Legislating morality, Kerry-style

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@ HS

I don't understand your point. AFAIK, every soverign nation of the earth, sans dictatorships legislate their morality on the basis of majority. I admit that there are failings in this systems as morality can change with time, but I fail to see why you think this system is ineffective. How otherwise do you propose we deal with legislating morality - unless you approve of complete anarchy as a solution?

 

Hacken Slash, I believe I have addressed your point in my previous point when I said that my comments only apply to a Western-style democracy; clearly, the Taliban does not fall under that definition. However, with respect to the examples of those not entitled to vote in our society:

Children are viewed as not generally capable of making responsible decisions for society as a whole, and therefore they are not give the right to vote in order to prevent messing up the system. Granted, the Taliban uses the same argument for women, but I think the idea of preventing children from voting has much greater worldwide acceptance than preventing women from doing the same, so I take some comfort that this approach is reasonable.

Criminals have their right to vote taken away as punishment for their crimes; however, it should be noted that in Canada, it was recently decided by the Supreme Court that the ban on voting was unconstitutional, and therefore prisoners were allowed to vote in the recent Federal election.

[ July 06, 2004, 21:18: Message edited by: Splunge ]

 

I don't like to discuss terms that are so vague that they already are meaningless. Would you please define what "morality" is, according to you.

Definition I know goes like this. Moral is behaviour according to a given standard. The given standard is given by me. End of story from my part.

As for the Taliban. I don't get it. The Taliban were an army of orphans that where equipped with machine guns. I don't see the majority come into play in a country ruled by warlords. So, the anarchy thing a gather from that is, that anarchy leads to a dictorical structure that develops further into monarchy... so ?

 

For the record, Calvin - a supposed "bloody dictator" - not only lost power to an elected town council, but executed just one heretic (already under a Catholic death sentence) during his two decades of influence. Not a bad record compared to Switzerland's blood-soaked neighbors. Also for the record, this is kinda off the point - I only brought up the Presbyterian angle to mock my position. For every example of Swiss corruption - and there are many - I can come up with a hundred examples of materialist horrors in, say, the Soviet bloc. But no need to go there (in this thread)!

Only if the majority will give me the moral A-OK for hatred!

Of course someone can still be immoral even if they're misguided. It's often only after the fact that we realize that what we've done was immoral. The alcoholic may not realize he's addicted until he starts to sober up - while he's drinking, everything is fine. Or if a fellow makes his girlfriend pregnant because he misguidedly believe he'll be loyal and loving, but dumps her after the feeling fades, then only in retrospect does he realize how much he misused her. Serial killers, to use an extreme example, may be so spiritually deadened that they don't realize that their sadism is immoral.

But this doesn't address his question (or mine) - what constitutes a moralizing majority? A majority of WHAT? Of the people? Of the voters? Of those with the guns? Consider this carefully. The US and Canada didn't have women's suffrage 'til the 20th century, which means that up to that point the voting majority wasn't even a majority of the population. Were our moral judgements irrelevant prior to the voting majority becoming the actual breathing majority? And if not - if societies prior to our oh-so-enlightened age really did have a semblance of morality without majoritarian democracy - then your dismissal of dictatorships means that you are morally disenfranchising everyone on the planet who does not live in a democracy. That's more than half the world's population. So the morality-by-majority position actually disenfranchises the global majority. Ironic, no?

Conveniently, we are all responsible, empowered individuals who can judge when another is responsible enough to be empowered. It wasn't that long ago that the idea of preventing women from voting had UNIVERSAL worldwide acceptance - from women, too! Heck, it wasn't even that long ago that the idea of preventing anyone besides the elite to vote had worldwide acceptance. We've already lowered the voting age in the US from 21 to 18 - what's to stop us from lowering it further? And if we do someday increase the scope of our suffrage, does that invalidate the moral decisions we make today because they were insufficiently majoritarian?

