Do Morals Matter?: Presidents and Foreign Policy from FDR to Trump

Written by Joseph S. Nye, Jr.

Narrated by Robertson Dean

Americans constantly make moral judgments about presidents and foreign policy. Unfortunately, many of these assessments are poorly thought through. A president is either praised for the moral clarity of his statements or judged solely on the results of their actions.

In Do Morals Matter?, Joseph S. Nye, Jr., one of the world's leading scholars of international relations, provides a concise yet penetrating analysis of the role of ethics in US foreign policy during the American era after 1945. Nye works through each presidency from FDR to Trump and scores their foreign policy on three ethical dimensions of their intentions, the means they used, and the consequences of their decisions. Alongside this, he also evaluates their leadership qualities, elaborating on which approaches work and which ones do not. Regardless of a president's policy preference, Nye shows that each one was not fully constrained by the structure of the system and actually had choices. He further notes the important ethical consequences of non-actions, such as Truman's willingness to accept stalemate in Korea rather than use nuclear weapons.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Tantor Media, Inc
• Release date: Jul 31, 2020
• ISBN: 9781705244142

Reviews for Do Morals Matter?

[mike starkey · Rating: 1 out of 5 stars]

Tell us what you like about this audio? If i checked a single star that means i didn't like it at all. In fact it was as unctuous and sleazy as the presidents the author pretends to be objective about. That three presidents liked the UN tells you how immoral and unethical those presidents were. That FDR helped Stalin enslave another several hundred million humans and helped Mao take over China along with Marshall and Truman and our deep state bureaucracy indicates our government is amoral. That FDR got Lucky!! when 2400 Sailors were killed in an attack on pearl harbor the typist for the left says that fDR was too gullible ignorant to know that his economic war and his War Plan Orange and his sending B 17 Bombers to the Pacific region and his fake private airforce that the Japanese knew about before they ever attacked Japanese in China that FDR is a mama's boy and got an allowance from his mommy... these are unhealthy things. The left handed typist uses words and wordy words and so many adjectives and meaningless words. He never confronts the root cause of the problems these presidents caused individual Americans. Why? Perhaps because he is too dull to know but I expect he shares the one characteristic that Truman and FDR and Eisenhower shared a top down central planning. These men were mass murderers but somehow when they did it that was moral. FDR kills 8 million Japanese that is responable and ethical? FDR destroys Japan so Stalin could take over East Asia? FDR promises Am Koreans he would give them back Korea. And then he gives Korea to Stalin. He gives Stalin land FDR didn't own, FDR gives Stalin POWs to use as slave labor. FDR forces American soldiers to send two million East Europeans back to Stalin where they ended up murdered, starved, or imprisoned and worked to death. This typist for the left doesn't even get his Frame of Reference concerning morality correct. In spite of his 3 D image of fake morality. See professors are so out of touch with real world they can make up stuff that has nothing to do with the individual man. Nothing to do with why we are here in America. He takes the view that Americans are just particles. They exist for the use of the managerial bureaucrats in DC. He does not see Americans as individuals with natural rights. The real context he should have used is capitalism. Capitalism is the economic system that demands morality from leaders. The system we have in DC is more fascist. It certain is NOT moral. So the typists starts out thinking and making us assume that the government itself is a moral system. Which is total backwardization of civilization. Government is the enemy of the individual. He doesn't get that or he benefits from a government check. Or like most intellectuals he is an anti capitalist unable to see Americans as individuals only cattle to be rounded up for slaughter for the benefit of the bureaucracy. He is like FDR. Americans exist for the greater good. The greater good being the state and not individual freedom. Thus to be redundant not unlike the social illogical writer he allows the presidents to have power to kill thousands and millions and sees no moral consequences of that.
Most humorous is he tells us most historians say FDR was telling the truth about being ignorant of Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor. FDR was being honest.. But the writer follows up by telling the listener how deceitful FDR was. And FDR lied about everything almost everything important.. but somehow FDR didn't lie about Pearl Harbor. It is very funny. Why is it the left cannot allow the possibility that FDR knew Japanese were going to attack, that FDR provoked the Japanese, that FDR was in this war to help Stalin.. none of this the intellectuals will admit to. But mostly they won't admit to FDR knowing about Pearl Harbor. This in spite of knowing that many presidents lied about events to get us into war. It was and is a common strategy of presidents. Finally the writer being well educated must know that in a democracy the worse rise to the top. Democracy is mob rule. In fact democracy doesn't even require a majority. A mob can form with 42 percent of the vote. Check out Wilson. The typist for the left doesn't bother to define what democracy is. He doesn't bother to explain that the US was never meant to be a democracy. Democracy is not in the constitution. Thus the writer starts with his own immoral or amoral basis to ooze out meaningless measurements on presidents. This is a painful listen. But what irks me most is he is suppose to be an intellectual and he treats the listeners as ignorant middle schoolers who have been brain washed to see democracy as moral as presidents being great instead of presidents being pretty much bad democrat or republican.