Rex Kerr
3 min readMay 5, 2022

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Given that I've been an amateur student of moral philosophy for decades, the second part of this is true. However, honesty is something onlookers will have to judge; my proclamations about honesty must be viewed through the lens of my actual honesty, so you gain essentially no information from what I say. (Exception: if you believe I'm honest and I say I'm not, it's paradoxical...so at least there's something to think about. Every other case is uninformative.)

We don't have to go into details about precise moral framework because it doesn't matter in this case: nothing I'm arguing is particularly different when viewed from any moral framework that is compatible with liberal democracy (a few aren't--act-utilitarianism, for instance--but those tend to clash violently with our moral intutions so for a casual discussion like this, those frameworks can be safely neglected). This discussion is on philosophical easy-mode.

Anyway, I explicitly drew the line in my previous answer: "The moral line he crossed is that he induced people to physically attack the democratic institutions that he swore an oath to protect."

If this is not deconstructed enough for you, the immoral parts are (1) resorting to violence, (2) contravening democratic institutions (thereby diminishing people's assumed right to self-govern), and (3) failing to uphold responsibilities. In Trump's case, he's hit by (1) and (2) not by doing them but by encouraging others, on the principle that if X is bad, then inducing others to do X is also bad (because it results in more bad).

How much commitment do I have to this particular line? I told you that too, in the same post--quite a lot: "When things are morally wrong, they're just plain wrong. That's part of what we mean by things being morally wrong."

That is, I am committed to this being wrong because-it-is-wrong, and I am committed enough to say so plainly as above. The rest of the post was also outlining why I was committed to this position (exploring Trump's culpability).

I'm not entirely sure why we're having this conversation. You are acting as though you're struggling with basic comprehension of arguments that unfold over more than a sentence, and having trouble with the process of creating a good argument yourself.

I suspect that this is mostly not because you're incapable, but because mostly you're still playing the whoever-gets-in-the-sharpest-zingers-at-the-other-side-wins game But that game is dumb because although it does serve somewhat to establish hierarchy of wit, it does little to nothing to establish correctness.

If you are curious how I would draw moral lines in other situations, I may answer given a sufficiently clear question (though I have to restrict the scope of this discussion to keep it manageable). But charging that I haven't made clear my commitment to this line is pretty ridiculous, given that I spent a whole post doing exactly that.

So, for instance, if you want me to comment on the morality of the FBI paying people to encourage the rioters, well, I could do that as a hypothetical (but isn't it so obvious I wouldn't need to say?); if you want me to respond to it as an actual event, you have to provide evidence that it happened along with details about what they actually did. (Yes, there's that pesky evidence thing again.)

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Rex Kerr
Rex Kerr

Written by Rex Kerr

One who rejoices when everything is made as simple as possible, but no simpler. Sayer of things that may be wrong, but not so bad that they're not even wrong.

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