posted
Since the election brought this whole "moral values" issue to the forefront of American politics, liberals keep claiming that they have moral values too. This is true in one sense - liberals do think the government has critical moral responsibilities, such as to help the underpriveledged groups in society. However, I think this might miss the point of the moral values issue. The conflict seems to be about promoting given moral values among the citizens of our country, not within the government itself. When someone says they are concerned about the moral values of this country, they do not mean they are concerned about how the government makes its decisions - they mean they are concerned with the moral values of the citizens themselves, in the messages we get from our society at large. Are we told that violence is okay? Or are we told it is wrong? That's the moral values issue.
And on this account, I think liberalism has NOT taken any moral viewpoint - other than moral relativism. The liberal philosophy generally is that people decide their moral beliefs on their own - that it is not the government's job to influence them. It's okay to have an abortion if you want to. It's okay to have premarital sex if you want to. It's okay to show violent programming if you want to. It's okay to do whatever you want, just as long as it doesn't violate the rights of others. But not only is it okay - the government isn't going to judge you either, or even try to pursuade you.
It seems to me that this philosophy is failing them. I don't think it is not true that all moral values are equal, and I think most Americans know that. And many, I think, consider a decision by the government to promote no moral value system is tantamount to promoting the idea that there is no absolute moral truth. This is a problem for liberalism, and the Democrats who favor it.
Can liberalism develop a moral message, or is moral relativism too critical to the philosophy of the left?
posted
"It seems to me that this philosophy is failing them."
To be fair, is this philosophy -- whether or not you've correctly identified it -- indeed failing liberalism, or is it merely making liberalism less politically popular? In other words, unless political popularity is the primary goal of liberalism, might their laissez-faire attitude towards personal morality be enormously successful while at the same time not a huge vote-getter?
Posts: 37449 | Registered: May 1999
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posted
I couldn't feel any other way than that my moral choices are my own and do not impinge on your life. If the democratic party abandons this, then perhaps I will find no candidates to my liking.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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quote:I don't think it is not true that all moral values are equal, and I think most Americans know that.
Wait ... try that sentence again?
It seems to me that, quite ironically, the modern liberal moral stance stems from Christian teachings against hypocrisy — the idea that it is wrong to sin, but that it is even MORE wrong to find fault in others for their sins.
This isn't to suggest that individual liberals typically derive their personal political beliefs from the Bible. But much of the time, they practically quote Christ's tirades against the Pharisees.
The problem, I think, is the fact that Christ taught a very balanced philosophy, which is part of what makes it so successful. He took a very strong stance against sin, and expected people to hold themselves to an incredibly high standard of behavior. Yet at the same time, he forbade them to use their own righteousness as a bludgeon against others.
Basically, He taught His followers to observe a double standard — absolute strictness with themselves, and compassion and tolerance for others.
Why am I bringing up Christianity in a thread about politics? Because the topic is the apparent inability of liberals to inspire the public with their moral philosophy. I think this is why. Tolerance alone, as a virtue, is empty. It offers nothing to aspire to except to rid oneself of prejudice. It offers only negative changes to your character — REMOVING wrong traits. There is no "higher tolerance" to aspire to once you choose to tolerate every person and every behavior equally (which is a pathetically easy conclusion to reach, requiring nothing beyond complete and utter apathy towards everyone else). And most importantly, if you truly come to believe that all choices are equally tolerable, and rid yourself of ALL your moral judgments, by what standard do you evaluate your own behavior? How do you know if you are doing well, when nothing you do is ever allowed to be wrong? How can you build true personal value without some ideals to help you define your best possible self?
Tolerance works far better when it is accompanied by a clear sense that there are right and wrong choices, and positive virtues to aspire to, like honesty, honor, responsibility, self-control, chastity, temperance, sacrifice, etc. Once you believe that there are actual, meaningful moral choices to make, then not only do you have a means of evaluating your own decisions, but tolerance itself becomes more of a challenge. You must learn compassion, mercy, and understanding for people that you actually believe are doing something wrong, which is much more admirable than simply tolerating everyone equally because there are no wrongs to commit.
