thing as being a personal subjectivist; it leaves open the question of what standards a person is using when he is making his judgments. (Personal subjectivism is one of the possibilities, but there are plenty of others.)

I don’t think that “individual judgment” can be removed from the equation. Whenever you have a President, he has to make his own judgments; that’s why you have a President.

I think that’s what the President is asking for – he wants to be able to make his own judgments, not because he is a personal subjectivist, but because he wants to stand apart from the Washington DC “group-think” where everything has to have the approval of everybody else. The “group-think” notion stands in opposition to the idea of people thinking for themselves.

[Jon_C]

On 1/16/2026 at 12:28 PM, necrovore said:

I think that’s what the President is asking for

As long as you’re willing to erase the word “morality”, replace it with the entirely different word “judgement”, and ignore the context of the question posed to T, then sure. 

 

On 1/15/2026 at 9:27 PM, tadmjones said:

Is  Miller , wrong? Notwithstanding what we wish were true?

Do you think Miller is making the descriptive statement “the strong can do as they please” or the prescriptive statement “the strong should do as they please”? Seeing as he is *advocating* for the annexation of Greenland, rather than passively commenting that “we totally could if we wanted to”, it would seem the latter. 

[necrovore]

11 minutes ago, Jon C said:

As long as you’re willing to erase the word “morality”, replace it with the entirely different word “judgement”, and ignore the context of the question posed to T, then sure.

I am taking both as a synonym for “moral judgment.”

[Jon_C]

On 1/16/2026 at 12:51 PM, necrovore said:

I am taking both as a synonym for “moral judgment.”

Too bad that’s not what he said. 

 

On 1/16/2026 at 12:28 PM, necrovore said:

not because he is a personal subjectivist,

https://www.newsweek.com/how-much-trump-worth-depends-how-he-feels-384720
 

“Have you ever not been truthful?"

“My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings, but I try.”

“Let me just understand that a little bit,” my lawyer said. “Let’s talk about net worth for a second. You said that the net worth goes up and down based upon your own feelings?”

“Yes, even my own feelings, as to where the world is, where the world is going, and that can change rapidly from day to day. Then you have a September 11th, and you don’t feel so good about yourself and you don’t feel so good about the world and you don’t feel so good about New York City. Then you have a year later, and the city is as hot as a pistol. Even months after that it was a different feeling. So yeah, even my own feelings affect my value to myself.”

“When you publicly state what you’re worth, what do you base that number on?”

“I would say it’s my general attitude at the time that the question may be asked,” Donald responded. “And as I say, it varies.”

[DavidOdden]

On 1/16/2026 at 12:28 PM, necrovore said:

I had another thought about this: the idea that nobody can think for another man, and that therefore any President, with any ideology, would have to rely ultimately on his own judgment.

Relying solely on one’s own judgment is _exactly_ the same thing as being a personal subjectivist. When a man declares that nothing other than his own personal judgment can stop him, that is a declaration of war against reality. He did not say “I will use my own judgment”, he overtly rejected reasoning from facts of reality.

 

 

On 1/16/2026 at 1:34 PM, Jon C said:

https://www.newsweek.com/how-much-trump-worth-depends-how-he-feels-384720
 

“Have you ever not been truthful?"

“My net worth fluctuates, and it goes up and down with markets and with attitudes and with feelings, even my own feelings, but I try.”

For the record, here the court which includes a partial transcript of his deposition from Dec. 19, 2007 when he said these things. P. 209 of cites the quoted text, testimony. The actual testimony is on p. 10.

 

[necrovore]

1 hour ago, DavidOdden said:

Relying solely on one’s own judgment is _exactly_ the same thing as being a personal subjectivist.

No, it is not; and that notion comes out of academia, which has already decided that truth comes out of consensus and cannot be attained by an individual. Since objective truth is unattainable, they say, the best kind of truth you can hope for is “intersubjectivity.” Even scientific truth is subject to “scientific consensus” and progress is determined not by individual discoveries but by the “paradigm shifts” that occur when everybody else finally accepts what has been discovered. (“Intersubjectivity” comes from Jürgen Habermas and “paradigm shifts” from Thomas Kuhn.)

Because academic intellectuals have already arrived at their conclusion, there is nothing that Trump could ever say that would persuade them otherwise. They will always find his reasoning defective, because it is his reasoning, because he does it as an individual, and not because of any particular sloppy phrasing he may use (although his sloppy improvised phrasing certainly creates more opportunities to mischaracterize him).

Obviously Trump is no Objectivist but I think that if he did discover Objectivism, or if some Objectivist later became President, the academic establishment (including the media) would ridicule him in the same way.

–

As for the thing about his “net worth,” it is well known that stock prices fluctuate and there are a number of theories about why, some of which place strong consideration on “market sentiment,” i.e., the feelings of market participants. Even “value investors” like Warren Buffett endorse a strategy of finding stocks that are “worth” more than their current “price” and buying those. Now how is that possible, for a stock to be worth more than its price? Trump can decide whether to sell his own stock based on whether it is “worth” what he would get for it; he would not want to sell it for less than what he thinks it’s “worth,” and yes, some of the best stock traders use their gut feelings (hopefully trained by some experience) to determine whether now is a good time to buy or sell!

Of course if XYZ is trading at $38 per share and I think it’s “worth” $100 per share, somebody could ask why, and then I might have a good answer or I might not, and they could decide whether my answer was good or not.

