Moral legislation [Alan Keyes]

In a republic such as the United States is supposed to be, the sovereignty of the people derives from and reflects the personal sovereignty of the individuals who comprise it. Therefore, the capacity for private choice and the nature of the choices made are inherently matters of public consequence.

Failure to take account of this fact has produced enormous confusion and error in defining and dealing with vital issues of self-government. Demagogues in politics and the judiciary, with the help of self-worshipping elitists in the communications and entertainment media, have relentlessly promoted the idea that issues of personal morality (those in particular having to do with sexual gratification) are strictly private concerns that do not involve, and should not be subject to the authority of, the people as a whole. "You can't legislate morality" is their absurd mantra. "It's a private affair."

Pretentiously decked out in legal jargon and baseless assertions of constitutional authority, this self-evident lie has been used to strike down legislative acts that define and maintain standards of sexual conduct and responsibility, including the public's respect for the natural form, rights, and obligations of family life. In their place, the partisans of this lie now seek to force public acceptance of and even reverence for a "lifestyle" that epitomizes the selfish hedonism and subservience to passion that make people fit subjects for elite domination.

Ironically, at the same time that they appear to advocate the destruction of all public authority over certain supposedly private choices, these same demagogues seek to impose public authority over other choices heretofore regarded as private matters. In the name of justice and compassion, they seek to regulate the distribution of wealth, income, and other aspects of the material life of the people. In the name of public health, they seek to eliminate unhealthy personal habits like smoking — first in public places and conveyances, then in private establishments, and now in some localities, in private dwellings as well. In the name of ecology and a clean environment, they want to impose requirements on private sector production, force businesses and homes to follow law-enforced regimes for waste disposal, and redefine the limits of acceptable personal conduct with respect to wild and domesticated animal species.

I am not here disagreeing with or rejecting all these efforts. Some have merit. Others may simply be excuses for conditioning people to accept and depend upon elite authority and largesse. But all are done in the name of some good to be achieved, or in order to eliminate bad effects and consequences, either for individuals or on the whole.

Any choice that involves a judgment about good and bad, and that defines right or wrong action in terms of that judgment, is a moral choice. This means that when, by law, government restricts private choice in the name of health or a clean environment, it legislates morality.

When the same people who use rhetoric that rouses or appeals to prejudice against moral legislation about certain things turn around and promote moral legislation about others, their rhetoric is obviously a smokescreen meant to obscure some other stake, shielding it from careful scrutiny.

We might begin that scrutiny by asking why these demagogues consider some issues fit and necessary subjects for moral legislation — while making such a show of opposing moral legislation on other subjects? Does the answer lie in the nature of the subject matter?

The demagogues appear willing to promote moral legislation about matters that can be quantified — that is, analyzed and presented in terms of discrete physical units of measurement: dollars and cents, housing units, deaths from cancer or respiratory ailments, degrees of heat and cold, numbers of wolves or snail darters. By decking out their preferences with the trappings of empirical research, they establish a specious analogy with the physical sciences, thus invoking the authority of scientific proof in support of their proposed laws and policies. They can get away with this, however, only so long as we ignore the issue that empirical science never confronts and cannot resolve — which is the one that addresses the intrinsic worth of the units in question.

When it comes to moral legislation, is the life of a snail darter worth more or less than the life of an infant in the womb? Is the execution of a murderer more or less reprehensible than the death of his innocent victim? Were the 9/11 terrorists who slaughtered unarmed civilians in the name of Allah more or less praiseworthy than the men and women who now work to find and destroy others who plan to imitate them? It may be that the answers to such questions seem plain to common sense, but common sense only exists on the basis of some common principle, when deliberation arises from some agreement about standards of worth and decency.

