The other night, I was out with a friend, and we got into an argument. What got us started was that this friend, someone with a background in philosophy and with an activist bent, came out praising James Comey for standing up to the President. I know that Comey has been doing his “rehabilitation tour,” and that he’s become a darling of the mainstream pundit class as well as many members of the self-styled #resistance, but I was surprised to hear this from someone who I know to be a radical intellectual and who is no stranger activism. In fact, just to paint an accurate picture, this is someone who makes any intellectual or political critiques that I make pale by comparison. So, you can probably imagine why I was so surprised, and why this led to a really long argument (in good spirit, but still, a pretty intense argument).

My friend’s point was that despite what Comey might have done prior to standing up to the President, the act of standing up to him was one that took moral courage. But to me, it’s quite likely that Comey’s act wasn’t a moral act at all. Instead, I suspect that Comey has an idea of himself as a deeply moral person, and that in order to maintain this self-image, he felt compelled to stand up to the president. So, it wasn’t truly a moral act, but instead, it was a self-interested act by a man who wanted to retain his self-image.

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