Speaker Pelosi has declared that Trump's proposed border-wall expansion is immoral. My training in ethical theory tells me that moral reasons override or trump (ahem) other reasons -- prominently, prudential ones -- by their very nature. They are all-things-considered reasons.
Usually when we face a challenge to a moral principle and make for an exception to a generalized moral statement, we find a way to subsume that exception under morality itself: "Morality dictates X except under a narrow set of circumstances."
Pelosi has categorically declared the (Trump-expanded) wall to be immoral, not a reflection of America's values. So if Trump comes with an offer of, say, amnesty for the Dreamers in exchange for his wall funding (or, say, the 3-year extension he has offered, followed by amnesty once the wall-expansion is built [per Krauthammer's proposal]), by her own statement she should reject that deal and any other deal that contains the wall funding. Not to do so would be to compromise with evil, by her own statement.
Does that seem reasonable?
Where a political culture is intellectually bankrupt, we shouldn't expect political leaders to be experts about morality and moral reasoning.
[Addendum: One suggestion I've heard (offline) for how to resolve the shutdown standoff: Trump gets his border wall, maybe even gets Mexico to literally cut a check to pay for it, and he resigns his office. Would that still be immoral, under Pelosi's authoritative declaration?]
[Addendum #2: I am unable to locate the posting(s) in question, but Maverick Philosopher has pointed out that Trump's proposal adds to an existing border wall, so how much border wall is immoral in Pelosi's view, exactly? Should the existing one be removed? Her exact wording is "A wall is an immorality. It’s not who we are as a nation." Being charitable, she just means Trump's border wall expansion proposal is the immorality. But she isn't being charitable toward Trump when she attributes to Trump a racist motivation for his immigration proposals: "That plan is a campaign to Make America White Again." Don't believe that she made this beyond-the-pale remark (which fellow Democrats enable and practice in abundance themselves on the basis of flimsy evidence)? Watch. Trump for his part has said that he wants people to come here, but through a legal process. Do I need to explain how Pelosi's irresponsible rhetoric calls her own moral credibility into question? That where she's coming from here markedly taints the credibility of her moral pronouncements? To clarify: the notion that Trump is a racist is based on flimsy evidence, as anyone well-trained in logic and evidence assessment can readily figure out. Try getting a philosopher concerned with his reputation to affirm that Trump is more than probably, or likely, or certainly a racist, given the existing evidence. (I would assign some low-to-medium probability to the proposition, under any reasonable construal of the term racist. [See also Rand on racism, a view I am essentially aligned with. I should make a posting connecting this with the topic of contemporary race relations in America, along with the role of both Trump and a pathological left-wing echo chamber in all that....] There is some amount of evidence to suggest it, but it's still pretty flimsy as a basis for a conclusion, especially if we're dealing with something beyond unconscious bias on his part, for which the evidence is considerably stronger. Easily the least unconvincing piece of evidence in the linked list would be the early-'70s housing discrimination stuff; essentially all of the rest is poor inference from things he said, typical of left-wing-style race-baiting rhetoric. There is that one comment he made about "the Mexican judge" he thought would be biased against him, and this was called out as an objectively racist comment -- which it is -- by then-Speaker Ryan among others. I attribute the comment to a much more well-established pattern on Trump's part: he can be a jackass, a lot, especially on twitter; he is racially insensitive, but he is insensitive about a lot of stuff politically, which is plenty bad for a president. But then yet again, have you seen his opposition?) And then compare/contrast the expected careful evidence-assessment there with the "it's a no-brainer" kind of garbage flowing from the Democrats. This is definitely an area where leftists process information differently than others and thereby make constructive communication that much more difficult.]
[Addendum #3: In regard to Addendum #2, a bit of seeking leads me to learn of a philosophy professor, George Yancy, who appears to have gone out on that "Trump is (definitely) a racist/white supremacist" limb. Given my overall (but hardly unqualified) respect for the philosophy profession in its current form, and for philosophy's exceedingly low tolerance for bullshit which runs rampant in politics and elsewhere (but especially politics, it seems), this should make for a good exercise and/or blog fodder for yours truly. Just a bit to start with...he says in an interview: "...I tried to create a mutually vulnerable space where white people could reveal the ways in which they harbor racist assumptions, emotions and embodied habits." I applaud the idea -- and would apply it not just to white people and any implicit racism they may partake in, but to all (groups of) people on gobs of important matters, which is pretty much the very task of philosophy. And so while we call out white people for their failings, is the political left ready for non-whites to be called out on theirs, without flipping out? One question that certainly merits examining: How much is "progressive"/leftist talk of institutionalized American racism actually a product of a refusal to confront evidence that their social policies have failed? Are(n't) leftist assumptions, emotions and embodied habits destructive?]
