Our Cultural Crisis Ep IX: "Morality" by Rule-Keeping

Virtue, classically speaking, meant doing the right thing in the right place at the right time in the right way. It was highly contextual, requiring wisdom and thoughtfulness. In contrast, we are witnessing, to our detriment, the ascendance of a “morality” based on rule-keeping. This morality (so-called) does not require the cultivation of inner goodness; rather, it simply requires adherence to an increasingly thin band of rules on both the left and the right, which gives rise to an empty moral culture. In this episode, we explore how this morality of rule-keeping plays out in our moral conversation, including in the debate about transgender athletes in the Olympics, the politics of Mitch McConnell, and the use of neopronouns.