A Call for Moral Courage in the 21st-Century

The Daily Show featured a bit contrasting various pundits from Fox News decrying the recent assassination of the UnitedHealthcare CEO with their veneration of Kyle Rittenhouse. Rittenhouse was a seventeen year old who famously shot and killed protestors during riots in Kenosha, Wisconsin. Despite Rittenhouse’s own demonstration of vigilantism by bringing a rifle to counter protest an already out-of-control riot, conservative news sources such as Fox News all but baptized him as a hero. The Daily Show demonstrated there is a sort of vigilante justice Fox News prefers, just not the kind that promotes a political narrative outside their agenda.

Now, making fun of Fox News is low-hanging fruit. I thought the Daily Show had matured beyond it. Laughs come cheap when you can’t seem to find a host to fill the shoes of Jon Stewart and cycle through a new one every other week. However, like every good satire, there’s a kernel of truth on both sides of the narrative. The Daily Show exposed a kind of vigilante (in)justice that both political liberals and conservatives won’t bat an eye at. One defends a personal sense of “law and order” and another enforces assumed guilt by association of the rich over and against the poor. Overall, this amounts to those all along the political spectrum justifying violence outside the law and into one’s own hands. Turns out in the deepest caverns of our social consciences, we are no better than many other “less sophisticated” societies that use violence to dispose of their problems…we’re just better at tying a bow of juris prudencce on it afterwards. Our social commentary reveals our true thoughts; namely, we hate each other.

The 20th-century saw many moral assumptions and questions tested and called to account. Broadly speaking, the moral assumption of humanity achieving sensibility and uprightness as a rational animal was tested by World War 2. The 20th-century also had many figures that held moral questions and accountability central when it came to human dignity: Gandhi, Mother Teresa, Martin Luther King, Jr., and Malcolm X just to name a few. Despite the many moral misgivings of the 20th-century; such as WW2, apartheid, vivisection and Jim Crow, there were always moral figures making a moral change for their respective society at a national or international level. More times than not that figure came to a violent end due to someone taking matters into their own hands. The moral figure, though eliminated, was elevated into a moral symbol much larger than they were in life and went on to serve as a symbol of a movement that transformed their society.

Now, more than 20 years into the 21st-century, and these moral questions are less settled than ever. Ethical right and wrong steadily became unfettered from morals and turned toward social interests. Rhetoric of foundational justice, truth, and love popularized by Gandhi and MLK, Jr. are fondly quoted rather than readily practiced. Late into the 20th-century dawned the technological age. Again, many of the moral questions once thought settled (or forgotten) centuries earlier suddenly become recapitulated into the 21st-century. Questions of moral agency and consciousness abound with AI. Questions of identity and human connection deepen in complexity with advances in medical technology and social media. The list goes on and on. These big picture moral questions might tease themselves out in the classrooms of our country’s universities, but their results are reflected in the day-to-day moral leanings of our populace. Most recently, 40+% of people under thirty approve of Luigi Mangione’s decision to assassinate a CEO in the streets of New York and even laud his efforts as the voice of the people left unheard too long. Someone who took matters into their own hands and executed another according to their own sense of justice is considered a champion of the people. Somehow, I am tempted to believe, this does not match with the moral vision laid out by Dr. King and other moral leaders like him in the 20th-century.

One unique feature of the moral leadership in the 20th-century was calling truth to power without an “ends justify the means” mentality (except for Malcom X in his early thought). In particular, Gandhi’s and Dr. King’s method of non-violent active resistance requires one essentially suffer at the hands of evil in order to tease it out and expose it as futile. Ultimately, methods of death inherently cannot create life; and yet, methods of love bleeds seeds of life even if they fall victim to the methods of death. Indeed, the lives of many in moral leadership of the 20th-century bear witness to this truth and their legacy continues to bear witness to it like the legacy of the martyrs during the early church.

One unique feature of the 21st-century is specialization, especially with the rise of the technological age. STEM specializations along with medical expertise and business professions in light of globalization give rise to high-level ethical questions. However, these technical specializations that produce high-level ethical questions are contemplated and teased out by those who have vested-interest in these institutions. Therefore, much of the prophetic thrust present in moral leadership of the 20th-century is lacking into the 21st-century. (I do not deny this modus operandi was not present in previous centuries, but has only exacerbated into incomprehensibility into the 21st-century). Dr. King viewed the church as the conscience of society. He viewed moral accountability taking place through the collective voice of the people by way of the Beloved Community. Unfortunately, the political landscape of the general populace on both sides of the aisle show the average person is willing to turn a blind eye toward injustice if it serves their political ends. Prophetic thrust requires moral courage to call out wrong no matter who commits it.

We need moral citizens in the 21st-century who are willing to call out their tribe when their actions and rhetoric mar the image of God in someone. We need moral citizens who call truth to power without compromising the requirement to love fiercely. We need moral citizens who are willing to say both Kyle Rittenhouse and Luigi Mangione are wrong for shooting another person in cold blood no matter the motivation to commit such heinous acts. We have medical technologists. We have crypto bros and nuclear engineers. Where are the average, everyday people who will do justly, act righteously, and walk humbly? This is what our society needs the most; and yet fundamentally lacks because we do not have the moral courage to risk life, limb, and tribe like those who have come before us. Instead, political and social interests have marred our moral vision. Lord, have mercy.