From Moral Collapse to a Values-Led Politics of Democratic Renewal

Reflections (with video) from the Yale University conference on moral and spiritual issues of the 2026 elections

Welcome back to Lucid, and hello to all new subscribers. Our next Q&A will take place on Sunday, April 19, 8-9pmET. I am Houston today for conversations on April 16 on democracy and authoritarianism at Rice University and the Progressive Forum, and I’ll be traveling on Friday when our Q&A would have taken place.

It will be “just us,” so plenty of time for questions. I’ll also be talking about the book on resistance I will be writing, lessons from Hungary, and previewing a new frame for uniting us, usable in any democracy threatened by authoritarianism.

Those who can’t attend wil find the video at lucid.substack.com. I’m looking forward to seeing everyone.

And on Friday, April 24, 1-2pmET, we’ll speak with fellow scholar of autocracy and democracy, Prof. Barbara Walter, author of the NYT bestseller How Civil Wars Start.

If you’d like to join these weekly sessions, you can sign up as a paying subscriber or upgrade to paid here:

__________

Earlier this week, I attended the importance conference organized by the Rev. Dr. William Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove of Yale Divinity School’s Center for Public Theology and Public Policy. My panel was entitled “A Moral Opposition to Today’s Authoritarianism.” Lucid has partnered with the Center to circulate the video of the entire panel, which featured Rev. Dr. Rick Lowery, Prof. Philip Gorski, Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin, me, and Prof. Eddie Glaude, with commentary from Rev. Barber.

You can view the video here. I have adapted my remarks for this Lucid essay. I hope you find them helpful to your understanding and advocacy.

___________

It has become evident that we are in a time of moral collapse: a time when plunderers of foreign territories, the environment, bodies, minds, and economies, who know they are on the decline, are trying to seize and exploit as much as they can before they are vanquished.

And they will be vanquished.

It has become evident that calling out this corruption and plunder is the way to move hearts, minds, and souls and get people into the streets and to the ballot box. The democratic opposition victory in Hungary bears this out.

America can do this too.

At the conference, Rev. Barber spoke of an ongoing “war on divinity itself.” He is a man of faith, and for the faithful of all creeds, the attacks of President Donald Trump and Vice President J.D. Vance on Pope Leo were likely an offense. The attacks bring home the MAGA scorn for devotion and a need to take down any rival to their authority.

Yet the war on divinity is something broader. It is a war on all that is good, a war on higher principles one can live by and sacrifice for, a war designed to destroy our faith in ourselves and our faith in each other. As such it is an offense to all of us.

This larger crusade to destroy all that is divine and beautiful —a crusade against respecting others and tolerating difference and multiple points of view—is evident in Vance’s comment that the Pope should “be careful” when speaking of theology. It resembles the kinds of warnings issued by Mafia bosses. Vance is protecting the cult of Trump: the cult of plunder and violence and defrauding the American people for personal gain.

This larger crusade against good is revealed more bluntly by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth: vowing to “negotiate with bombs” reveals the nihilism at the core of this and other autocratic governments. They speak through violence.

I know this kind of nihilism well, because it dates back to Fascism. And so I know that moral analysis, and the foregrounding of the values of justice, accountability, transparency, empathy, solidarity, equality, and more as levers and supports of opposition politics, should be part of the remedy.

The Importance of Moral Analysis

Moral analysis is key to understanding the operation of authoritarianism and the intimate and social tragedies it causes. Authoritarianism is a political system built on a logic of betrayals: betrayals of others and betrayals of self. It cultivates, and rewards, a state I call moral deregulation: a rolling back of civic and ethical norms against defrauding, silencing, bullying, and physically harming others.

Democracies inculcate such norms in schools, religious spaces, and other social institutions. Government service positions in democracies carry obligations of nonpartisan and ethical behavior regardless of which party and leader are in power.

Authoritarian takeovers mean such norms are discredited and dismantled as the very purpose of government mutates. Authoritarians see governance in a completely different light. Public welfare and the public good have no place in their motivations and reasoning. The point of being in office is to enrich yourself and amass power sufficient to be above the law and beyond accountability.

The strongman’s goal is always to make his collaborators descend to his level. We hear about how authoritarians “hollow out” institutions by removing anyone not loyal to the leader and the party, but they also hollow out people to the point where they will participate in acts of violence, corruption and sabotage against their compatriots.

Where We Go From Here

So what is to be done? We should not think that if we do well in the midterms the myriad afflictions we face will go away.

Voting is key, and we should never give up on elections. We need an overwhelming turnout for the midterms and beyond - such a turnout is why Viktor Orban conceded.

Yet voting will not be enough to defeat moral collapse. We need a culture shift –a political culture shift-- to restore and center the values of justice, fairness, and equality and a sense that we are all precious beings who deserve good government by virtue of existing.

During the Barack Obama years, the philosopher Martha Nussbaum argued that our institutions must invest in shaping an emotional and moral climate to support democratic laws and norms. Yet when institutions have become hollowed out and compromised, as happens with authoritarian governments, change must come from the community up, the person up.

It is only by joining with others in acts of peaceful opposition that we can forge this path of moral renewal. When we protest we are modeling the values we want to see in the world.

The Power of Love to Defeat Nihilism

Love cannot be absent from our work of moral renewal. Heart-centered action has played a role in resistance against autocracy through its power to stir the conscience, touch the soul, and reach multi-generational constituencies. As bell hooks observed, love is an action as well as a feeling.

Love’s potential to galvanize others is greatest when the brutality and thievery of state policies becomes evident to many.

This is the moment to elevate solidarity, kindness, tolerance and empathy as core values of democracy. This is the time to “love forward,” as the Rev. Barber II and Jonathan Wilson-Hartgrove advocate, circulating care and compassion to contribute to a collective moral renewal that supports defense of rule of law, exposure of corruption, and other cornerstones of our struggle to restore democracy.

“The absence of love brought many tragedies that might have been averted. Instead of the golden rain of love, a black cloak of indifference fell upon the people…And so people have lost the eyes of love and can no longer see clearly…” wrote the Italian filmmaker Alberto Lattuada, who grew up under the Fascist dictatorship, in a searing preface to Occhio quadrato, his book of photographs published in 1941.

This is timeless wisdom. Through our work of moral renewal, we can realize democracy’s promise as the political expression of equality, justice, and love.

Photo of our panel. Left to right: Rev. Dr. Rick Lowery, Prof. Philip Gorski, Dr. Tony Tian-Ren Lin, me, and Prof. Eddie Glaude. Photo courtesy of Yale Center for Public Theology and Public Policy