Shame and Scold

Tom Nichols: “This raises an important question: How should conservative critics of the administration approach those people who, a year in, remain unshakably attached to an administration plumbing such moral depths? Should we engage and try to understand these voters, or should we shame and scold in an effort to reawaken some moral sense in a party that once proclaimed itself the defender of patriotic and family values?”

“Personally, I am in the ‘shame and scold’ camp. The ‘engage and understand’ approach is based on the deeply flawed assumption that these voters don’t know what they are doing. It is a kind of ‘root causes’ explanation, in which Trump’s supporters are good people who are merely expressing a yawp of anger at a globalized world that has left them behind.”