So this problem leads to a lot of fundamental moral misunderstandings that end badly for liberals. For example, when a conservative or a moderate says, "I support our troops!" they usually mean, "I support their cause and their decision to fight, and I want them to win!" Many times, I've heard an anti-war activist step in and answer, "I support the troops, too! I'm trying to save their lives by bringing them home!"
Fundamental misunderstanding here. To a person with actual moral beliefs, there are many greater things for a person to achieve beyond merely preserving their own lives. A soldier who willingly goes to war is saying, by his actions, that he is willing to die for a cause — be it the freedom of his countrymen, the freedom of others, the overthrow of a criminal dictator, or what-have-you.
Telling that soldier that you want to "support" him by pulling him out before the job is done, saving his life, while rendering the sacrifices made by his comrades completely meaningless could actually be taken as a grave insult. What, you think he is such a coward that he wants you to "save" him from his own noble choice?
Liberals definitely have values. Peace is one. Tolerance is another. Freedom is another. Yet these values are all fundamentally negative. They are defined by the LACK of something else — the lack of war, judgment, and tyranny. And at the individual level, they are often simple or meaingless. The virtue of freedom is achieved at the government level. On the personal level, it offers no moral guide whatsoever to your daily actions.
Positive personal virtues like honor, temperance, and sacrifice, which actually demand effort and difficult choices on the part of their practitioners, are far more inspiring and life-changing, and do a far better job of rallying the troops. Yet they are notably absent from (or at best, overshadowed by) most liberal philosophies.
Asking a person to give up his leisure, his comfort, his pleasures, or his life can be difficult to do. But the people who do have high expectations will ultimately prevail ofer those who say, "Do whatever you want, I don't care." If you don't care, then neither will anyone else.
(One area what liberals DO achieve this is on the economic front — asking people who have plenty of resources to give up their money so that those with very little can have more. But very often, rather than describing this as a personal sacrifice by the rich, they describe it essentially as a punishment inflicted by the proletariat, which is far more negative and less inspiring.)
[ November 15, 2004, 11:20 AM: Message edited by: A Rat Named Dog ]
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posted
In a discussion with a friend, I said that I feel that laws should represent the minimum requirement for a functional society. All other things should be personal choice.
You need to be able to prove strongly that some action significantly harms society for me to agree that it should be illegal.
Posts: 1261 | Registered: Apr 2004
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posted
(How about if your idea of supporting the troops is to make sure they at least have all the equipment they need such as body armour to carry out their mission and that when they come home they have resources to help them as much as possible?) This is my view on things- I believe that it is not enough to say you are moral. It's not enough to talk about sexual morality when you have in the past and in the present had numerous affairs or walked out on your wife or husband or whatever. You just can't say a thing about being moral so you must be silent and sit in the corner. Morality is about doing the right thing no matter how difficult it is. Sometimes it's moral to fight a war if it truly is for a good cause. It's not enough to just say it is, it has to be. You cannot tell me the sky is orange, I will not believe it. Truly moral people would look out for children. They would not let the gap between rich and poor get so wide that some people in this country end up living no better than people in third world countries. How is that right? I'm tired of people talking about how they are against abortion but when it comes to taking care of the children that are already here, they are silent on the issue. I'm tired of people talking about how immoral it is to be homosexual but when it comes to things that are truly evil and vile. Silence. I am tired of hypocrasy. Plain and simple. No more of it. Either these people who preach on morality live up to it, or they shut up. It's as bad as people who talk about how free the country is... Freedom is such an empty and stupid word that means nothing.
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quote: The problem, I think, is the fact that Christ taught a very balanced philosophy, which is part of what makes it so successful. He took a very strong stance against sin, and expected people to hold themselves to an incredibly high standard of behavior. Yet at the same time, he forbade them to use their own righteousness as a bludgeon against others.
