The more a society reflects a shared value system, the less we need laws to regulate behavior. Someone recently said, "There was a time in our country when, if you got on a city bus, you could be reasonably sure that everyone else on the bus felt pretty much the same way about things as you." Imprecision notwithstanding, there is elemental truth to that reflection. If a teenager got on that bus playing a boombox loudly, they were certain to be scolded and shooshed rather quickly, and without fear or forethought.
Today, it is certain that no one on the bus would speak up. Thus, if the consensus is that we don't want boomboxes played loudly on city buses ... we are going to need to pass a law. Of course, before we do that, we are going to need extensive hearings to determine whether there is the required consensus. These are apt to contentious, as we will need to hear from spokespeople for various subcultural groups who may have differing points of view about the aesthetics of loud boomboxes. Also, we probably will need to deal with objections from the ACLU about restrictions on personal liberties. It may take considerable time, perhaps years, to arrive at a determination as to how we should act, and we may never arrive at it, in which case we will just have to live with loud boomboxes and invest in earplugs.
This brings us back to the long and frustrating effort of Neocon, in particular, to argue that shared values, traditions, and customs are the compound that holds a society together. Increasingly lacking that compound now, we are forced to argue endlessly over truths that were once taken for granted, as self-evident. In our last dying efforts to preserve sanity and common sense in our society, we find we need to pass, er, try to pass, a confusing jumble of laws to regulate even the most trivial instances of bad behavior. In the sexual arena where we first started a few days ago, we find ourselves unable to introduce any example of utterly depraved behavior that will not be defended under the mantra of "in the privacy of their own homes." Our imaginations fail us. Urinations and defecations upon one another just don't cut it. Anything and everything goes "behind close doors."
In our new and improved society, at least as reflected by some on this thread, we don't make judgments about other people. Never. Ever. |
