Molineaux is co-publisher of The Fulcrum and president/CEO of the Bridge Alliance Education Fund.
Each of us has a moral compass. This internal sense of right and wrong guides our behavioral choices throughout our lives. A navigational compass always points true north unless a magnet is nearby. Then it will point to the magnet.
Our moral compass can also be magnetized. Instead of pointing to our values of integrity, loyalty, compassion and so on, it points to those who are polarizing us, telling us that only THEY hold the moral high ground and we should give them our attention, money and power. Our moral compass needs to be recalibrated on a national scale. Can we even step out of the toxic polarized conditioning to assess what our individual moral compasses are today?
What is the north star for you? What are the values and ethics by which you guide your life? I imagine yours will be a similar to mine:
- Be honest with self and others.
- Honor family and friends before other commitments.
- Contribute to the betterment of the community.
- Stand up for what is right and good; i.e. the dignity of others.
- Be myself and allow others to be themselves. “You do you.”
In my personal life, these are the results of alignment with my moral compass:
- Relationships with family and friends are strong.
- I apologize when I make mistakes or harm others.
- I work every day to evolve myself and those around me to be better citizens.
- I have pledged “dignity first” for all interactions.
- I am mostly non-judgmental about other’s choices.
What about our national moral compass? A national moral compass is the weaving of all of us together that results in a national ethos. Here are the results of our national moral compass:
- Name calling and public demonization of any person as bad, evil, ugly, etc., is OK.
- Doxxing is part of serving the public; where people are unsafe in their homes and jobs when called out.
- Rigid belief systems keep us from liking each other based on labels and assumptions.
- It’s OK to strip voting rights and bodily autonomy away from people via the courts and legislation.
- Threats of violence will be used to enforce one belief system on all of us.
What are the values that lead to these results?
- Winning is everything.
- Money is power.
- Time is money.
- Fame is priceless.
Just reading this list of values, I am angry. Angry that We the People have allowed The Politics Industry and Conflict Profiteers to magnetize the good hearts of Americans, turning them against one another. What we need is for millions of Americans to:
- Participate in self-reflection, resetting their own moral compass without the magnetizing impact of conflict profiteers. ( More tools here.)
- Interact with others to learn from them. Calling forth their own recalibrated moral compass.
- Become one of the 12M Americans who will stand up for our democratic republic and all those who seek to destroy it for profit, power and fame.
How might we bring better alignment between our personal and national moral compasses? This is the work of our lifetime.
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.