In fact, the natural human impulse seems to be, "Sin is wrong, so hold others to a high standard," and this is why these directives are so important--to follow the philosophy is the hard choice, the choice that requires effort, the choice that runs counterintuitive to what our basic nature seems to prefer.
Posts: 720 | Registered: Oct 2004
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quote: Truly moral people would look out for children. They would not let the gap between rich and poor get so wide that some people in this country end up living no better than people in third world countries. How is that right?
Why does living withing the geographical boundaries of the United States make somebody deserve a better standard of living than somebody else living in Brazil?
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quote: I'm tired of people talking about how immoral it is to be homosexual but when it comes to things that are truly evil and vile. Silence.
Of course you'll hear more talk about homosexuality, since there is not a concensus view on it.
You won't find many people going around saying that genocide is just fine and that we should accept it. Everybody agrees that it's wrong. There's not a terrible lot to discuss. Hence a lot of the silence.
posted
Not deserve, but it shouldn't be that way. Kids in this country should not have a poor standard of education because of how so many people claim that the US is the best country on Earth. There shouldn't be tons of children living way below the poverty line here, if that is the case. A past example is how politicians and all manners of people talked about how free America was when so much of the population was denied rights because of something stupid like skin colour. It's hypocritical. It just, because I am an idealist, shouldn't be like that. It makes no sense at all.
Edit to Scott R- I would not think you hate me personally, but I would very rudely think you are completely wrong... Which is a terrible attitude. >.<
posted
The key difference, of course, is that there are practical disagreements over the best way to reduce the number of children living below the poverty line. Som there may not be disagreement over the moral principle involved, just the best means of implementing it practically.
Geoff, I found your post very thought-provoking. However, I think you display some misconceptions about liberal morals. You seem to think that the primary liberal value is tolerance, and that liberals do not distinguish between right and wrong actions except in terms of tolerance. I'll go ahead and presume to speak as a liberal, though I'm not certain the term applies to me, and tell you that I certainly believe there are immoral actions, and I define these primarily as actions that harm people. I also believe in personal honor, integrity, living up to committments, and so forth. I also believe that my morals are the "right" ones. What I don't believe is that they should be enacted into legislation, unless failing to do so presents an immediate and tangible danger to society and/or my fellow citizens. Thus, murder should be illegal, but adultery should not. That certainly does not mean that I condone adultery, or that I don't think we as parents and churches should teach that it is wrong. But if a moral belief is true, I think society at large will see its value soon enough. I don't think making people be morally upright is an effective way to create public morality. I don't think creating public morality is the government's job at all. I think protecting our rights is.
(I think Xap is closer to the truth on this when he points out, in his initial post, that the debate is not on having morals versus not having them, but on whether it is the place of the government to teach and enforce them. I think Xap has this right until the middle of his second paragraph, where, like you, he starts ascribing moral beliefs to the left that it does not hold:
quote: It's okay to have an abortion if you want to. It's okay to have premarital sex if you want to. It's okay to show violent programming if you want to. It's okay to do whatever you want, just as long as it doesn't violate the rights of others.
quote: I don't think it is not true that all moral values are equal,
I submit that this is not the belief of the left, as a whole. There is such a thing as a moral relativist. (In my experience, they tend to be college students. ) But it is not necessary to be a moral relativist to believe that the government should not be legislating morality. I think Dabbler's litmus test is a good one.
I think this is an excellent point:
quote: The problem, I think, is the fact that Christ taught a very balanced philosophy, which is part of what makes it so successful. He took a very strong stance against sin, and expected people to hold themselves to an incredibly high standard of behavior. Yet at the same time, he forbade them to use their own righteousness as a bludgeon against others.
Basically, He taught His followers to observe a double standard — absolute strictness with themselves, and compassion and tolerance for others.
I think this is precisely what liberals want to do. I think you muddle your point by believing that because liberals do not want to legislate beyond the compassion and tolerance that they do not have personal morals beyond tolerance and apathy.
