December 7, 2025
By Stephen Stofka
In Genesis 22 of the Old Testament, God commands Abraham to sacrifice his son Isaac. As Abraham is about to make the sacrifice, an angel interrupts. Many commentators, among them the 19th century Danish philosopher Søren Kierkegaard, have discussed the ethics of Abraham’s actions (Source). This week I want to explore several aspects of asymmetrical relationships like that between God and Abraham, or between leaders and the people they govern. The first avenue is the question of honesty. God lied to Abraham as a test of his fealty. In making a sincere effort to comply with God’s request, Abraham was honest. In an asymmetric relationship, what are the ethics of those who hold more power in the relationship? Do public leaders owe any obligation of honesty to those they govern?
Related to the issue of honesty is the distinction between public and private. I want to explore the intersection of honesty and privacy. In our public relationships, when do we have an obligation to tell the truth? Is that obligation grounded in any ethics or does it simply reflect an imbalance in a power relationship? For instance, a witness in a criminal trial is subject to imprisonment and fines for lying under oath. It is the government who imposes that punishment because the government has more power in a relationship with each individual it governs. However, in such a case where a witness might implicate themselves in a crime, the Fifth Amendment to the Constitution provides an escape clause. An individual can remain silent instead of lying.
The founders recognized that each of us has a private space, a private interest that must be balanced with the public interest. In a tribal society with strict rules of hierarchy and fealty, the Biblical tradition placed a higher value on obedience than to an individual’s self-interest. The Constitution was the product of Enlightenment thinking which placed greater emphasis on the individual.
Do we judge the actions of others by their intent or by the outcome of their action? Our system of justice considers the motivations of people in the commission of a crime and at sentencing for those who have been found guilty of a crime. Most of us do not hold the executioner responsible for the death of a prisoner legally condemned to death. They are simply acting in their official capacity as an agent of the government.
At the inauguration ceremony, a newly elected President takes an oath to “protect and defend the Constitution” (Source). Unlike a witness, a President’s oath does not include telling the truth. Believing that he was keeping the American people safe from further terrorist attack, former President George Bush ordered an invasion into Iraq that led to the death of many hundreds of thousands (Source). He acted on authorization from Congress (Source) but without the sanction of the U.N. Security Council (Source). Many leaders honestly believe they are protecting their community, or furthering the interests of the community when they act.
In 2006, a Gallup poll found that Americans were almost evenly split on whether the war was morally justified. A majority of 60% thought the war was not worth the cost. A slight majority held the Bush administration responsible for misleading the public about the presence of WMDs, the primary pretext for the war (Source). Are leaders responsible for the consequences of their actions if those decisions were based on an honest belief that they were necessary? In January 2003, Gallup polls found that a large majority of Americans thought that Iraq might be hiding nuclear weapons (Source).
Does an honest belief in something excuse any action, no matter how heinous the consequences? Early 19th century Americans believed that God ordained the dominion of the continent by white Christian settlers, a policy called Manifest Destiny (Source). Did that belief justify the taking of many Indian tribal lands and the killing of many unarmed civilian Indians?
In a democracy, a duly elected leader is believed to be the voice of the people, which gives him legitimacy to act for the people as a whole. Many European monarchs based the legitimacy of their office on primogeniture, the belief that a ruler was divinely ordained by birth. Does either belief system convey more legitimacy? In the 18th century, the 13 colonies declared their separation in the Declaration of Independence. The document challenged the legitimacy of the English monarch’s rule because of his actions, which were listed in the declaration (Source). As Jay Winik notes in his book The Great Upheaval the founders were at the forefront of an Enlightenment movement that overturned the belief in divinely ordained rulers (Source).
Do honestly held beliefs justify the actions of our leaders? The Cold War between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. was an apocalyptic battle between two political ideologies, democracy and communism. In 1954, President Eisenhower introduced an idea labeled the Domino Theory (Source). This was a belief that, if one country fell to communist rule, its neighbors would soon follow, as though a political ideology were contagious. Based on that belief, President Johnson ordered an escalation of the war in Vietnam, a small country with no geopolitical effect on the United States. That escalation led to the deaths of more than 58,000 American soldiers and many hundreds of thousands of civilians (Source).
While newspapers champion the truth, they feed on controversy, on opposing beliefs and opinions. If we all have the same opinion on an issue, its not newsworthy. In pursuit of controversy, they may give attention to those with marginal opinions or colorful characters. In 2015, many newspapers treated Donald Trump as a rich eccentric who attracted an audience. When he declared his candidacy, the press gave him a lot of airtime because his interviews boosted their ratings. Trump espoused marginal conspiracy theories but did he really believe that Barack Obama had not been born in the U.S. or that all immigrants were criminals? Rather than delegitimizing the beliefs underlying the conspiracy theories, the media helped promote them. Beliefs are contagious, after all.
Mass media companies are part of private industry but many Americans regard them as public utilities. They think the network and cable channels have a public responsibility to expose corruption, state the facts without political spin and act as a watchdog on public institutions and other private companies. That is a tall order for a private company whose first responsibility is to its shareholders. Given such high expectations, it is understandable that a recent Gallup poll found that only 28% of Americans express any trust in mass media. In 1976, after the Watergate scandal, 72% of the public had a “great deal or fair amount” of trust in mass media (Source). Have public expectations exceeded the capacity of the private media industry? Is the media less objective today than it was fifty years ago?
Americans have even less trust in Congress with only 15% approving the job they are doing (Source). A lack of belief in an institution often leads to the demise of that institution. For the past decade, the influence and profits of mass media has declined. The industry has shrunk and consolidated. Private industry may respond to the changing beliefs of the public, but public institutions like Congress are resistant to public sentiment. The members of Congress may change, but only a civil war can abolish the institution itself.
Because government institutions are resistant to change, libertarians prefer a minimum of such institutions. At their founding, the legitimacy of political institutions is grounded in the public will or welfare. Their capacity to have an influence on individual lives, however, is based on the police power of the government. They no longer express the will of the people, but enforce the will of a small minority within the people. While professing to serve the public interest, they often serve the interests of its leaders. Members of Congress have little accountability outside of Congress until election time. Of the many who have served in the past few decades, only have a few have been convicted and served time (Source).
Company leaders, on the other hand, are held responsible by tax, accounting and fraud laws. That sense of accountability leads to greater public trust in private industry. An annual poll by Bentley University and Gallup finds that 65% of Americans believe that businesses have a positive impact on people’s lives (Source). When Americans have so little trust in our political institutions, their expectations diminish. They become callous to the ineffectiveness of Congress to enact any meaningful change in their lives.
Instead, they came to rely on a Presidential candidate who was a private businessman like Donald Trump, an outsider to the political arena. When he promised to lower grocery and oil prices, a majority of voters believed him. Now that voters see out false those claims were, they have become disillusioned. They have realized that Trump is almost as ineffective as Congress. Lots of hot air, no results.
Like belief, trust is private to each individual. Like belief, trust is contagious. The public trust is the sum of private trust. As trust decreases, everyone looks only to their advantage. Strategy, not ethics or convention, rules. The public will is subordinated to private ambition. How do we reinvigorate that trust?
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Photo by NADER AYMAN on Unsplash
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