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Politics : Sharks in the Septic Tank -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Lane3 who wrote (17370)	6/26/2001 10:17:49 AM
From: dave rose	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

Very good Karen. Thanks

To: Lane3 who wrote (17370)	6/26/2001 12:00:45 PM
From: TimF	Respond to of 82486

Morality is essentially a religious construct and religion and government have been intertwined. Morality is a pretty broad idea that includes different constructs. It includes beliefs like "action A is against the will of God", but it also includes ideas of what is right and wrong, and ideas about what should and should not be illegal that are not based on religion. We don't legislate morality, or at least we shouldn't. Morality is between the individual and and conscience, his associates, and his god. What we legislate is a social contract, which is an agreement among people about how they're going to treat each other subject to government enforcement. The social contract itself is an abstract moral idea, it isn't a concrete contract that we each sign when we are old enough to read or when we turn 18. As opinions about moral issues change then opinions about the limits of the social contract also changes. I would agree with you that moral qualities and virtues like chastity or honoring one's parents are not the governments business, and it would be against my moral and philosophical principles for the government to intervene in these areas, but in the past these areas where often considered part of the social contract (in the sense that people thought them legitimate areas for government involvment) and in some places they probably still are. I make a distinction between human rights abuses and areas of purely personal morality, but decideing what fits in each area involves an opinion about morality and moral ideas. Tim

To: Lane3 who wrote (17370)	6/26/2001 1:58:25 PM
From: The Philosopher	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

We don't legislate morality, or at least we shouldn't. Morality is between the individual and and conscience, his associates, and his god. What we legislate is a social contract, which is an agreement among people about how they're going to treat each other subject to government enforcement. You have, I think, too narrow a view of the term morality. My OED (concise) defines it as "Concerned with the distinction between right or wrong...dealing with regulation of conduct" Whether I think it's right or wrong for me to kill you is a moral decision. You're right that, at least initially, that is a decision between me and my conscience or my god. (I deliberately leave out associates; they have nothing to do with morality, only with custom.) So if I am faced with a situation, I have my own sense of what is right and what is wrong. (Think Lord of the Flies.) Let's say that you learn something about me that I don't want publicly known. You threaten to tell others unless I pay you $100,000. (Good luck getting it out of me in this market!) My moral sense may tell me that the only way to deal with blackmailers is to kill them. That is certainly a viable moral position. But your moral sense may tell you that blackmail isn't a good enough reason to kill somebody. We have a conflict of morals. What happens? Absent law, I kill you (or try) and nothing bad happens to me. My morality is justified by events. But your group that thinks blackmail isn't a sufficient basis to kill somebody has enshrined their view of morality into law, in opposition to my view of morality. So if I do kill you, and get caught, I get punished. Society has imposed your (and their) moral views on me. They have legislated their morality in opposition to mine. This is clearly, IMO, legislating morality. Choosing one moral position and imposing it by force of law on someone else who holds a conflicting moral position. Pick any substantive law. (I exclude procedural laws such as you stop on red and go on green, although even there there is an implied morality that I have to wait for you at times, and can't just get in my car and drive when, where, and how ever I want to.) But substantive laws ALWAYS enshrine one view of morality over another. Minimum wage laws: those who think it is moral to take advantage of people who are desperate and pay them the minimum possible are prevented from doing so by those who think it is only moral to pay some minimum amount for labor. Environmental laws: those who think there is a moral responsibility to care for the planet impose their views on those who think if I own this land I can do whatever you want with it. Even land ownership in the first place is based on a moral belief that it is acceptable for one person to own part of the earth -- a concept in conflict, for example, with the morality of the Native American cultures, and also in conflict with the far more modern concepts of pure communism. Even in Western culture, not too long ago, the moral code was that the King owned all the land, individuals couldn't own any, and the use of land was at the disposal and whim of the King, who was the regent of God on earth. So it was moral to kick somebody off the land they had farmed all their life if they got hurt and could no longer produce food on the land. I challenge you to name a single substantive law which isn't a) based on a moral code, and b) imposes the moral viewpoint of part of society on another part of society which doesn't share that moral code. (If we all agreed, there would be no need for law, as, for example, there is no law saying that people have a right to wipe their noses when they run, since nobody argues that it is immoral to let people do that.)