(The issue of rallying the troops muddies the water here. There are liberals who are pacifists, and liberals who are not. And it is possible to be opposed to this war without being a pacifist. I don't think opposing this war is about liberal apathy.)
-o-
Scott, I agree with you on hate crime legislation, but that's where I part ways with those who label themselves liberal.
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quote:Writing legal papers saying it's OK to torture people and violate principle terms of the Geneva Convention is not OK.
First, he didn't say it was OK. He said it might not violate the Geneva Convention.
Second, it is a lawyers JOB to look at caselaw, statutes, and treaties and then either give a judgment as to whether a particular action is in accordance with those authorities or to make the best case possible that it is.
posted
Yes, and it's a moral person's job to say, "What, are you nuts? Piss off!"
Or is MORALITY IN GOVERNMENT not really all that important, now they they've won?
Remember: GWB himself ridiculed trial attorneys for acting immorally and only doing what will make them the most money. Exactly what Gonzales did when he wrote those papers.
Gonzales makes cases for and against, and (I think--as a liberal) that his case AGAINST the Bush administration's desire to ignore the GPW is better than the case FOR, Gonzales still concludes in favor of claiming that the GPW does not apply (even though he previously states that it pretty much allows the enemy combatants to violate the Geneva convention as tyhey see fit, as well).
Remember, folks: the Republicans all laughed when Clinton asked what the definition of "is" was (actually, many Democrats laughed as well). Now the Republicans are asking what the definition of "torture" is. But I don't think it's that funny. Actually, they already asked what it was. Apparently, you can now cause a lot of pain and suffering, intentionally, and for the reason to extract information, but it's not really torture.
posted
Look, if you to swap idiocies of the left and right, we can do that. But you've pretty much given up your right to bitch about others doing the same thing.
As for defining "torture," it's a legal concept that requires a legal definition.
An Attorney General who can see both sides of a complex legal question is an advantage, not a detriment.
We're pretty much typing at the samre time here (and, after this post, I've got to stop and get back to work).
Read the first memo. As I said, Gonzales actually presents both sides pretty well. In my mind, his case AGAINST the Bush administration's stance is far stronger than the case supporting them.
Ask yourself: why does he wind up supporting the Bush administrations stance, then?
You may find that his case for the Bush Admin stance is stronger--that's certainly your right, and probably a fuitless point to argue.
My stance against Gonzales has certainly weakened after actually reading the memo: he seems, for the most part, to be an intelligent and responsible person. But why does he wind up supporting the weaker stance?
I'll get back to this thread later tonight, if I can.
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posted
I agree, it's fruitless to argue about which side is stronger. But I will mention that the criteria used to evaluate the strength of each argument are notoriously flexible. Witness the Supreme Court's varying interpretations of statutes and the Constitution.
There's a saying that no one knows what a Supreme Court decision means until the next case in which the court deals with that issue and tells us what it actually meant.
So the question "Why did he support the weaker side?" is pretty much unanswerable, both because of serious disagreement over what "weaker" means and second because we don't know which interprative method is being used.
quote:But you've pretty much given up your right to bitch about others doing the same thing.
No, he didn't. That's playground logic. If something is wrong, then it's wrong no matter who is pointing it out. Only in childish partisan games could you even suggest this without being laughed out of the converstaion. Yeah, the side he supports does something bad. That doesn't make it any better when the side he doesn't support does something bad too. To suggest otherwise is simple partisan hackery.
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posted
If ssywak thinks that it is legitimate for posters on this board to bring in unrelated examples of behavior exhibited by people OTHER than the one under discussion, then he has forfeited his right to claim that this same tactic is illegitimate on this board in other circumstances.
That's not partisan hackery, that's consistency.
And it's not playground logic. Playground logic is thinking it illegitimate to use people's actions in determining what they think is acceptable posting behavior.
posted
In fact, playground logic really is a good word for it - it's like someone saying one day that they get the swing because they called it first, and the next day claiming they get it because they got to it first.
quote:Yeah, the side he supports does something bad.
