David Brooks is an American author, journalist, and commentator generally regarded as a moderate conservative. I do not always agree with him, but his arguments are consistently well researched and thoughtfully reasoned. He belongs with the traditional conservatives depicted in this image from the Seattle Times:

I have travelled several times with Americans whom I respect without reservation. Of course, people inclined to international travel are more likely to respect all communities in our diverse world. Brooks’s opinion piece in The Atlantic begins with a question that many people have been asking for a considerable time.

How is it that half of America looks at Donald Trump and doesn’t find him morally repellent? He lies, cheats, steals, betrays, and behaves cruelly and corruptly, and more than 70 million Americans find him, at the very least, morally acceptable. Some even see him as heroic, admirable, and wonderful. What has brought us to this state of moral numbness?

Brooks then contrasts people guided by moral standards that serve and respect the wider community with those who place primary importance on individual autonomy.

I’d say the decline of a shared morality happened over the past 60 years with the rise of hyper-individualism and moral relativism…

Today, we live in a world in which many, or even most, people no longer have a sense that there is a permanent moral order to the universe. More than that, many have come to regard the traditions of moral practice that were so central to the ancient worldview as too inhibiting—they get in the way of maximum individual freedom…

How do people make decisions about the right thing to do if they are not embedded in a permanent moral order? They do whatever feels right to them at the moment…

In the 1980s, the philosopher Allan Bloom wrote a book arguing that in a world without moral standards, people just become bland moral relativists: You do you. I’ll do me. None of it matters very much.

…people are unschooled in the virtues that are practical tools for leading a good life: honesty, fidelity, compassion, other-centeredness. People are rendered anxious and fragile…

…“MacIntyre argues that today we live in a fragmented society made up of individuals who have no conception of the common good, no way to come together to pursue a common good, no way to persuade one another what the common good might be, and indeed most of us believe that the common good does not and cannot exist.”

Along comes Trump, who doesn’t even try to speak the language of morality. When he pardons unrepentant sleazeballs, it doesn’t seem to even occur to him that he is doing something that weakens our shared moral norms. Trump speaks the languages we moderns can understand. The language of preference: I want. The language of power: I have the leverage. The languages of self, of gain, of acquisition. Trump doesn’t subsume himself in a social role. He doesn’t try to live up to the standards of excellence inherent in a social practice. He treats even the presidency itself as a piece of personal property he can use to get what he wants…

Few of us escape the moral climate of our age. As MacIntyre himself put it, “The barbarians are not waiting beyond the frontiers; they have already been governing us for quite some time. And it is our lack of consciousness of this that constitutes part of our predicament.”

…we probably need to recalibrate the culture so that people are more willing to sacrifice some freedom of autonomy for the sake of the larger community.

The Atlantic is a publication I follow regularly. Its articles often resemble the linked one by David Brooks. These are thoughtful, deeply reported analyses that sometimes reflect liberal perspectives and other times conservative ones.

Rather than chasing daily web traffic, The Atlantic has concentrated on substantive, long-form reporting. That approach has been supported by investments from Emerson Collective, its majority owner, which is controlled by billionaire philanthropist Laurene Powell Jobs. Her wealth derives largely from Apple and Disney shares.