The Theater of Neutrality

The Moral Failure Behind "Just Asking Questions"

This is, after all, a philosophy blog.

Something remarkable happened on Joe Rogan's podcast this week when Douglas Murray and Dave Smith squared off over history, war, and moral responsibility. Beyond the specific arguments about Ukraine, Israel, and historical revisionism, Murray exposed the profound moral vacuum at the center of our current discourse—the failure of the “just asking questions” posture that has become the default stance of podcast hosts, commentators, and an entire generation raised on procedural neutrality.

Two plus two equals four. There are twenty-four hours in a day. And platforming dangerous historical revisionism is not a morally neutral act regardless of how many times you disclaim expertise.

But perhaps the most revealing moment came when Smith exposed the moral relativism that undergirds his entire worldview. When discussing foreign interventions, he made an astonishing equivalence: a totalitarian regime interfering in a democracy to undermine it is morally indistinguishable from a democratic nation projecting power to challenge totalitarianism. This false equivalence isn't just historically inaccurate—it represents a collapse of moral reasoning so complete that it renders meaningful ethical distinctions impossible.

What we witnessed was a false genuflection toward the notion of having “clean hands”—a moral posture that confuses inaction with innocence, that treats withdrawal from moral complexity as ethical superiority rather than abdication. It's a throwback to the isolationism that gave the Axis powers space to gain strength, a worldview that fails to understand that refusing to confront evil doesn't mean you haven't chosen a side—it means you've chosen the side of its unopposed advance.