And I wasn't saying anything about his "side." I was commenting on his behavior.
posted
Tres, Almost no one believes in moral relativism the way you define it. There isn't this widespread movement with the idea that everythings ok. You're not opposing reality. You're opposing a concept that has it's greatest effect limited to the confines of your own brain. Neither liberalism nor the actual state of people fits into the neat little box that you're trying to put them in.
Geoff, You know, some people consider that it's not their job to force other people to live correctly. That is, in fact, the central tenant of classical liberalism. For many people, it's not that people don't hold themselves to high standards and wish that other people followed these standards. It's that they don't think that forcing people to follow standards is either ethical or practically a good idea. Many of these people will use every means at their disposal short of compulsion to try to get people to live correctly. I'll recommend John Stuart Mill's On Liberty another time, because it is in my opinion the clearest, most concise statement of liberalism.
The Democratic party doesn't live up to these ideals in so many ways. You'll get no argument on that from me. But that doesn't mean that the ideas that they claim to follow are full of holes, just that they are as an organization.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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posted
Here's a followup to you Geoff, based off this comment:
quote:Tolerance alone, as a virtue, is empty. It offers nothing to aspire to except to rid oneself of prejudice.
Should the government, an apparatus that tries to regulate a nation of disparate cultures, some quirky, some recently actively and violently attacked, try to do more than this? I feel that the government should only regulate where it will ease interactions between citizens. This can mean some painful short-term effects, as seen in the Civil Rights Movement, but overall the rationale is to promote long-term tranquility among all citizens, I think. I don't think it's the governments place to morally judge people for any crime; rather, it's for the government to set laws in place that will protect citizens from unruly and/or dangerous actions from a fellow citizen. I see only difficulty and conflict in trying to imbue the government with moral force, especially when you start getting to the nitty-gritty aspects of what constitutes a particular crime. Now, I know this is a departure, particularly from the founding fathers, but I don't see this philosophy as much more than an evolution of the way our jurisprudence has been tending toward since 1789.
That said, there are surely some excesses that come along... I find hate crimes particularly egregious. I think it would be better to inform juries to take certain aspects into account when recommending a sentence, but to have manadatory sentencing for certain classes of crimes should only be required in the most backward of places, where a good old boy could get slapped on the wrist for assault or murder of someone of another race or religion, which in the past has been known to happen. Then again, I don't see how you could reasonably decide this before the trial, and if you would actually want to force juries on an individual basis to adhere to those guidelines (in fact, I'd tend to think that the government shouldn't).
quote:Almost no one believes in moral relativism the way you define it. There isn't this widespread movement with the idea that everythings ok. You're not opposing reality. You're opposing a concept that has it's greatest effect limited to the confines of your own brain. Neither liberalism nor the actual state of people fits into the neat little box that you're trying to put them in.
Gee, it sucks when someone misstates the nature of the opposition, doesn't it?
posted
To follow up Bok, I don't see enforcing virtue as the role of the government. I like that tolerance is empty, virtue-wise. Human governance has constantly shown itself that is incapable of being trusted with questions of virtue. And, besides that, I don't believe that compelled virtue bears much of a relationship to actual virtue. It's important to protect people against the excesses of others, but you can't make people virtuous. The best you can achieve is to make slaves that don't misbehave (unless they don't think that they'd get caught).
Virtue is the choice to do the right thing. In the important cases, it's generally more concerned with a positive thing (often above and beyond what could be reasonably expected as minimum legal conduct) than with not doing bad stuff. A society where people avoid doing the bad stuff but don't do the positive things is not a virtuous one. The development of virtue can only be encouraged, not ensured. It has constantly been shown that trying to force it, subjecting it to punishment/reward systems, warps it.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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quote:Liberals definitely have values. Peace is one. Tolerance is another. Freedom is another. Yet these values are all fundamentally negative.
You are correct. Liberals even favor the enforcement of these values by law. Hate crimes and affirmative action are an examples of legislating tolerance.
