Over the past several months, I’ve written commentaries revisiting moments in our history when individuals confronted serious challenges and rose to meet them — to remind us who we are and what we stand for. After writing about the tragedy in Minneapolis, I briefly turned to Steve Allen, an entertainer known for his intelligent wit — not to diminish what happened, but to offer a small measure of relief, a moment of joy from the weight so many of us are carrying for the country we love.

This is a nation that has endured tyranny, civil war, and deep division, and still found its way back to center—not only to the rights cherished in our Constitution, but to the ethical values that give those rights meaning: trustworthiness, responsibility, justice and fairness, caring, civic virtue, and respect. We know how to live these values. Sometimes we slip, but we have always returned to what steadies us.

This moment feels profoundly different.

We are living through a presidency in which ethical boundaries once taken for granted are routinely ignored. That realization grinds away at us every single day, and it leaves me with a deep sadness for the country we are, and the country we are meant to be. But that sadness is not just personal. It’s reflected in how many Americans now assess leadership and conduct at the highest level.

In polling conducted between February 4 – 5 by John Zogby Strategies, after the killing of two unarmed U.S. citizens by federal agents in Minneapolis, 84 percent of Republican voters continued to approve of President Donald J. Trump’s job performance. Whatever the limits of the survey, evaluating a president’s performance must involve more than issue outcomes alone. It must also account for decency, restraint, and respect for human life.

Nevertheless, that number, 84 percent, measures more than political loyalty. It forces a harder question: What are we now willing to excuse, and at what cost to our shared ethical standards?

John Zogby and I have enjoyed an academic friendship for years. I wrote to him about the figure, asking why so many continue their support of this president.

His response was brief and unsettling: “There is no shame left among some.”

Shame is not humiliation. It is the recognition that our words, actions, or both have caused harm to someone else, or to the larger community. It is not weakness; it is moral awareness.

Today, shame is a word rarely spoken by some of our nation’s leaders, and when it does surface, it’s often dismissed as irrelevant.

Last week, the President of the United States posted a racist and deeply offensive image on social media depicting former President Barack Obama and former First Lady Michelle Obama as apes. The post remained in the ecosphere for about twelve hours before it was taken down.

The public response was swift and unmistakable: outrage.

White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt dismissed it as “fake outrage.”

Growing up in the sixties, shame mattered in my home; disrespect was not brushed aside, and crossing that line came with serious consequences.

In recent years, some politicians have recast shame as weakness and its absence as strength. A society without shame is not fearless; it is adrift. The greater danger is not that a loyal minority remains in denial, but that the rest of us grow numb to what that denial is costing us.

How are we to sustain a society without ethical norms, without the simple, essential obligation to treat our neighbors as we would want to be treated ourselves?

Civility does not sustain itself. It must be modeled, protected, and reinforced, especially by those entrusted with power.

Leadership is not merely about winning or dominating; it is about setting the moral tone of a society. When leaders dismiss civility as weakness, they license its abandonment everywhere else.

That is why I thought of Steve Allen last week. There was a time when we could laugh at simple silliness—wordplay, surprise, human awkwardness, and just plain humanness—without cruelty or targets. That laughter didn’t distract us from who we were; it reflected it. It reminded us that seriousness and decency could coexist with joy.

Civility is not optional for leadership. It is foundational. Without it, authority loses legitimacy, and democracy loses its footing.