Legislating Morality

[dblack]

Sure the governments’ job is to legislate morality.

I agree that legislation implies the imposition of public morality.

Why?

Ever hear of Natural Law? It’s the fundamental basics for most laws and constitutions across the world. However, liberal’s don’t subscribe to it and prefer Rousseau or Marx and not John Locke. Read John Locks Second Treatise of Government.

Heard of it, yeah. It never made much sense to me.

Let me ask you, what would you consider the purpose of government? You seem to think it's more than protecting our rights.

 

[Publius1787]

Why?

Ever hear of Natural Law? It’s the fundamental basics for most laws and constitutions across the world. However, liberal’s don’t subscribe to it and prefer Rousseau or Marx and not John Locke. Read John Locks Second Treatise of Government.

Heard of it, yeah. It never made much sense to me.

Let me ask you, what would you consider the purpose of government? You seem to think it's more than protecting our rights.

I certainly subscribe to the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence which was a plagiarism of John Locke’s Second Treatise. i.e. Natural Law. Natural Law violates no one's rights, except, to preserve the law. For example, you have the unaleinable, irrefutable, right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so as long as you don’t forcibly prevent the right of the same to others. That is the universal moral basis for all law. The governments job is to defend the laws of nature. i.e. your natural rights or your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

Liberals, on the other hand, (modern liberals) believe that you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, UNTIL someone else fails in his/her pursuits. If that is the case, the failure has the RIGHT to YOUR unaleinable ,uh......... suddenly aleinable right, uh ..... former right, to life, liberty, and pursuits by no other virtue than that of being a failure who can’t exercise his/her rights as industrious as you can. Just call it granting a specific privilege at the expense of everyone else rights in order to get the votes and gain power off of those who demand services at the expense of everyone but themselves. That defines the modern liberal democrat.


.............................................................................................................................................Liberal Morality Explained

 

[Publius1787]

Suicide is immoral?

Why is it immoral?

Lets get to the root of some of these morals.

If a guy jumps off of a building and hits me on the way down, that’s immoral. If he hits the concrete I don’t have a problem with it.

 

[dblack]

I certainly subscribe to the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence which was a plagiarism of John Locke’s Second Treatise. i.e. Natural Law. Natural Law violates no one's rights, except, to preserve the law. For example, you have the unaleinable, irrefutable, right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so as long as you don’t forcibly prevent the right of the same to others. That is the universal moral basis for all law. The governments job is to defend the laws of nature. i.e. your natural rights or your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

And how is that any different than what some of us have been saying, that the purpose of government is to protect our rights? That statement really doesn't jibe with your previous assertion that it IS government's job to legislate morality. Or are you saying that our natural rights are the only morals?

Liberals, on the other hand, (modern liberals) believe ..

Yeah, whatever. I'm not EVEN interested in the usual right/left pissing match.

 

[shalabi]

Morality must be found through reason. Legislating it can be done, but it must be done wholly through reason, so that when one wishes to challenge it, it is done on a rational plane and not a belief/irrationally-based plane.

In essence, legislated morality is wholly possible and practical IF the body creating it is reasonable/rational..... and therein lies our problem

 

[Dick Tuck]

Sure the governments’ job is to legislate morality.

I agree that legislation implies the imposition of public morality.

Why?

Ever hear of Natural Law? It’s the fundamental basics for most laws and constitutions across the world. However, liberal’s don’t subscribe to it and prefer Rousseau or Marx and not John Locke. Read John Locks Second Treatise of Government. It's free to the public online. Or, if you have a hard time understanding natural law philosophy...... ...... .....

The highlighted above is bullshit. The liberal concept of government defending our basic rights against tyranny, whether corporate or religious, is a significant part of liberalism. I suggest if Locke were around today, he'd be a liberal. He'd have supported civil rights legislation.

 

[Publius1787]

Why?

