“A prince who wishes to maintain his rule is often forced to do evil, for when the choice is between the survival of the state and moral virtue, one must choose the state.”
Niccolo Machiavelli (The Prince)
When political discourse deteriorates, it’s always for one reason: the interlocutors are too blinded by their own principles to reach a compromise. The rigidity of the neoliberal establishment has twisted discourse such that every issue becomes one of complete moral absolutism to the point of absurdity. I assume the reader unequivocally rejects moral relativism and accepts that moral truths exist which are knowable, and are both objective and absolute. Moral absolutists argue that objective moral standards not only exist and are knowable, but are also applicable to every situation— regardless of context, circumstance, or consequence. Moral objectivism, like absolutism, holds that unchanging moral truths exist and are knowable, but the key difference is that recognizes that they are entirely contextual. It pairs well with particularism, which observes that there is no unified moral code that can be indiscriminately applied to every situation. When it comes to politics, I am a moral objectivist and a moral particularist. My aim in this essay is to defend moral objectivism and particularism as separate and distinct from absolutism and moral generalism as it applies specifically to politics and the state. In matters of the church and of the health of the spirit, I am a moral absolutist as is the only defensible position. The goal of this article is to equip the reader to defend against arguments that claim to advance political goals but instead grandstand on ineffective principles that, even if true, are immune to compromise and allergic to action. To that end, I advance the “doctrine of necessary choice” which keeps objectivism from collapsing into relativism. This doctrine has four distinct branches:
Necessity — A lesser evil may be tolerated only if no non-evil alternative exists.
Proportionality — The good achieved (or evil prevented) must outweigh the evil tolerated.
Intentionality — The evil must not be directly intended, only foreseen as a side effect.
Accountability — The agent must acknowledge the evil, take responsibility, and pursue repair.
This allows us to say that the bombing of Berlin or Hiroshima was evil, yet necessary in its context. It allows us to say that Hamas is morally indefensible, even if Israel is far from virtuous. It allows us to argue that taxation may be unjust in principle, yet tolerable if the alternative is collapse of essential civic goods. And it allows us to say that political compromise is not moral cowardice, but pragmatic realism in pursuit of the common good. Politics is not the church. In matters of faith, absolutism is necessary as truth cannot be compromised without risking the soul. In politics, however, human beings operate in a fallible world where tragic choices are unavoidable. Moral objectivism — absolute in principle, particular in practice — is the only framework that preserves truth while making action possible. It guards against the naïveté of absolutism and the nihilism of relativism, offering instead a path of necessary responsibility. As theologian and ethicist Reinhold Niebuhr wrote:“The sad duty of politics is to establish justice in a sinful world.”
The idea of moral absolutism is built on Immanuel Kant’s First Formulation of the Categorical Imperative, which states:
“Act only according to that maxim whereby you can at the same time will that it should become a universal law”
This is the driving force behind all modern political discourse. It is the principle by which the leftist denounces Israel and the conservative champions tax cuts. (e.g., all death is bad, this is a universal law, Israel is killing innocents, therefore Israel is bad; all taxation is theft, theft is a universal evil, the state taxes innocents, and is therefore morally bankrupt.) These are all true things, but moral absolutism in response to immoral action can only spawn inaction. Or, as Edmund Burke put it:
“All government, indeed every human benefit and enjoyment, every virtue, and every prudent act, is founded on compromise and barter.”
