Anderson edited "Leveraging: A Political, Economic and Societal Framework" (Springer, 2014), has taught at five universities and ran for the Democratic nomination for a Maryland congressional seat in 2016.
There are two problems with fact-based or data-based policy arguments. These problems are not insurmountable, but they are problems that must be addressed.
The first problem with any fact-based policy argument, whether it is a federal or state policy or a policy that is advanced in a company or a nonprofit organization, is that facts alone can never justify a change of action. Facts need values to move them in the same way that fuel cannot drive you to the hospital. You have to put the fuel into a car or a truck or a bus or a motorcycle.
Facts by themselves tell you how the world is. But if you want to change the world, or indeed some part of it, you need a reason or a set of reasons to justify and motivate you and others to change it. And those reasons must concern values of some kind -- justice or liberty or care or God's calling, whatever it is.
The same holds in court trials. A prosecutor cannot convict a defendant with facts alone, even eyewitness reports that the defendant shot someone in cold blood. The attorney, and the jury and the judge, must rely on laws (which are public values) that must be upheld. If you can prove that in fact someone broke the law, then your facts have done the job for you.
Fact-based or data-based arguments frequently presume that the facts or data alone will guide us in our actions. But without a clear value or set of values to guide us, the facts are inert. The same facts could be used to guide us in different directions depending on the values that we embrace, values which themselves may need support.
If the facts show that excessive smoking can cause cancer, then it must be determined whether the country or a given state is more concerned about promoting the values of economic freedom and economic growth or the values of health and public safety. Indeed, we have not outlawed smoking in any state, but many restrictions have been imposed upon the tobacco industry.
The same value conflicts arise when we are addressing factual debates concerning the coronavirus and public and private decisions that are needed concerning vaccines and masks.
The second problem with fact-based or data-based arguments is that there are frequently rival accounts of what the facts or data actually are. In trials, for example, each side presents and defends their view of the facts. In discussions of poverty, conservative and liberal social scientists present and defend their views of the facts. For every Brookings Institution, there is a Heritage Foundation. In quantum mechanics physicists have a range of factual disagreements about the motion of subatomic particles.
Admittedly, some camps in politics present views of the facts that are so strained and indefensible that it can seem unjustified to call their facts "facts" rather than make-believe or plain lies. Yet in politics there is no tribunal of reality to disqualify arguments given in electoral or issue politics on the grounds that the facts they employ are bogus or fake. In the end, there are only the votes cast by politicians and the votes cast by citizens for politicians and referendums.
The upshot is that both problems with the facts must be addressed by all sides. Having a fact-based argument in itself is insufficient because facts alone don't prove anything or guide any actions. Even if you hitch your facts to values, even widely accepted values, you still must confront others who dispute your account of the facts.
In short, wielding well-justified facts is always a good thing in moral arguments, in political arguments, and in organizational arguments. But having good facts is nothing to boast about. You must defend them vigorously and you must drive them with values.
As Democrats and Republicans continue to struggle over how to address child care, health care, universal pre-K, climate change, and paid parental leave in the social services bill, it is critical for the public to understand that strong arguments for new policies require a combination of convincing accounts of the facts and convincing accounts of the values.
A golden tray sits on the Resolute Desk as President Donald Trump speaks during an announcement on American nuclear innovation in the Oval Office at the White House on July 24, 2026, in Washington, D.C. Trump is signing multiple executive orders targeting the nuclear energy sector and easing rules for new reactors and nuclear fuel supply chains.
Trump’s hubris rivals the fallen heroes of ancient Greek mythology
In January, the New York Times asked President Donald Trump if there were any limits on his global powers.
“Yeah,” the president responded, “there is one thing. My own morality. My own mind. It’s the only thing that can stop me.”
That was eight months ago, but fortunately Christopher Nolan’s blockbuster adaptation of “The Odyssey” has made ancient Greek literature newly relevant. Before that window closes, I’d like to talk about hubris.
Today, the term mostly means excessive pride or arrogance. That’s part of what the Greeks meant by it too, but the meaning was a bit richer and more specific. Hubris was an insolent or outrageous act that offended the gods, often because the transgressor was claiming abilities or authorities that solely belonged to supreme beings.
Nolan renamed and slightly modified the concept of xenia for the film, calling it “Zeus’ law.” In the director’s telling, mortals should follow the rules laid out by the gods, specifically the requirement to treat strangers with respect lest they be gods in disguise.
In a sense, hubris is the opposite, or at least the rejection, of xenia. The hubris of the suitors, and at times Odysseus himself, invites punishment by the gods and their mortal instruments.
Which brings me back to Donald Trump. His claim that there are no constraints on his personal power to dictate events on the global stage was one of the greatest expressions of hubris ever uttered by a political leader.
Trump’s claim was obviously false when he made it.
He vowed that he could end the Russia-Ukraine war in 24 hours. He’s proved powerless to make that happen. If he had divine powers to work his will, why would he have balked at implementing his tariffs so often that Wall Street adopted the “TACO trade” term for his deals? “TACO” stands for “Trump always chickens out.”
And why would Trump have made so many embarrassing concessions to China — from rescinding tariffs on Chinese goods to allowing them to buy crucial and incredibly valuable computer chips?
But Trump saw his success at capturing Venezuelan strongman Nicolas Maduro as proof of his ability to launch missiles to the same effect as Zeus’ lightning bolts. Trump believed he was the most powerful man who ever lived.
This is no exaggeration. In March, when the Iran invasion seemed successful, Trump gave a document penned by“Presidential Historian David King” to New York Times reporters Maggie Haberman and Jonathan Swan purporting to prove that Trump was “the most powerful person to have EVER walked this planet.” King was, in fact, a businessman and occasional caddy for legendary golfer Gary Player.
King compared Trump favorably to many of history’s most powerful, and often heinous, figures: Alexander the Great, Attila the Hun, William the Conqueror, Napoleon Bonaparte, Joseph Stalin, Genghis Khan, Mao Tse Tung, Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin. Many of these men thought they were the most powerful person in the world, too. And many were defeated precisely because they believed it.
At least Napoleon and Hitler had a string of truly impressive victories before they learned the folly of hubris. The limits on Trump’s power have been exposed by far less august forces than the combined might of the allies in World War II or the fearsome Russian winter.
Iran is a comparatively middling power. But the regime’s ability to absorb punishment while imposing its will on the Strait of Hormuz has proved to be a greater constraint on Trump’s power than his morality or mind. We should note that, at least rhetorically, his morality has not proved much of a constraint. He has repeatedly promised to destroy Iranian “civilization” if the regime refuses to capitulate.
But they haven’t — and won’t anytime soon — because the regime’s tolerance for pain far outstrips Trump’s. The combined fear of skyrocketing oil prices, outrage of Gulf state potentates, diminishing weapon supplies and domestic unpopularity is doing the work that international law, congressional oversight and the collective opinion of foreign policy experts can’t or won’t do.
If I considered Trump more heroic than reason and facts could allow, I would say his Sisyphean predicament has the whiff of Greek tragedy to it. Trump is vexed by the fact that the Iranians won’t honor deals or ratify his countless premature claims of victory — giving new meaning to his vow that his presidency would make people tired of winning. It’s almost like they’re out-Trumping Trump.
Things might have gone better if he’d heeded that great Greek tragedian Sophocles: “For Zeus utterly abhors the boasts of a proud tongue.”
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Jonah Goldberg is editor-in-chief of The Dispatch and the host of The Remnant podcast. His Twitter handle is @JonahDispatch.