Ever hear of Natural Law? It’s the fundamental basics for most laws and constitutions across the world. However, liberal’s don’t subscribe to it and prefer Rousseau or Marx and not John Locke. Read John Locks Second Treatise of Government. It's free to the public online. Or, if you have a hard time understanding natural law philosophy...... ...... .....

The highlighted above is bullshit. The liberal concept of government defending our basic rights against tyranny, whether corporate or religious, is a significant part of liberalism. I suggest if Locke were around today, he'd be a liberal. He'd have supported civil rights legislation.

(modern liberals) believe that you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, UNTIL someone else fails in his/her pursuits. If that is the case, the failure has the RIGHT to YOUR unaleinable ,uh......... suddenly aleinable right, uh ..... former right, to life, liberty, and pursuits by no other virtue than that of being a failure who can’t exercise his/her rights as industrious as you can. Just call it granting a specific privilege at the expense of everyone else rights in order to get the votes and gain power off of those who demand services at the expense of everyone but themselves. That defines the modern liberal democrat.

 

[Publius1787]

I certainly subscribe to the first two paragraphs of the Declaration of Independence which was a plagiarism of John Locke’s Second Treatise. i.e. Natural Law. Natural Law violates no one's rights, except, to preserve the law. For example, you have the unaleinable, irrefutable, right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness so as long as you don’t forcibly prevent the right of the same to others. That is the universal moral basis for all law. The governments job is to defend the laws of nature. i.e. your natural rights or your life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness.

And how is that any different than what some of us have been saying, that the purpose of government is to protect our rights? That statement really doesn't jibe with your previous assertion that it IS government's job to legislate morality. Or are you saying that our natural rights are the only morals?

Liberals, on the other hand, (modern liberals) believe ..

Yeah, whatever. I'm not EVEN interested in the usual right/left pissing match.

Natural Law is the universal morality. That’s why it is the basis of all American law. What I posted shows the fallacy in liberal thinking in accordance with the laws of nature that our founders envisioned.

 

[Dick Tuck]

Ever hear of Natural Law? It’s the fundamental basics for most laws and constitutions across the world. However, liberal’s don’t subscribe to it and prefer Rousseau or Marx and not John Locke. Read John Locks Second Treatise of Government. It's free to the public online. Or, if you have a hard time understanding natural law philosophy...... ...... .....

The highlighted above is bullshit. The liberal concept of government defending our basic rights against tyranny, whether corporate or religious, is a significant part of liberalism. I suggest if Locke were around today, he'd be a liberal. He'd have supported civil rights legislation.

(modern liberals) believe that you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, UNTIL someone else fails in his/her pursuits. If that is the case, the failure has the RIGHT to YOUR unaleinable ,uh......... suddenly aleinable right, uh ..... former right, to life, liberty, and pursuits by no other virtue than that of being a failure who can’t exercise his/her rights as industrious as you can. Just call it granting a specific privilege at the expense of everyone else rights in order to get the votes and gain power off of those who demand services at the expense of everyone but themselves. That defines the modern liberal democrat.

The bolded part is total nonsense. What liberal wants to deprive life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness to those who do fail? To the contrary, it's the libertarian that wants to remove the social safetynets and equal opportunity to those who get a raw deal, even if caused by race, creed, national origin, religion, age, gender, etc..

 

[Publius1787]

The highlighted above is bullshit. The liberal concept of government defending our basic rights against tyranny, whether corporate or religious, is a significant part of liberalism. I suggest if Locke were around today, he'd be a liberal. He'd have supported civil rights legislation.

(modern liberals) believe that you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, UNTIL someone else fails in his/her pursuits. If that is the case, the failure has the RIGHT to YOUR unaleinable ,uh......... suddenly aleinable right, uh ..... former right, to life, liberty, and pursuits by no other virtue than that of being a failure who can’t exercise his/her rights as industrious as you can. Just call it granting a specific privilege at the expense of everyone else rights in order to get the votes and gain power off of those who demand services at the expense of everyone but themselves. That defines the modern liberal democrat.

