Originally posted by GwynnInTheHall
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In personal relationships, yes, it is good to enforce appropriate boundaries. If someone mistreats me and (depending on the situation) is not able to or not willing to address their mistakes, it may be healthy to cut them off or remove myself from the situation. That's not really the same as "punishing" them for breaking the rules. I agree that each person has to decide for themselves how best to do this. I don't agree with how you seem to be positioning yourself, which is as an arbiter who gets to assess when everyone else in your life has or has not lived up to an ethical code. I don't know to what extreme you take that, but if you take that too far, you could be a really miserable person to live with. Nobody wants to be constantly judged for every mistake they make by someone else who has positioned themselves on a pedestal as a universal moral arbiter. In a poker tournament, sure. In relationships, no.
In politics, I think the "moral arbiter on a pedestal of righteouness" works even less well. There is a good/necessary place for prophets of truth--people who will lay out how the world should work and how we are falling short, calling us to be better than we are. MLK Jr was great at this. People recognized the truth of what he was saying and were ashamed and either reacted strongly against him or were motivated to change. Jimmy Carter has become this in his later life. But MLK wasn't going around trying to punish everyone who disagreed with him, and Jimmy Carter isn't showing up on your or my doorstep "demanding" that we come build houses with him. Your emphasis on punishment of those who disagree with anything you believe strikes me as strange. You can cast it as an ethical battle where you are taking the high road and are more saintly than everyone else, but yikes, that's not likely to be true. Even MLK and Jimmy Carter are morally flawed. Everyone is.
I think we should expect people to act with honesty and integrity and never change that standard. I don't know how we "demand" it or what we would "capitulate" to. Donald Trump is certainly not acting with honesty and integrity. I can "demand" he change it at the ballot box in November, but 5 million other people in Texas are going to overrule my "demand" on that count. I can never capitulate...how? By striving to live with honesty and integrity in my own life, for sure. By teaching my children to do the same, and by living with integrity in my work, yes. But I don't see any way for me personally to keep Donald Trump from doing what he will do. I can't "punish" him in any effective way, and turning that frustration around to try to punish my fellow Americans who vote for him seems twisted emotionally and ethically and also counterproductive (because it will alienate FAR more people than it will persuade).
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