On Immigration, MAGA Needs Less Morality

"President Donald Trump's MAGA movement suffers from an excess of morality. On no issue is that more apparent, and more self-damaging, than immigration. That claim likely would strike both the right and the left as absurd. The former sees itself as hard-nosed realists who will do whatever necessary to take back their nation. And the latter doesn't see much MAGA morality in Minneapolis, where this weekend immigration officers again shot dead a disruptive protester, the second this month."

"That style of thinking is moralism, a special form of idealism that makes enlightened political judgment and prudent political action nigh impossible. Describing this mental tendency in August, I wrote: The philosopher Raymond Geuss, in an essay on the historian E.H. Carr, argued that moralism, not utopianism, is the true antithesis of political realism. Moralism, Geuss wrote, is a "complex set of attitudes that give unwarranted priority to moral considerations in explaining and justifying human action.""

MAGA conservatism increasingly adopts moralism, treating immigration as a matter of moral absolutes rather than pragmatic governance. Moralism elevates moral considerations above practical explanation and justification of action, impairing prudent political judgment and effective enforcement. The style mirrors yard-sign sentiment such as "no human is illegal, love is love, kindness is everything" and produces abrasive moralized rhetoric that obscures complex policy trade-offs. Philosophical accounts identify moralism as the antithesis of political realism and describe it as a complex set of attitudes that gives unwarranted priority to moral considerations and often amounts to moralized preaching. Satirical commentary and absolutist responses illustrate moralism's self-damaging effects on immigration policy.

Read at The American Conservative