But I don't agree that these are negative. There is something different about them, though - they generally don't tell you the correct way of acting, other than to tell you not to try to correct the way others are acting. Just being peaceful, tolerant, and free does not tell us very much about how we should actually go about our lives. It leaves a lot of leeway.
quote:Tres, Almost no one believes in moral relativism the way you define it. There isn't this widespread movement with the idea that everythings ok. You're not opposing reality.
It is not the belief that everything is okay. It is the belief that it is okay for other people to hold any moral belief system they choose, as long as it doesn't directly hurt you. As in "For me X is wrong, but for you X may be right, so I won't try to make you believe what I believe."
quote:You know, some people consider that it's not their job to force other people to live correctly.
But the question is not just whether we should force people to live correctly. It is also a question of to what degree we should legally encourage them to live correctly.
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posted
Hey, as long as we are legislating morality, I'd like to see some decent laws against adultery and, in fact, all sex outside of marriage, as well as no-fault divorce. And on the non-sex morality, I'd like to see a lot stiffer prison terms for "white-collar" crimes. In fact, some of those "scandals" were so egregious that there are a few people I think deserve the death penalty for it. And as long as were are legislating morality, since I believe that power corrupts, when you are popular enough to have a poll done about you, you can no longer be in charge of a religious anything. Too many people getting scammed out of their money by scumbags pretending to be Christians. And anyone doing anything in the name of God (charity, church, whatever) and gets caught doing something immoral/illegal ought to get extra time. Like hate crime laws, only I'd make the extra time for these crimes be under the heading of fraud. Like if you are a minister and get caught with a parishioner in bed, you'd get charged with adultery (my new adultery law and all) and with fraud for being a minister and not practicing what you preach. (Of course, if we brought back stonings, updated of course so that men could be stoned to death, too, that would just kill two birds with one stone. No pun intended.)
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posted
Well, the first amendment would pretty much not allow laws regarding most of those religious issues - the government can't legislate who calls themself Christian. And cruel and unusual punishment is also unconstitutional.
However, I've previously proposed the possibility of banning of premarital sex - which would definitely help out on a couple of issues, including abortion. However, (1) it would not be popular, (2) it would probably be impossible to enforce, and (3) some will say they have a right to have sex. But it doesn't seem all that much more unworkable than, say, banning Marijuana.
posted
I can't think of any way to ban premarital sex and make it stick without draconian measures and some sort of severe and publicly humiliating punishment to serve as a deterent. People would have to want to obey the law since it would be laughably easy to violate it. I mean, speeding is against the law and the ratio of tickets to actual speeders is very low indeed.
This would also force celibacy upon homosexuals, since they can't marry. But as long as we're enforcing morality, what the heck.
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quote: As for defining "torture," it's a legal concept that requires a legal definition.
An Attorney General who can see both sides of a complex legal question is an advantage, not a detriment.
Dagonee
I wonder two things about you Dagonee and I mean no offense.
1) Do you work for republicans in some way? Because Ive heard these arguments (pretty much all the ones you have used in your posts in this thread) already by them.
2) How much do you hate the left? And accordingly, does this disqualfy you from speaking ill of them because of that?
Edited because spelling is good, and to say that really dont mean any offense Dag, just asking.
posted
Dagonee does not hate the left. He is a law student, and as such legal definitions are perhaps more immediate to him than they are to most of us.
While he sometimes does seem like he's being difficult for it's own sake, I think you'll find as you get to know him better that he's mostly just trying to be accurate, and is quite reasonable on most issues, even with people he doesn't see eye-to-eye with.
posted
I just wanted to add this too. Moral relativism does not maintain that everything is ok, it only claims that there is no absolute moral code. Of course there are moral values, yet they are products of society. They are tools society employs in order to function properly, and thus, holds a pragmatic function for all of us. I think this is the kind of relativism SOME people (moslty liberals) will subscribe too. I dont know if this helps at all, but maybe it does!!
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posted
ElJay pretty much got it right. I won't even ask which issues I'm not quite reasonable on.
