politics

I love Mitt Romney, but he is utterly wrong.

Human ethics do not apply to state actors. We accept this the moment we grant a monopoly on violence to the state.

Morality cannot be the rubric we apply to political leaders. It is dangerous to do so.

The relevant lens is the national interest.

Crypto @ Coinbase, foreign policy, political theory. yugacohler.twitter

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*some form of morality* always applies. 
(1) Eg during war, we don’t just kill unarmed civilians even if it might be efficient bullying tactics. We still moralize the process
(2) culturally, a lot of national morality flows top to bottom so we should care about a reasonable level of character in leaders.

(1) In fact, every national military does kill unarmed civilians. The laws of armed conflict prohibit this, but there is no body to enforce violations. 

(2) What is the evidence of this?

"National interest" is a tried and true justification for deeply immoral acts in many a nation state's past. If your governance framework fails at ruling put immoral acts without relying on secondary consequences (ie sanction by other nation states who DO have a moral backbone) then it's a useless framework and one I'll never vote for.