Well...the US, for one, locks certain moral issues beyond the reach of all but super-super majorities. Like the rights enshrined in the Constitution. Serious, morally-charged issues - like slavery, women's suffrage, and the like - are deliberately protected from majorities. The more important the issue, the more important it is to keep it safe from majoritarian abuse. Which is one reason why it isn't irrational to push for the Federal Marriage Amendment, even in the face of public opinion - it's precisely BECAUSE public opinion is against this critical moral value that it needs to be protected.

Y'know, I really want to get back to the beautiful possibilities that morality-by-majority offers us. Iago writes:

But that's too shallow. We don't get very far when we write our own morality, because it bumps into others'. There's so much more raw power when we can say, "The given standard is given by US. End of story from OUR part." To be able to rewrite a moral law by the sheer weight of willpower - wow! That's staggering. It's the dream of human history. It's freedom and imagination tied together in the ultimate creative artform. Physics, mechanics, genetics, whatever - nothing comes close to the pure power of reshaping justice. We become the judge of justice itself. We've tamed nature, we're taming man - and now, maybe, we can tame the divine. That we should live to see humanity's greatest ambition played out in our lifetimes...and that so many should seem so unaware of its tremendous ramifications...wow!

'Course, if there really are absolute moral laws and, worse, a Lawgiver, then we may be running quite a risk. But hey, even in the Garden of Eden story, the devil doesn't deny that God exists, only that He may be beaten by selectively reinterpreting His rules. Maybe we've finally reached the point when we can not only get away with doing wrong, but actually make it right.

Rock the vote!

 

The problem with each one of those examples is that they are taken from the perspective of the person committing the act. But I asked “Can I still be an immoral person if I, along with everyone else, believes that I am not?” In other words, not just me, but all of society.

I’m afraid I don’t follow you. We’re talking about how, in a democratic society, morals are legislated by the majority. Dictatorships, by definition, are not democracies, so the morality-by-majority position doesn’t apply, and its citizens, again by definition, are disenfranchised.

So let me see if I understand you here. Let’s say, for example, that the majority of U.S. citizens decided that the right to bear arms was a bad thing because thousands of people were suddenly going around on a daily basis randomly shooting other people, and penalties under the current law were proving to be an ineffective deterrent. Are you saying that there should be no mechanism in place to change the laws to reflect the change in attitude and restrict these rights? (And I don’t want to turn this into a debate over gun controls; let’s assume, for the sake of argument, that there was a form of gun control that could achieve the desired results.)

Nice try, Grey, but that belongs in the Gay Marriage thread. But since you brought it up, the issue here is not protecting a “critical moral value”, but whether it has a moral value deserving of protection.

This whole discussion reminds of an earlier topic in the Alley on contraception; the debate turned to a discussion over whether commitment was an important part of sexual relations. I responded that yes, it is, but only because society tells us that it is. In other words, society’s attitudes shape our own, and thus our beliefs and moral standards tend to reflect those of the society in which we live. Of course, there will often be exceptions, and changes are brought about when the strength of the opposition to societal norms are greater than the resistance to change that the opposition faces.

An example of different moral standards in similar societies – nudity. If a woman in North America goes topless on a public beach, she’s likely to be arrested; nudity here is viewed as being morally objectionable. But do the same thing in Europe, and - nothing. So, are Europeans morally corrupt sinners, or do North Americans just have ridiculous attitudes towards nudity? Or is it just that we each have our own different set of moral standards on this issue?

Maybe we need to define what we mean by “morality”. Encarta Online defines it as “standards of conduct that are accepted as right or proper” and “the rightness or wrongness of something as judged by accepted moral standards”. To me, the key word is “accepted”. And who determines what is accepted? – society. I find it hard to imagine a moral standard which is accepted by a society, but not generally accepted by that society’s citizens.

Let me present you with a hypothetical, but not entirely unfathomable, scenario. Currently, we (myself included) are a society of meat-eaters. Eating animal flesh is not generally considered to be immoral in our society. However, a relatively small segment of the population objects to killing animals for our own consumption because there are alternative food sources available. What if, some time down the line, more and more people object, until eventually society as a whole decides that it is morally wrong to eat meat, and passes laws to forbid it. Does that mean that society as it stands now is immoral, despite the fact that few people see it that way? Does it make you (assuming you eat meat, otherwise this is a terrible example) and I immoral right now? Or does it simply mean that we came to view the consumption of meat in a different light than we see it now, and changed our attitudes accordingly? I view it as the latter.