So we come to the issue that is really at stake in the controversy over moral legislation. It is not about whether we can legislate morality. It's about the true starting point of moral deliberation — the principles of moral judgment, the standards, ideas and ideals of what is to be praised, what is to be blamed, what is to be honored, what is to be condemned. This, in turn, involves assumptions about the nature of the whole — the universe as a whole, but also the meaning of every particular and individual whole that exists within it. Though the demagogues want us to believe that politics is exclusively about more mundane and practical things, this is true only to the extent that some agreement on moral principle is either properly assumed or covertly imposed.

In our era, human societies are hardly starting from scratch. We have all been born into circumstances that reflect a moral consensus arrived at before we got here. It differs from society to society, sometimes to such a degree that genuine community between them seems practically impossible, conflict and even war almost inevitable. The differences are reflected in different religious beliefs, different behavioral priorities, different attitudes toward the passions and aspirations made manifest in existing things. These not only involve the human condition, but that of the plants, the animals, the earth, the air, the stars, and indeed every experienced or imaginable thing.

It may not be the work of politics and politicians to explore, ponder, describe, and articulate all of this — what are the poets for, the preachers and the philosophers? It is, however, the work of the political leader to be open to the content and consequences of what these others do, so that the varied streams and colors of creativity, reverence, and thought can be brought together, as the prism combines the frequencies of light, into a common stream that presently sustains us even as it sheds some light upon our vision for the future.

The moral consensus of any given society is never completely settled. In this respect, it resembles physical objects. Even the appearance of great solidity masks a state of constant flux.

In some times and circumstances, the moral commotion is more evident than at others, including epochs where it is so great that it threatens to break down the very core of the community's moral identity. These are moments of truth, when the community's survival as a community depends upon the ability to renew its common sense of the relation between its actions and its principles, between what it does and what the premise of its existence requires it to do.

In this respect, communities are like living things. They move within and in response to their circumstances. Life is change. But all of the changes must take place within and with respect for the parameters of its distinctive existence, else that existence ceases, it dies.

When cancer develops, for example, the cancerous cells grow without respect for the parameters of the body's existence. Skin cells, liver cells, white blood cells, etc. — each with a distinctive way of being that contributes to the continued existence of the body — are displaced by cells that operate with no regard for it. In ways that we still do not thoroughly understand, the existence and requirements of the body are communicated to every healthy cell, which then conforms its operations to those requirements, receiving in turn what its life requires. The activities of every healthy cell of a living body thus take account of and respond to the distinct idea or concept of its existence as a living whole, even as the activities of the body as a whole take account of and respond to the requirements of its component parts.

The prejudiced thinking that arises from the dogmatic materialism of our times has impaired our ability to conceive of and discuss this aspect of life, though we retain the concept needed to do so. The "soul" is the distinct idea or concept of the existence of the living whole.

Our advances in computer science and technology should actually make its nature easier to understand than ever before. The soul is pure information. Its content can be expressed in physical form (just as data can be expressed by the arrangement of electrical charges, or the modification of a beam of light), but a soul is not simply identical to the form it takes. As our understanding of matter and energy improves, we are finding and will find more and more sophisticated ways to track its physical manifestations, but I doubt that we will ever comprehend it fully by any physical means.

In this respect, however, the corresponding aspect of the human community ought to be easier to follow. Ideas, like the ones expressed in this essay, appear in physical form. But when I say "America," we all know that the whole I refer to is not the same as any given physical manifestation of it. In fact, the information the word conveys depends on what each reader does with it, and that will be influenced by their background and experience, their emotions and their will.

When the community is healthy, our response to some things produces a general positive reaction that suggests that they convey this information more reliably than others: physical objects like the flag or a picture of the White House; sense experiences like eating a hot dog or watching a football game; thoughts and ideas like "equal rights," "representative government" or "liberty and justice for all." Such are the symbols that invoke the community's soul.

When a community is in moral crisis, however, the evocative power of the more visceral symbols of its common life becomes increasingly unreliable. The subconscious complex of mental and emotional responses they produce declines — either through the natural erosion produced by change and fading memories, or deliberate assault from those who seek to overthrow the community's existing identity. That identity may be entirely lost unless an effort is made to renew the community's conscious sense of attachment to the purpose and way of life the symbols are meant to convey.