[DavidOdden]

Utter nonsense. He says, about what can stop him, “there’s one thing: my own morality, my own mind.” Pure primacy of consciousness, no role for reality.

You are the one slinging academic references like “Habermas”, “paradigm”, “intersubjectivity”. What do you think “subjective” means? Are you saying that there is no subjectivity?

[necrovore]

Interesting that he didn’t say there’s only one thing.

[Jon_C]

31 minutes ago, necrovore said:

whichhas already decided that truth comes out of consensus and cannot be attained by an individual. 

Which truths? Prove that the Higgs Boson exists. Do it all by yourself, as an individual. Come on. I double dog dare you. 
 

31 minutes ago, necrovore said:

Even scientific truth is subject to “scientific consensus” and progress is determined not by individual discoveries but by the “paradigm shifts” that occur when everybody else finally accepts what has been discovered.

The actual, non-strawman position is that people (especially laypeople without any technical expertise in the subjects concerned) should be wary of accepting grand claims by lone “geniuses” when no other experts are able to replicate the results. 

As for progress, if *nobody* else had accepted relativity then we don’t get GPS and the “progress” would have been limited to the interior of one man’s skull. 

31 minutes ago, necrovore said:

there is nothing that Trump could ever say that would persuade them otherwise.

Here’s some helpful things T could say that he never has and never will say: “I condemn all violence perpetrated by my supporters in my name” or “I recognize that I am not a king.” 

 

31 minutes ago, necrovore said:

They will always find his reasoning defective, because it is his reasoning, because he does it as an individual,

Trump *famously* parrots the claims of whoever he most recently spoke to, and is currently on auto-pilot from Steven Miller to invade NATO ally. 

 

31 minutes ago, necrovore said:

As for the thing about his “net worth,” it is well known that stock prices fluctuate and there are a number of theories about why, some of which place strong consideration on “market sentiment,” i.e., the feelings of market participants. Even “value investors” like Warren Buffett endorse a strategy of finding stocks that are “worth” more than their current “price” and buying those. Now how is that possible, for a stock to be worth more than its price? Trump can decide whether to sell his own stock based on whether it is “worth” what he would get for it; he would not want to sell it for less than what he thinks it’s “worth,” and yes, some of the best stock traders use their gut feelings (hopefully trained by some experience) to determine whether now is a good time to buy or sell

You should go into the circus for all the pretzels you’re able to tie yourself into with this kind of comical statement. But I guess you simply disagree with Rand that emotions are not tools of cognition. 

[tadmjones]

They are part of cognition, yeah? Is any ‘thing’  really a ‘tool’ of cognition? What did Rand mean by cognition, did she ‘have’ it done to the bosonic level explanatorily?

 Lots of religious traditions encourage scriptural debate.

[necrovore]

22 hours ago, Jon C said:

Which truths? Prove that the Higgs Boson exists. Do it all by yourself, as an individual. Come on. I double dog dare you.

On that, I should defer to Peter Higgs, who first realized (in 1964) that the particle was possible and who (at least indirectly) caused the search for the particle to be undertaken.

22 hours ago, Jon C said:

The actual, non-strawman position is that people (especially laypeople without any technical expertise in the subjects concerned) should be wary of accepting grand claims by lone “geniuses” when no other experts are able to replicate the results. 

As for progress, if *nobody* else had accepted relativity then we don’t get GPS and the “progress” would have been limited to the interior of one man’s skull.

The source of truth isn’t the committee per se, but reality itself. And reality has to be identified by an individual. (Because it is objective, other individuals can also identify it, either independently or as a result of having it pointed out to them.)

Centuries ago the “consensus” was that the world was flat.

22 hours ago, Jon C said:

Here’s some helpful things T could say that he never has and never will say: “I condemn all violence perpetrated by my supporters in my name” or “I recognize that I am not a king.”

He’s not obligated to deny arbitrary accusations.

22 hours ago, Jon C said:

You should go into the circus for all the pretzels you’re able to tie yourself into with this kind of comical statement. But I guess you simply disagree with Rand that emotions are not tools of cognition.

Reality is the final word.

Emotions (and intuitions and even inductive generalizations) can be valid or invalid. Observation and reason are what validate or invalidate them. (Technically a line of reasoning can be invalid, too, but the only way to detect that is by another line of reasoning which starts over from the beginning.)

[DavidOdden]

 

Trump just announced new tariffs on the EU in order to force Denmark to sell Greenland to the US. He announced a plan to initiate force against JP Morgan Chase for its rightful decision to close some bank accounts of his – banks are involuntary public servants, remember? He has initiated political revenge investigations of Minnesota officials for opposing his unlawful quasi-military invasion of that state, as well as Jerome Powell whom he has judge to be an enemy, and Mark Kelly and Adam Schiff for publicly criticizing Trump. This is just the most prominent and recent Trump antics. I fear for my life for criticizing that Nazi scumbag. However: I suspect that his brain worms will incapacitate him before he is able to focus his guns on me (‘cuz frankly he has more important fish to slaugher and burn to death).

A few Germans resisted Hitler decades before reality asserted itself at the end of WWII, mostly Germans recognized that Resistance is Futile. America might still resist and overthrow the dictator, but it is more likely that increasing numbers of Americans will be assimilated to the hive mind, in search of the goal of “being great again”.

The thing that puzzles me is how anyone with a modicum of interest in reason and rights can persist in evading an objective moral evaluation of this brute.