Ugh, I’ve gone on too long. Time for a break…

Edit: I just realised I didn’t address this question:

Well, again, I’m only addressing this in the context of a Western-style democracy, since that’s how this whole thread started. And in such a society, freedom of speech is important. Thus, “those with guns” doesn’t qualify. So in a democratic society which doesn’t allow women to vote, then yes – the men speak for the majority, since they’re the one’s with a say. But obviously, there was enough opposition to this from those without a vote (ie. women) that eventually they were granted the right to vote; this is where freedom of speech is important, because it allows those who feel disadvantaged to speak up without fear of punishment. That’s pretty much what democracy is all about, and that is how change comes about in a democratic society.

[ July 07, 2004, 02:49: Message edited by: Splunge ]

 

I'm too sleepy to stay up and answer your excellent rejoinder in full, Splunge, but since my mind is already in the moral gutter, let me quickly response to this paragraph:

As C.S.Lewis pointed out in "Mere Christianity", that's really the difference between chastity and propriety. To quote at length:

Maybe I should change my name to the "Grey Prude"!

Anyway, propriety is determined (usually informally, sometimes formally legislated) by the majority. It's totally up to them to decide, and we need tolerance for those who transgress propriety. But morality is based on absolute principles and should be reflected, not created, by the majority. Invention in propriety can sometimes be clever, sometimes impolite, often both. But invention in morality is only distortion of the proper reflection.

Perhaps we're just confusing the two? Iago objected (rightly) to overzealous attempts to regulate propriety. My objection is to overzealous attempts to deregulate morality. Are we perhaps throwing out the baby with the bathwater (to return to the original post)?

 

What timing! I was just editing my previous post when you posted yours. Thank goodness you're too tired to say more, Grey, or I fear I would have been unable to respond (I'm tired as well).

And that, I suppose, is the crux of the matter. You say that morality is an absolute; I disagree (or more accurately, I don't necessarily agree). And perhaps that is why you and I so frequently find ourselves at an impasse in these sorts of discussions.
Not that they aren't fun, though.

 

First, it wasn't mine. Second, just about everything that is against Catholic tenets Kerry can construe as a matter of tolerance and argue for it to be legal despite he supposedly believes it's wrong. That's not right. 0!=1. Either he's lying as to his beliefs, or he allows murder to happen in his full consciousness. From his own words, the latter is more probable. Wonder how he can sleep at night.

It's not so simple. First of all, the subject matter of intellectual property is hardly identical with the subject matter of traditional "physical" property. Second, patents in the current shape work on first come first served basis and it's not like no one else could possibly come up with that very same idea a while later. They don't exist to assure proper credits for the author and make sure his authorship isn't usurped by anyone else, but they work like dividends. What if some caveman had copyrighted wheel? Or beer? Or wine? Or agriculture. Or fishery. Or sword. Or gunpowder. We've already reached the level of absurd. I'm fairly sure most people hate the idea of one-copy-per-computer-per-user, for instance. Let alone the extortionate prices dictated by M$ and pals, or musical businesses. What's the moral? The law doesn't always (have to) support the majority. Also, what's legal isn't always right and what's illegal isn't always wrong.

Always anytime? Doubt that. What about ancient Greece? And still - wherever the majority is opposed to homosexual marriage and stuff, gay rights movements claim rights protections and build far-fetched inferences from constitutional rights that lead to conclusions substantially different from the will of the majority. Can't paedophilia or necrophilia follow the same route? Perhaps we don't see it as possible now, but 100 years ago who would think that a gay couple could be kissing in public? Or 500 years ago, who would think non-marital sex would ever be legal?

If I consider life to begin at the moment of conception (for which I don't need religion), it's only logical I consider the taking of that life to be homicide and in many cases plain murder. As you said, I don't need religion to oppose murder. So I don't need religion to oppose abortion. QED

Tell that to the cops and the judge in the court.