In the world of the moral absolutist, compromise means moral failure. To the absolutist, every evil must be denounced, and every deviation from principle must be rejected. The result is paralysis: when every available course of action is tainted with evil, the absolutist refuses to choose at all. In war, this would mean condemning both sides yet never proposing a peace that might save lives. In politics, it would mean denouncing taxation as theft, yet never supporting even the spending that preserves basic order. Absolutism confuses purity with justice. It treats the tragic dilemmas of life as if they were clean moral syllogisms, when in fact governing requires choosing between lesser evils. In this way, absolutism becomes indistinguishable from inaction, and inaction itself allows injustice to triumph. Instead, the absolutist must construct a framework wherein every man can simultaneously recognize and accept moral truth and there won’t be a need for compromise (see: anarchism.) There is perhaps no better example of this in the public eye than Kentucky Representative Thomas Massie, who has built a reputation as a principled contrarian who prioritizes ideological purity over pragmatic governance. He is respected by many, myself included, for his ability to cut against the grain and have a backbone, even at the cost of millions of dollars from donors and lobbyists, but he is by any measure, a completely ineffective politician. In 13 years, Massie has sponsored numerous bills and resolutions, yet none have become law. This isn’t for lack of effort; Massie has pushed niche libertarian priorities like auditing the Federal Reserve, repealing gun-free school zones, and reforming civil asset forfeiture. But his proposals routinely stall in committee or garner insufficient support, often due to their narrow appeal and his reluctance to compromise. Massie’s cosponsorship rate is also abysmal; he backed just 85 bills in 2024, in the 4th percentile among Republicans—limiting his role even as a team player. His district, which includes rural areas reliant on federal agriculture and infrastructure funding, sees little return: no major investments in Kentucky-specific projects like flood control or expansion of broadband internet. Voters elected him to make laws, not just filibuster them. Massie’s hallmark is casting lone or near-lone “no” votes, often against his own party on high-stakes issues. This grandstanding signals virtue to purists but erodes his clout in a body where deals require alliances. Massie is more moderate than firebrands but too fringe for mainstream deals. Thomas Massie is a gadfly, not a statesman. Effectiveness demands more than viral X posts or podcast appearances; it requires passing laws that advance and reflect, in his case, actual conservatism. Thomas Massie embodies the ineffective purist, standing on principle in a body that requires action and compromise. Gadflies are necessary in congress to keep their peers accountable, but a congress full of purists would progress nothing. This is unfortunately the legacy of the moral absolutist. On a personal level, Thomas Massie is a good man and one of the few politicians to look to for a simple, virtuous and principled life. However, I look to men like Massie to be pastors and neighbors, not political leaders. The core of this article is to distinguish between the pastor and the statesman.
How then, can someone propose a solution to the Israel-Palestine conflict that recognizes the moral evils of both sides but also advances a solution? All solutions and compromises inherently require moral tradeoffs. This is the necessity and proportionality in the model I proposed previously. Any solution to the conflict in Gaza will inherently include something immoral. The question is if that immoral action is both necessary and proportionally more permissible than the immoral consequences of letting the conflict continue. The solution isn’t generalism and absolute ethics, but virtue ethics. Moral objectivism is rooted in Aristotelian virtue ethics as Aristotle’s writings support objectivism. He writes that moral truths exist independently of human beliefs, but his understanding of how to apply these truths in specific situations leads toward a type of situationalism. Aristotle agrees with the objective existence of a hierarchy of “goods” that is, some goods are inherently better and preferable to other goods. But he also recognizes a “highest good” that is knowable and attainable through intuition and human action rather than contemplation of a transcendent Form. In Nicomachean Ethics, Aristotle sets up the objective “telos” or “end” of human action:
“Every art and every inquiry, and similarly, every action and pursuit is thought to aim at some good, and for this reason, the good has been declared to be that at which all things aim.”
On situationism and particularism’s shared emphasis on context being necessary for moral judgment, Aristotle argues:
“It is the mark of an educated man to look for precision in each class of things just so far as the nature of the subject admits.”
This, in essence, rejects exactness or indiscriminate judgment as contrary to nature and not necessary for satisfactory policy in the context of political action. When describing moral virtue as a “mean” between extremes, Aristotle notes that the mean is “relative to us.” This is not a moral relativism, but an acknowledgment that the right action is contextual:
“For instance, if ten pounds are too much for a man to eat and two too little, it does not follow that the trainer will order six pounds; for this may be too much for the man who is to take it, or too little — too little for Milo, too much for the beginner.”
This is the essence of the objectivist worldview and my rejection of absolutism, which drives much political discourse on both the right and the left. Absolutism is largely responsible for the widening chasm of the last decade, as Americans entrench themselves in what should be rightly called “absolute ignorance.” Even the father of liberalism, John Locke writes in his Second Treatise:
“For, since it can never be supposed to be the will of society that the legislative should have a power to destroy that which everyone designs to secure, the preservation of himself, liberty, and property, it cannot be absolute.”
In the world of the moral absolutist, compromise means moral failure; but as Locke saw, even political authority itself must be compromised, or else it destroys the very ends it was created to serve. Refusing all compromise in the name of purity allows destruction to proceed unchecked, just as unchecked authority leads to tyranny. True political responsibility lies not in absolutism, but in the art of compromise that secures the common good. Your mandate is thus: ground yourself in the pursuit of virtue and the recognition of moral truth. Those who cling to absolutes and deal in sweeping judgments mistake rigidity for wisdom, yet it blinds them to justice. In politics, there is no purity; the only righteous path runs through compromise.