The bolded part is total nonsense. What liberal wants to deprive life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness to those who do fail? To the contrary, it's the libertarian that wants to remove the social safetynets and equal opportunity to those who get a raw deal, even if caused by race, creed, national origin, religion, age, gender, etc..

You read it wrong. And any time you pay for the failure of someone else your life, liberty, and pursuits are denied.

 

[Dick Tuck]

(modern liberals) believe that you have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness, UNTIL someone else fails in his/her pursuits. If that is the case, the failure has the RIGHT to YOUR unaleinable ,uh......... suddenly aleinable right, uh ..... former right, to life, liberty, and pursuits by no other virtue than that of being a failure who can’t exercise his/her rights as industrious as you can. Just call it granting a specific privilege at the expense of everyone else rights in order to get the votes and gain power off of those who demand services at the expense of everyone but themselves. That defines the modern liberal democrat.

The bolded part is total nonsense. What liberal wants to deprive life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness to those who do fail? To the contrary, it's the libertarian that wants to remove the social safetynets and equal opportunity to those who get a raw deal, even if caused by race, creed, national origin, religion, age, gender, etc..

You read it wrong. And any time you pay for the failure of someone else your life, liberty, and pursuits are denied.

Perhaps you ought to extrapulate from Locke to Mill, and understand the concept of public purpose and utilitarian ethic. Taxation to provide more equal opportunity (not really equal, since legacy points and having wealthy daddies will always trump merit), and a social safety net, increases domestic tranquility and improves the simple concept that "all men are created equal." I think the problem with libertarianism is that the whining about taxation, and in fact puts you more in Hobbes' bed. There's more to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness than cutting taxes, in spite of how libertarians are looking for excuses not to ante up for the greater public good.

 

[Publius1787]

The bolded part is total nonsense. What liberal wants to deprive life, liberty, or pursuit of happiness to those who do fail? To the contrary, it's the libertarian that wants to remove the social safetynets and equal opportunity to those who get a raw deal, even if caused by race, creed, national origin, religion, age, gender, etc..

You read it wrong. And any time you pay for the failure of someone else your life, liberty, and pursuits are denied.

Perhaps you ought to extrapulate from Locke to Mill, and understand the concept of public purpose and utilitarian ethic. Taxation to provide more equal opportunity (not really equal, since legacy points and having wealthy daddies will always trump merit), and a social safety net, increases domestic tranquility and improves the simple concept that "all men are created equal." I think the problem with libertarianism is that the whining about taxation, and in fact puts you more in Hobbes' bed. There's more to life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness than cutting taxes, in spite of how libertarians are looking for excuses not to ante up for the greater public good.

Gibberish.

John Locke: "To understand political power aright, and derive it from its original, we must consider what estate all men are naturally in, and that is, a state of perfect freedom to order their actions, and dispose of their possessions and persons as they think fit, within the bounds of the law of Nature, without asking leave or depending upon the will of any other man."


Uh, oh ... Someone actually read Locke's Treatises ..... Face it, that is certainly not consistant with liberal redistribution of wealth as you so require to bring equality amongst men. According to Locke,you advocate subjugation.

 

[FA_Q2]

Exactly. Only those things are connected to Ethics and Morality. What you abuse, you lose.

As I see it, they have nothing to do with your ethics or your morality. That is the entire point. My freedom is not tied to your ethics and, when your ethics gets into my government, my freedoms are threatened.

Yes and no. Laws are rooted in the Consent of the Majority, within reason. Ethics and morality are part of the formula. You are confusing that with Dogma. What goes on in your head, is between you and your Maker. When you take without compensation, consent, mutual agreement, you violate, Ethics, Morality, the Law. The Law can be Limited, Yes, but it still based on Right and Wrong, for the most part. When One does Harm, there is more question, rather than less. Can I use the Law to get You to Live up to My Expectation? That seems more like an abuse, with exception. Can I use the Law to compel You to stop for a Red Light? Can I use the Law to compel You to act against your own Conscience or better Judgement? That's debatable. What happens when Morals and Ethics compete or contradict? That's are what Courts are for. In Theory, the Law is to Establish and Maintain Justice, while knowing It's Limits. Still, the Law would not Exist without a Sense of Justice, which is in the Realm of Morals and Ethics. I think we are just playing with words here.