Whatever you doto oppose it is construed as infringment on the right to choose and so on. Whatever more than saying you believe it's morally wrong may get you in trouble with the law.

Agreed. But, as you said yourself, you don't need religion to consider murder wrong. So you don't force religion on people when you ban murder.

Your analogy works for purely religious things. For instance, it's not like Protestants ban Catholic churches and clergy, or the other way round anymore. Churches are built, services are performed and so on. No one forces anyone to celebrate his own religious holidays, nor do Catholic enforce Lent etc. In so much as I wouldn't make a law prohibiting meat on Fridays, I don't consider abortion to be a matter of religious tolerance.

 

You do realize that you turned your point 180 degrees ?

As long it harms no one, you can do whatever you wand and say whatever you want.

If you read GM's first post, he stated that it doesn't make sense to him, that a Catholic wouldn't force his believe systems of members of other believe groups, an presbyterian for example.

Calvin convinced the city council to kill dissidents. And so they did. They enforced their view through cruel methods. A dictatorship. That's what they call it, that's what it is.

[ July 07, 2004, 21:15: Message edited by: Iago ]

 

Seems I didn't give Kerry enough credit. He really does hold to the "gradual personhood" justification - which lets him say, honestly, that "life begins at conception" but also that this life is expendable. Arguments against legislating morality are dumb, but arguments about who's human and who isn't, and when those humans get the right to life - those are real arguments with weight.

 

Wake up, Grey. There is no law against abortion in the US, at least that I know of. You should take your own advice regarding the rule of law argument and have the honesty to admit that abortion is "the rule of law" at the present time.

Edit: I had to add that not only does America allow abortion but capital punishment as well. All of you who support Bush may remember that as our governor he had no problem sending men and women to their deaths just up the road from here at Huntsville. Some may consider that another form of "legalized murder."

[ July 24, 2004, 01:31: Message edited by: Chandos the Red ]

 

An off-topic retort - there's too much casual comparison of capital punishment and abortion, as if they were comparable. True, today's pope stands against both. But:

- Capital punishment was endorsed as Catholic doctrine by popes, church fathers, and even saints (St. Thomas More executed hundreds) until very recently.

- The pope is not infallible except when he speaks ex cathedra, and this has only occurred in two instances: the sinless birth of Mary and her final Assumption.

- Both Old and New Testaments give explicit defense of capital punishment - and in certain instances command it.

- Proponents of capital punishment do not question the humanity of its recipients.

In contrast:

- Abortion (and its lazy twin, infanticide) have never been accepted as legitimate Catholic practice; in fact, it has been held to be a mortal sin.

- The Bible explicitly prohibits child sacrifice, whether on the altar of a foreign god or the altar of career, convenience, or choice.

- Proponents of abortion regularly question the humanity of the fetus.

This is why Catholic zealots like Antonin Scalia, dread Supreme Court Justice, can unhypocritically oppose abortion even as they support capital punishment. The question of capital punishment is genuinely ambiguous - at least, in the sense that it was supported for centuries but in the teeth of modernity has been (like just war theory) pushed aside. Catholics have to decide between current Catholic opinion and the weight of Catholic opinion across the centuries, in the context of today's world. Abortion offers no such ambiguity.

I'm no Catholic, and never will be (heavens forfend!). But I know enough to recognize what (under Catholic rules) is a false analogy.

 

I don't recall mentioning the Pope in my post. I was only hinting at the standard "respect for life" argument used by those supposed claimants of the "pro-life" doctrine. If the Pope ever wishes to stand for election, and have the honor of holding public office in the Senate in the US, he is welcome. But he will have to become a citizen first.

 

OK.

I know this thread is WWWWWWAAAAAAYYYYY off topic when GM accurately defends RCC doctrine and CTR invites the Pope to America to run for a Senate seat. I suppose PJP2 could always marry a US citizen...maybe even a wealthy heiress...Oh, wait...celibacy...never mind.

Just to throw more fuel to the fire for those who think that Morality can be a subject of legistation...anyone seen the new findings from super-sensitive ultrasound?

Check it out at BBC.

Oh, wait...BBC is a Christian controlled Conservative media pawn, isn't it?