This in turn requires that its members revisit the state of heart and mind that drew them — or people not unlike them — into the community in the first place. To continue their walk together, they must think again of the goal that unites them, and of the path that brings them together for its sake. And in light of that renewed vision of their unity, they must renew their commitment to the cause it represents — moving in answer to the hope it produces and accepting the limits required to sustain that hope.

We Americans have a name for the vision that unites us. We call it the American Dream. Years ago, in the first chapter of the book I wrote about the moral identity of black Americans (Masters of the Dream: The Strength and Betrayal of Black America, William Morrow and Co., 1995), I did my best to put into words what my reflections on my heritage as a black American have taught me about the true nature of this vision.

The American dream wasn't just about money and material advancement. It was a dream of freedom. Tycoons and stockjobbers weren't its only heroes. They were also colonists from Europe who traded houses and jobs in developed cities and towns for the hardship of life in a wilderness. They were families who exchanged comfortable city life in the East, for a dangerous westward trek in covered wagons across the Plains. They were men who died thirsting in the Great American desert and women who gave up frills and fancy dresses for days working their fingers to the bone. Most of these people weren't guaranteed a better future in material terms than the one they left behind. Some sought riches, to be sure. But others sought the right to worship God in their own way, or to build communities in which they themselves could make the decisions and the laws. Pioneers like Daniel Boone or Abe Lincoln's father gave up farms in settled communities to move farther west, where they could, as the saying went, breathe free.

It was a dream of freedom. And its heroes included Native Americans who fought against overwhelming odds to maintain their autonomous way of life. They included fugitive enslaved blacks who braved tracking dogs and bounty hunters to follow the North Star out of slavery. They included the enslaved blacks these left behind, who, following the North Star of their faith, never surrendered the kernel of their humanity or their hope for a better day.... To those who limit their vision to the dingy materialism that passes for ambition in our day, it will seem strange to assert that black Americans were masters of the dream.... If the American dream is mainly an economic result, black Americans had little or no part of it. But if the dream included the longing for freedom, or the values and character that make people capable of it, then the enslaved and their offspring can indeed lay special claim to be its masters.

Simply put, the American dream of freedom is not just a material result for the lucky few who manage to "succeed" in some material sense. It's a moral premise, a moral purpose, a moral hope extended, by God's will equally, to every human being.

It has never been more succinctly stated than it was when the nation began with the assertion that we are all "created equal and endowed by our Creator with certain unalienable rights." Though the result of this premise is a form of government that respects the consent of the governed, the justice claimed for that form of government depends on our acknowledgement of and respect for the authority of the Creator — an authority beyond our consent, beyond our rights, and beyond our will. If in our actions, our laws and policies, we deny that authority, then we deny the basis for our claim to equal rights and self-government.

The moral discipline required for liberty is therefore the capacity to keep our use of freedom within boundaries consistent with respect for the determinations of God that make it possible. But that means first and foremost that we must respect in all others the moral dignity and rights we each claim for ourselves; and that we must accept for ourselves the obligations to others that our rights require them to assume in their dealings with us. Every issue of personal and national sovereignty, every issue of law, policy, and politics that involves these equal rights and obligations, confronts us with choices that will either strengthen and preserve the vision that forms our community, or blind and distract us in ways that lead ultimately to its dissolution. Such moral issues are thus the focal points of the crisis of the Republic.

For those of us committed still to live as a community of free men and women, these ought to be the kinds of issues upon which all our decisions about its future first depend. In the next few installments of this series, I will deal with the foremost of these issues — such as abortion, the definition and understanding of marriage and family, and the responsibility we have in our individual actions to understand and respect the good of the whole community.

In this context, we must consider for the first time the implications of this discussion when it comes to individuals presenting themselves for public office, including especially the present candidates for President of the United States.

The moral discipline required for liberty is therefore the capacity to keep our use of freedom within boundaries consistent with respect for the determinations of God that make it possible.