Again, I don't see it as 'playing with words.' There is a clear difference in what you are supposing - that law MUST be rooted in some vaunted moral code. No matter how basic a moral code you are going to use, there will always be that element of defining things that are 'wrong' for one group but just fine for another. Morals are subjective whereas freedoms are not. The is a gray area where my freedoms limit others that law would have to dabble in but define governments purpose in this way takes out the ambiguity that basing law on an amorphous 'morality' inherently comes with.

Sure the governments’ job is to legislate morality. I would hope that law was grounded in something. However, what kind of morality? Objective morality? Religious morality? A little of both? Of course, I need not convey the obvious answer.

Did you even bother to read the OP. Government, and by extension law, should be grounded in protecting my rights and my freedom. Legislating on morality does the opposite.

I agree that legislation implies the imposition of public morality. This should remain limited however, to what is fundamental to the orderly functioning of society.

Every law or policy is a morality play, kiddies.

Soem are just more obviously involved in issues we understand as being moral issues.

But EVERY LAW is effecting our behaviors and every act we do or don't do is basically playing out as a mind of moral decision.

As dblack said, why? Why does morality even play into this. It is not necessary. Defining morality as everything that effects our behavior is not helpful by the way. That is not what morality is.

So Laws about killing, stealing and such are not based on moral decisions within a society?

Just because they have been around along time does not mean they were not based on accepted morals.

Rights are kind of just broadly accepted morals.

? No, not at all. There are two different words here. Rights (and I will add freedoms) have nothing to do with morals at all. Just because you can do something legally does not make it 'right' and just because something is illegal does not make it 'wrong.'

Why are you completely ignoring what has been said concerning these laws and how they are not based on morality. Continuing to repeat yourself without addressing the statements that have been made about such laws existing to protect our rights and NOT because such actions are immoral.

Morality must be found through reason. Legislating it can be done, but it must be done wholly through reason, so that when one wishes to challenge it, it is done on a rational plane and not a belief/irrationally-based plane.

In essence, legislated morality is wholly possible and practical IF the body creating it is reasonable/rational..... and therein lies our problem

Here, of course, we are back to the original problem. If I am going to base law on morality and I believe that an action is immoral then it is perfectly rational for me to make a law against it even though YOU see that as irrational. Qualifying such a law process with 'rational' is just another way of supporting moral law that you agree with (rational) and condemning those that you don't agree with (irrational). You can rationalize anything based on that logic.

 

[Artevelde]

Sure the governments’ job is to legislate morality.

I agree that legislation implies the imposition of public morality.

Why?

The reason I ask, is that it seems the central question of the OP, is "Should government be imposing morality through laws, or merely protecting our rights?".

I don't really think that the purpose of government is to ensure that we all believe the same thing, or have the same values. At least as far as the tradition of the US goes, the purpose of government is to maintain a society where we can get along and, as much as possible, remain free to follow our own beliefs and values.

In other traditions government is about enforcing conformity of beliefs (particularly in theocracies) and in those it makes sense for government to legislate morality. But I don't want our government to follow their lead.

Every society is based on some common values. The upholding of these values is a legitimate and even necessary aim of government and legislation. For example, in most Western societies we believe that it is not right for a man to marry more than one woman at the same time. This shared value is enshrined in legislation.

 

[FA_Q2]

Why?

The reason I ask, is that it seems the central question of the OP, is "Should government be imposing morality through laws, or merely protecting our rights?".

I don't really think that the purpose of government is to ensure that we all believe the same thing, or have the same values. At least as far as the tradition of the US goes, the purpose of government is to maintain a society where we can get along and, as much as possible, remain free to follow our own beliefs and values.

