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(Not that I expect to hop the fence and turn Pro-Choice, fight for legalized drugs, or have laws against murder repealed.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

On Objective Truth

[jackofallgeeks.livejournal.com]

Being born and bred Catholic, we can't completely discount that I may have some religious bias. However, I hold that my belief in objective morality is more philosophically based, an extension of my belief in an objective reality, and that it is more-or-less divorced from my religious inclinations. That both my personal philosophy and my religion tend to agree with each other is a null point -- I'm sure you wouldn't expect someone to hold two opinions which contradicted each other, would you?

And yes, it follows that I do think my morality is the correct one, which is why I subscribe to it. Again, would you expect someone to subscribe to a system of morals they thought was wrong? But I don't think it's absolutely and ultimately correct -- I'm open to persuation, and if I were persuaded that some other system was more correct, I would subscribe to that. I won't say I *know* absolutely that I'm right, but I think it's pretty obvious that I think I am. I'm not sure how anyone could really function if they believed themselves to be wrong.

It does then follow that I think you (and by necessity a great many others) are wrong. It's only logical. But just because I disagree with you on this point (or any others) doesn't mean I think badly of you, or wish you ill, or anything like that. The great majority of my friends disagree with me on at least two or three key topics, but we're still friends. Just because we disagree doesn't mean we must hagte each other, or that we can't enjoy eachother's company. That I'm friends with an Episcopalian, or a Jew, or buddhist doesn't compromise my belief in Catholicism.