Good essay. A materialistic, hedonistic, selfish people can not be governed under the light hand envisioned by the Founding Fathers and the government of such a people will eventually evolve into a police state.

It's about the true starting point of moral deliberation — the principles of moral judgment, the standards, ideas and ideals of what is to be praised, what is to be blamed, what is to be honored, what is to be condemned.

Initiation of force, threat of force and fraud to be condemned. Initiation of force is the denial of reason. First, the criminal initiating force denies his own ability to reason, and secondly, it denies the victim his ability to reason.

Really? So how have we survived for the past 200 years?

With all due respect Alan Keyes subscribes to some great social virtues but somehow still manages to come off as self-righteous blow hard. I'm tired of him.

So how have we survived for the past 200 years?

Because the moral degeneracy of our society seen in the breakdown of the family, abortion, widespread divorce, sexual licentiousness, acceptance of homosexuality as normal, astronomical illegitimacy rates, the decline of what was once the dominating influence of the church (of whatever denomination) in most people's lives, violent crime rates, the debasement of popular culture, etc., etc., which in the past only had a limited reach into society, in recent decades have become widespread.

Were you born yesterday or have you been living in a cave somewhere? You haven't noticed these trends over the last 50 years?

Can you explain clearly how that bit of libertarian boilerplate has anything to do with the Keyes paragraph you quoted?

"So how have we survived for the past 200 years?"

Ugh. You sound like a fun person to be around.

Were you born yesterday or have you been living in a cave somewhere? You haven't noticed these trends over the last 50 years?

Between your posts and the fossil records, I think I did notice something........ ( did somebody remove my feeding tube?)

“Really? So how have we survived for the past 200 years?”

We’ve survived because there have been enough moral, self-governing people to keep this country afloat. With the way society is headed today, who knows how much longer we’ll survive. We're on the brink--just like the Biblical model of Sodom and Gomorrah and trying to find 10 righteous men, etc.

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of Patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of Men and Citizens. The mere Politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity…let us with caution indulge the supposition, that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason, and experience both forbid us to expect, that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle." …"It is impossible to rightly govern the world without God and the Bible." - President George Washington, Farewell Address, Sept. 17, 1796

"We have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion…Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate for the government of any other." - John Adams, member of the Continental Congress, 2nd President of the United States, Vice President To the United States, Commissioner to France, US Ambassador to England - Oct. 11, 1798, address to the officers of the First Brigade of the Third Division of the Militia of Massachusetts

LOL! Yeah, that’s the ticket, uhhh, I just misspelled it...

Hey but we’re a fun group on this thread - we’re all gonna do some meth and go pick up some hookers - I’m sure you’re up for that, right Jorge?

Benjamin Franklin in a letter to the President of the first Constitutional Congress, 1789:

"I have lived a long time, Sir, and the longer I live, the more convincing proofs I see of this truth- that God governs in the affairs of men. And if a sparrow cannot fall to the ground without His notice, is it probable that an empire can rise without His aid? We have been assured, Sir, in the sacred writings, that " except the Lord build the House they labor in vain that build it." I firmly believe this; and I also believe that without His concurring aid we shall succeed in this political building no better the Builders of Babel: We shall be divided by our little partial local interests; our projects will be confounded, and we ourselves shall become a reproach and bye word down to future ages. And what is worse, mankind may hereafter from this unfortunate instance, despair of establishing Governments by human wisdom and leave it to chance, war and conquest. I therefore beg leave to move- that henceforth prayers imploring the assistance of Heaven, and its blessings on our deliberations, be held in this Assembly every morning before we proceed to business, and hat one or more Clergy of the city be requested to officiate in that service."

James Madison, chief architect of the Constitution, signer of the Declaration, Secretary of State, President of the United States:

"We have staked the future of all our political institutions upon the capacity of mankind to self-government, upon the capacity of each and all of us to govern ourselves, to control ourselves, to sustain ourselves according to the Ten Commandments of God."

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