In other traditions government is about enforcing conformity of beliefs (particularly in theocracies) and in those it makes sense for government to legislate morality. But I don't want our government to follow their lead.

Every society is based on some common values. The upholding of these values is a legitimate and even necessary aim of government and legislation. For example, in most Western societies we believe that it is not right for a man to marry more than one woman at the same time. This shared value is enshrined in legislation.

And hence you get oppression as 'undesirable' unions are not recognized by law as in the case of gay marriage. Good point, another example of morality in law gone astray....

 

[Mr.Nick]

I have meant to post this topic for a long time but have failed to do so until I seen Immie recently mention government legislating morality and I could not let another statement like this slide. I have heard time and time again that it is the governments place to legislate morality and that all law is based on this. The worst part is that I hear this mostly from the 'small' government right here on this board. You cannot have a small government at the same time as a government that decides morality. Those two situations are mutually exclusive because a government that is based on determining morality has any and all rights to do whatever it feels is moral at the time.


IT IS NOT THE GOVERNMENTS PLACE TO LEGISLATE MORALITY. PERIOD.


It is one of the most egregious things that the government does when it legislates my activities based on what it feels is right and wrong. That was never the place of the government and we should never have given it such an unstoppable power. Now, before you go into making murder or theft illegal and claiming that is legislating morality, it is not. The number one job of the government (and in reality, the only real job of government) should be to protect its citizens rights. It is in that duty that acts like murder, theft and other laws derive their need. It prevents on citizen from infringing on the rights of other citizens.

Personally, if I were to draft a law, the primary question that should be asked is what right does this law protect. If the answer was none then such a law would be meaningless and discarded. If the government can decide what is immoral and moral, how long are you going to wait for the government to decide that YOUR morality is not the correct morality.

Well.... let the scathing criticisms begin

Let the village judge its people (within constitutional guidelines)...

 

[editec]

Presumably all laws of governments are meant to serve SOME PURPOSE.

Having a purpose implies that one has a moral code to guide one to that purpose.

Ergo every law or policy comes bundled with some (usually unstated) moral implications

Yes, EVEN parking laws, it could be argued, ultimately serve some value of the morality of the society that imposes them.

 

[Mr.Nick]

Presumably all laws of governments are meant to serve SOME PURPOSE.

Having a purpose implies that one has a moral code to guide one to that purpose.

Ergo every law or policy comes bundled with some (usually unstated) moral implications

Yes, EVEN parking laws, it could be argued, ultimately serve some value of the morality of the society that imposes them.

Maybe on the state level...

The federal government cant manifest parking laws without amending the Constitution..

 

[dblack]

Presumably all laws of governments are meant to serve SOME PURPOSE.

Having a purpose implies that one has a moral code to guide one to that purpose.

Ergo every law or policy comes bundled with some (usually unstated) moral implications

Yes, EVEN parking laws, it could be argued, ultimately serve some value of the morality of the society that imposes them.

I don't see how having purpose implies a moral code. I guess you're pointing out that laws represent some shared value, which I'd agree with. But I think the question is, to what extent must our values be shared? Obviously, for a free society to work we must at least share the notion that freedom is worth having, and recognize that in order to protect our own freedom we must be willing to tolerate the freedom of others. I'm not sure if you'd consider that a moral value, or just a pragmatic necessity to achieve a desire goal. If you call it a moral, it's an oxymoron of sorts that essentially says we shouldn't push our morals on other people.

Again, I see laws as practical tools that facilitate civilized society. They make it possible for us to get along, despite the fact that we don't all share the same morals.

 

[editec]

Presumably all laws of governments are meant to serve SOME PURPOSE.

Having a purpose implies that one has a moral code to guide one to that purpose.

Ergo every law or policy comes bundled with some (usually unstated) moral implications

Yes, EVEN parking laws, it could be argued, ultimately serve some value of the morality of the society that imposes them.

Maybe on the state level...

The federal government cant manifest parking laws without amending the Constitution..

True.

Not really relevant to the point I'd made, but true.