We
are experiencing a complete nihilistic moral collapse in the West in so
many ways. We have lost sight of what it is to be human. We are
undermining civilization—our civilization and all civilizations—by these
sorts of completely amoral actions that take place.
We have to try to find a way of recreating a civilizational structure that provides the moral foundations for how people behave and who they are. They always come, basically, from the old myths and narratives of a civilization. These are the moral stories that create the architecture by which ordinary people steer their lives and live. And when you lose that, you are on a path to utter destruction.
» I keep hearing that we can't kill the leaders of another country when we're negotiating with them. I'm sorry, that's not how the rules work. The rules say we can't invite them to a negotiation, seat them at a table, and then go all "Game of Thrones Red Wedding" on them. That's against the rules.
But once they have shown that they're not going to work and that they're actually an obstacle to peace, then we have every right to go ahead and turn some of those people into their component molecules and fly some missiles through their windows to make sure that the rest of the people negotiating on that side know not to mess around with President Trump. And I can guarantee that the CIA and Mossad have a list of people to whom that could happen that is long and distinguished. That could be a good next step. «Jim Hanson, President, Security Studies Group (US national security think tank), July 2, 2026.
Jim Hanson is an example of someone on the path to having no moral standing at all, to suggest that it's fine to kill leaders of other countries. It's really very distressing to hear that, and it should be clearly condemned.