Moral clarity

This article has multiple issues. Please help improve it or discuss these issues on the talk page. (Learn how and when to remove these template messages) This article's factual accuracy is disputed. Relevant discussion may be found on the talk page. Please help to ensure that disputed statements are reliably sourced. (May 2020) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article includes a list of general references, but it lacks sufficient corresponding inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (May 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) This article needs additional citations for verification. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unsourced material may be challenged and removed. Find sources: "Moral clarity" – news · newspapers · books · scholar · JSTOR (May 2010) (Learn how and when to remove this message) (Learn how and when to remove this message)

Moral clarity is a catchphrase associated with American political conservatives.^{[citation needed]} Popularized by William J. Bennett's Why We Fight: Moral Clarity and the War on Terrorism, the phrase was first used in its current context during the 1980s, in reference to the politics of Ronald Reagan.^[1]

The phrase moral clarity encodes a complex political argument that includes all of the following claims:

• The War on Terrorism, like some previous wars involving the United States (particularly World War II and the Cold War), is a conflict between good and evil.^{[citation needed]}
• Traditional American values like democracy and freedom are universal human rights, worth promoting and defending through military intervention.^{[citation needed]}
• Attempts to understand or explain the actions of anti-Western terrorists as justifiable responses to actions of the United States or Israel are a sign of moral weakness at best, and sympathy for the terrorists at worst, and will hamper efforts to defeat them.^{[citation needed]}
• Though the actions of the United States and its allies may lead to civilian deaths or other forms of collateral damage, may require the use of means such as torture that would be condemned in other contexts, and may involve temporary alliances with undemocratic regimes, these actions are justified by the greater moral necessity of defeating terrorism and thus promoting American values and ensuring long-term U.S. security.^{[citation needed]}
• Opponents of action against terrorists are guilty of promoting moral relativism or moral equivalence, in which the allegedly similar means of both anti-terrorists and terrorists are used to blur the moral differences between good and evil.^{[citation needed]}