Thoughtful Innuendos

[jackofallgeeks]

I was doing some thinking the other day, spurred by a comment made by my uncle over dinner the other night. We were discussing the Libertarian Right vs. the Religious Right, and why he doesn't like the trend that the Religious Right would have us take -- legislating morality and dictating behavior.

I've been sitting on the fense of this one for a while, sort of. On the one hand, I've been aware that you can't legislate morality, though I can't articulate it any better than "it won't work." But at the same time, older theories on Politics argued for a Government that takes stock of it's people's spiritual health as well -- I cite Plato and Aristotle, lest anyone fear I refer to the Middle Ages' Catholic Church. And so I've been stuck, in a way; why not set laws to dissuade people from doing what's wrong, anyways?

The key point my uncle made was a line he pulled from a book, What's So Great About America? if I recall, and it went to the tune of "true virtue must be freely chosen. To force it on someone robs it of all it's value." It would actually be a disservice, I think, and something of an insult to human nature, to legislate morality (aside from the other point that was made, that is that morality is not easily codifiable enough that we might build a suitable code of laws from it).

This post, from mephron makes a point of how legislating morality could go wrong. We would all have people Be Good and Do Right, surely, but seeing that this is so isn't necessarily the job of Government, I think.

(Not that I expect to hop the fence and turn Pro-Choice, fight for legalized drugs, or have laws against murder repealed. My uncle also made a point that most good laws were those which were set to either protect individual rights or to preserve the interests of society. I am not an anarchist, I would just have morality dictated by something other than the government.)

Comments

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Hmm. I'm not sure how the story is an example of legislating morality "going wrong" except insofar as it's, you know, an attempt to legislate morality. As such an attempt, if the cop knew he had the authority to enforce his judgment, it seems like it'd work fine. What's morally odious about it is just that it's an unwarranted attempt to impose one particular view of morality through the medium of law.

What "going wrong" (by the lights of the attempt to legislate morality) would be would seem to be something more like: we outlaw abortion and the total number of abortions does not decrease (much), but rather it just means that more women have them done under unsanitary conditions and are harmed thereby. In that sort of case, you'd be thwarting the very moral values you were attempting to legislate.

On another note, it's not impossible to reconcile a committment to government as a system for protecting fundamental rights and making society run with a committment to government as a system in which citizens can reach their full moral potential. After all, one of the major reason we want rights protected and society running relatively smoothly is so that people can live good (in the Aristotelian sense of *eudaimon*, not *just* morally good) lives. One attempt (and I'm biased, because I basically agree) is Mill's in On Liberty. In a nutshell: the only way to find the best life is by experimentation; one role of government is to preserve the ability for citizens to freely choose and experiment with forms of life without undue interference from others.

One thing to keep in mind is that a lot of the social control stuff in Aristotle is supposed to happen in the course of moral *education* - laws serve a moral purpose for adults mostly when those adults have had defective upbringings that have left them without a properly developed moral sense. So you can have a basically libertarian society that's still committed to a morally loaded education (in citizenship values, etc.) for its youth - after all, turning a bunch of unsocialized psychopaths loose in capitalism is a recipe for disaster (cf corporate personhood in law). This is why marketizing education (through vouchers, e.g.) isn't necessarily a good idea (OK, it's a bad one) - educators are very often in the position of providing a service that their customers will only desire *after* they've received it, and so normal supply-and-demand won't work properly. But I don't think it's incompatible with some basically libertarian approach to policy - since it would be a fallacy to regard children as the kind of rational choosers that it assumes.

Of course, it bears keeping in mind that the government isn't the *only* potentially tyrannical structure (*pace* Reagan). Mill worried a lot about the 'tyranny of the majority' (which is what I think we're sliding dangerously towards now, illiberal democracy). And freedom can be infringed upon by the family, the culture, corporations, religious organizations, etc. - many of which will move to fill the power vacuum where government recedes from social control (cf, like, the entire 80s and 90s). Sometimes the way to preserve liberty is to use one power structure to check the influence of another. Dewey's Liberalism and Social Action is a useful corrective on this point. :)

Blah blah blah.

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

Blah Blah Blah
No, no, you actually make good points here. Unfortunately, I haven't been intellectually primed in a while, and I'm so mentally, physically, and emotionally tired these days... In short, I don't think my post above was very articulate at all, and I don't think my comment below will do much better.

I don't really think that the post is an example of Legislation Gone Wrong, because there's no real legislation or going-wrong happening. It just made me think, is all, about how far would be too far, and how easy it would be to slide that way. It just resonated with my current thoughts on how fit or not I feel Government is to dictate morality. I think it should put certain measures into effect -- keep honest men honest, or something -- but...

I don't see how a failed law (illegalizing abortion having no effect on actual abortion rates) thwarts the moral it is intended to protect. it seems to me that it simply fails. If all people stole, it doesn't mean that laws against theft were compelling them to steal...?

Neither do I see that it's irreconsilable to have government protect rights and at the same time provide an environment to achieve moral maturity -- I do see a problem with Legislating Morality and providing an environment to achieve moral maturity, but I can't quite articulate it.

I do believe you're right on Aristotle, and I agree that The Goivernment isn't the only potentially-tyranical structure... Unfortunately, I don't feel I'm able to say any more right now; my head hurts and I'm tired, and as such can't think well at all. Hopefully later...

[dikaiosunh.livejournal.com]

Rereading, I see I wasn't as explicit/careful as I should have been on the abortion example. Specifically, the law would be for the (presumably moral - it's not like we need to keep the birthrate up, or have any other compelling state interest) purpose of outlawing abortion. More generally, though, the moral value it would serve would be something like respect for and/or preservation of life. So a law that had little effect on the actual abortion rate, but greatly increased the number of women harmed or killed by illegal abortions would be a net loss from the perspective of encouraging life.

Not much turns on it being the *same* value. It could be an overall moral failure as a piece of legislation because it fails to serve one intended moral purpose while thwarting another.

I'll get to the other stuff when you're feeling better, perhaps - but thought I'd clear that up.

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

Ah, yes, I think I can kind of see where you're going with that... I'll think on it more once my head gets to working right.