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

To: The Philosopher who wrote (17396)	6/26/2001 2:16:22 PM
From: Lane3	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 82486

You have, I think, too narrow a view of the term morality. I'm not going to get into a semantic argument on the meaning of morality. I am on record as hating that word. My point is that, among the myriad dos and don'ts in the world, there are separate subsets for immoral and illegal. The fact that the two subsets overlap--many items appear in both--confuses the issue and fosters muddy thinking. There are plenty of things that are immoral that aren't illegal and plenty of things that are illegal that aren't immoral. You mentioned procedural items, for example, which keep our cars from running amok. Then there are laws protecting us from ourselves, such as the seat belt laws that we've discussed before or the laws on how much water one's well needs to produce. If one has a libertarian bent, it is crucial to keep the distinction between the immoral and illegal subsets nice and crisp. And the etiquette subset, as well. Karen