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.

"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.