Daily Inspiration Quote by Max Lerner

The line lands like a cold splash on the face of respectable compromise. Lerner, a journalist who spent his life watching American politics narrate itself as pragmatism, is warning how easily “necessary” choices become moral alibis. The phrase “lesser of two evils” is already a rhetorical comfort blanket: it frames participation as reluctant virtue. Lerner tears that blanket off with one blunt clause: “it is still an evil.” The sting is in the “still” - a refusal to let outcome-based reasoning launder the means.

The intent isn’t puritanical abstention so much as moral bookkeeping. In a democracy, citizens are constantly asked to trade ideals for viability, conscience for coalition. Lerner’s subtext: when you normalize the language of evil as just another menu option, you train yourself to stop demanding better choices. “Choose” is doing heavy work here. It makes the voter (or party boss, or editor) an agent, not a hostage. You don’t get to outsource responsibility to the system and keep your hands clean.

Context matters: Lerner wrote across the mid-century era of total war, Cold War realpolitik, and machine politics, when “least bad” decisions were often defended as existential necessities. His sentence punctures that grand narrative. It’s less a directive to sit out than a challenge to stay uneasy - to treat compromise as a temporary tactic, not a permanent identity. The quote works because it doesn’t offer a third option; it offers a verdict. It forces the reader to carry the moral cost, and that discomfort is precisely the point.