1) The last time I worked for Republicans was in college (undergrad), over 12 years ago. And I was more involved with university than national affairs. I worked on one governor's campaign during that time.
2) I try to hate no one. When I fail, it's directed at individuals, not groups, and it doesn't last long.
I'm curious as to why you would ask if I hate the left? And further, why that would disqualify me from speaking out about them if it did?
quote:The liberal philosophy generally is that people decide their moral beliefs on their own - that it is not the government's job to influence them.
Liberal philosophy, by definition, prizes
The Rule of law Individuality Equality Democracy Liberty
The problem with classical liberalism is that these five qualities exclude each other, when any one of them is taken as comprehesive.
__________________________________
For the record, the problem is with the Democrats is that we have been inappropriately pigeon-holed as moral relativists. Kennedy, Stevenson, and FDR are were not moral relativists, hell, anyone who has ever voted for any tax increase isn't a moral relativist. The relativist don't believe in any duty that they haven't volunteered for. They do what they want, when they want to, and if you ask me, that sounds a whole heck of a like the Bush Admin.
The party of the Civil Rights movement cannot be the party of the moral relativist.
Maybe that's because I've never been part of the, "If it feels good, do it," part of the Democratic party. Then again, Republicans have a variant of the same wing. That wing of the Republican party just dresses better and blames it on the market.
posted
The problem with any public discourse on morals is that it's all totally arbitrary.
For the purposes of government, it doesn't matter if there is an objective morality or if morality is an entirely social/individual construct. There are almost as many moral systems as there are human beings, and trying to reconcile them all in a legal system is impossible and frankly useless.
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posted
I disagree. If there is a moral absolute then the government must comply with it, because if we human beings create a government that violates the moral absolute, then we have done something wrong.
This is not to say that the government must enforce all aspects of that moral absolute, however. It is also possible, as I think most nonrelativist liberals believe, that the moral absolute is such that a government should give us liberty rather than oppressive enforcement of morality. It is like moral capitalism - the idea that the overall good is promoted best when each individual is left free to choose the best path for themselves.
posted
But again, for the purposes of government, it's a pipe dream. Unless you're willing to inject a heavy dose of metaphysics into your government and come periously close to a theocracy, there's no absolute measuring stick a government can use.
Posts: 1515 | Registered: Feb 2002
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quote:There are almost as many moral systems as there are human beings, and trying to reconcile them all in a legal system is impossible and frankly useless.
I don't think so. I think it's dangerous to have a politician who doesn't understand religion. And there is a difference between having faith and understanding religion.
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posted
On the subject of banning premarital sex and adultery, it's been tried. (In fact, come to think of it, wasn't the woman who was going to be stoned for adultery in Nigeria (?) recently reprieved?) It don't work. Fornication (in the legal sense of 'sex outside marriage') was forbidden in most of Europe for several hundred years, and I suspect also in the Puritan colonies. (Scarlet Letter, anyone?) It did not make Europe noticeably more moral, or America either; just better at hiding what was going on. Take a look at how many shotgun weddings and babies born out of wedlock there were, and think again on legislating a basic human drive.
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posted
If someone tried to legislate/enforce who I can and can't sleep with I would probably reverse my stance on gun control, as it would be obvious that my government was no longer doing an adequate job of protecting my freedoms and I would have to start protecting them myself. And yes, I would consider someone trying to arrest me for fornication to be a situation in which deadly force would be justified to protect myself, because in this hypothetical puritan world the punishment would probably be stoning, and I would probably be in danger of rape while imprisoned in the meantime.
But it would be a moot point... because as soon as that law passed it would be obvious that this country, however much I love it, was no longer the place for me and it had gone past the point where I could work for changes from within the system. Canada, New Zealand, Australia... wherever would take me first, I'd be gone.
Anyway, I know (think?) that no one is really suggesting this... but I still needed to share how utterly horrifying I find the prospect. Not because I feel the need to sleep around irresponsibily. But because it is none of your blessed business if I do.
Posts: 7954 | Registered: Mar 2004
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