 

I've been trying my best to resist the temptation of bringing the Founders into the dicussion of "legislating morality by the majority." But here are a few observations:


James Madison:

I agree with Madison: There is real tension between Authority and Liberty; Government and the Governed. Yet, what is most important is the Consent of the Governed to have their general Happiness and Welfare to be entrusted with honest, virtuous and rational men and women who understand that real political power is derived from the People, and not themselves or their own self-interests. They are entrusted to "influence the public opinion" by virtue of what is in the best interests of the People, and not the intrests of Governmental Authority, or any other authority for that matter.


Here's Grey's hero, Hamilton:

Here's Jefferson's famous line on the Consent and Sovereignty of the People.

This, I whole-heartedly agree with. I think this is the real key to a democratic-republic. Here's Jefferson again, this time writing to Madison:

This document became a guarantee that the individual, (smallest unit of the People) would have his/her liberties guarded against from an over-powering central government, or majority for that matter. It is also why everyone - from the most radical of liberals to the most reactionary of conservatives - hold up the Bill of Rights as the cornerstone of their freedoms. Simply put, it belongs to the People as an entire collection of individuals, not a nameless "mass" or "mob," as they are often erroneously depicted as by the anti-democratic minions.

These Founding documents are an integral part of resolving the tensions between Liberty and Authority. While at the same time they are a source of "interpertive" tensions in themselves: Are they intended to be living, and changing documents? Or are they framed with unchanging, narrowly focused, "orignial" meanings and intentions?

Much like another touchstone document (the Bible) individuals see in them what they want to, and will take from them that which they see will benefit their own rhetoric, while happily disgarding from them that which would work against it. Nevertheless, the Founders, speaking through these documents, and the machine they put in motion, left a powerful framework in which these tensions - the will of the majority, the rights of the individual, and the power of authority - may be balanced, sorted through and, in a great many instances, resolved.

 

And nothing...NOTHING...can change the fact that each one of the Founding Fathers would stand outside an abortion center and weep.

 

Well, I guess its a good thing they're all dead then.

 

And nothing can change the fact either that some founding father would weep when he saw that slavery is abolished. You can't live in the past, the world changes and so does the oppinions and morals of people. To deny abortion is to go back in time which is not good.

 

The Founding Fathers would not have understood or chosen to accept a woman whom would not accept the influence or control of a man.

Abortion is not about the child (i.e. clump of cells). Abortion is about freedom for women.


EDIT

One of the biggest things which bothers me about the pro-life movement is that their is a certain level of dishonesty inherent in their legally-based arguements.

The pro-life position rests upon a single fact which is almost never openly discussed. They believe that the developing clump of cells has a soul. This imaginary father figure in the sky has granted this clump of cells with a what...? A puff of incorporeal air which eventually goes to an imaginary place where dead puppies aren't allowed but every man has a bevy of virgins?

Every single conciousness which has ever existed will end. We all die. A large portion of the world has created a belief system based upon imagination in order to intellectually and emotionally accept the fact that they are going to die...and better yet, while they are here...it is not exactly going to be a picnic. It is no accident that the more miserable the life of the person...the stronger their faith in imagination. Take the Middle East or Africa or perhaps the slow declination of religion in the face of comfort. But rather than accept the harsh truth that life can be largely suffering, the majority instead choose to think that an imaginary being loves them and once they do in fact die, all this bother will be over and it's going to be nothing but hugs and chocolate.

It is immoral for you to dictate your irrational imagination upon the real life of a woman. A developing embryo is not a person. It has the potential to one day have hopes and dreams and maybe even the ability to breathe...but until it exits her body...it is a potential detriment to her life which she may decide not to accept.

Every time a woman has an abortion it is an attack upon your ability to cope with reality...but it is ultimately your fault for choosing to rest your house upon a rock that is imagined.

[ July 25, 2004, 18:49: Message edited by: Late-Night Thinker ]

 

LNT! You are my new idol!!! Three cheers for the thinker! Horray! Horray! HOOOORRAAY!!!

Your thoughts mirrors mine exactly and you put them more eloquently than I have ever been able to do.