My North Star, My Moral Compass

A “moral compass.” A “north star.” A “guiding light.” Whichever metaphor (or cliché) we use, we are all looking for the same thing: When dealing with complicated issues, we would like to have a trusted advisor who can steer us toward doing what is morally right and help us act in the most ethical manner possible and, sometimes, simply know what’s true and what isn’t. Many people turn to religious leaders and texts for this guidance, while others rely on secular philosophies. For the past nine years, my most reliable moral compass—my north star—has been our current president (as of late January 2025). Because of his utter lack of nuance, subtlety, or ambiguity, he far surpasses religious or philosophical sources in guiding me to form opinions and make decisions about a vast array of difficult problems.

My approach is simple. If our current president supports Policy X, then I can assume the policy is at the very least morally tainted, will probably harm people who don’t deserve it, and quite possibly will make our current president and his wealthy supporters wealthier. Similarly, if our current president says that Statement Y is true, I can be reasonably certain that Y is untrue, or is an exaggeration of something true, or might be true but in a context different than our current president intended.

This approach can be easily tested. For example, the 14th Amendment of the Constitution states that “all persons born … in the United States … are citizens of the United States.” I don’t see how this can be stated any more clearly. So it came as no surprise when our current president claimed that birthright citizenship is not guaranteed by the Constitution. Had I any doubt about my reading of the amendment, our current president would have removed it.

Another example: Should the United States buy (or take) Greenland? While I, like most Americans, know little about Greenland’s history or why it’s part of Denmark, my gut feelings that Greenland is not ours to take, that the people living there should have some say, and that the whole idea reeks of colonialism, are supported by our current president’s enthusiasm for acquiring it.

Similarly, I’m convinced that human activities have caused and continue to cause climate change, and that we humans need to enact policies to reverse that trend before it’s too late. The overwhelming majority of climate scientists, and my own experience, support that conviction. However, there is a tiny possibility that I, and the overwhelming majority of climate scientists, might be wrong. What to do? I turn to our current president, who has unfailingly denied that humans cause climate change and has consistently pushed for policies that will make things worse. For me, this removes any lingering doubts: Climate change is real and requires urgent action to reverse it.

Let’s see how this works on a more complex issue. Immigration is a classic knotty problem. On the one hand, we want to make it difficult for criminals to enter the country. On the other hand, and speaking as a grandchild of immigrants, the United States is a country mostly of immigrants or descendants of immigrants. Using the most restrictive definition of "immigrant," if we draw the temporal line in the sand at 1789 (when the Constitution was ratified), then all who arrived after that were immigrants to the U.S., and their children, grandchildren, etc. are descendants of immigrants (including our current president). So overall, it would seem that immigration has been a good thing for our country. But is it? A lot of people in the government, including our current president, have been claiming for years that our immigration policies are a mess and we need to tighten our borders to make it much harder to enter the country. I’m not in a position to know with certainty if this is true. However, by using our current president as my moral compass, I can confidently say that our immigration policies are probably not a mess, and even if they need to be modified (which I concede might be true), that modification will look entirely different from what our current president proposes.

Modern life is complicated, and we are daily assaulted by statements from government officials and the media. These statements often involve a complex mix of facts, exaggerations, and lies that we don’t have the time or resources to verify. With my moral compass, however, I can quickly cut through all the subtleties, the intricacies, and the fine print and arrive at an immediate resolution. I simply ask myself, “What does our current president say about this?” and assume the opposite.

Will this approach ever steer me wrong? Probably. After all, it seems inevitable that our current president will occasionally say something that is at least somewhat true, or that he will now and then accidentally support a morally correct position. But in the interest of simplifying my life, I’m willing to take the chance.