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.

Perhaps I misunderstood your post 45. I assumed you meant that Islam should be outlawed as we outlawed Nazism and Communism. I pointed out in response that neither ideology was outlawed in this country.

Certain acts in support of those ideologies were appropriately punished. I know few people who think Muslims who commit criminal acts should not be prosecuted for them.

If you want to outlaw Islam as a religion, you have to change the Constitution. If that isn’t your goal, I apologize for jumping to a conclusion.

Any poster can read your post #34, in which you made a false claim.

What are you talking about?

I made NO CLAIMS about anything in post #34.

I asked a QUESTION!

"are we going to outlaw every religion but that of the majority."?

Are you really this dishonest or can't you keep track of the exchange?

Even the best government is the least evil, it is not and cannot be truly good.

"Argue for your limitations and sure enough they're yours." Richard Bach. The best government is not evil and is instead morally and ethically good.

A terrorist holds 50 people hostage, with them wired to be blown up if the police attempt to rescue them.

The terrorist believes the ends justify the means. The terrorist has initiated force against 50 people. He's a criminal. He has chosen to deny his own ability to persuade by reason and has denied his victims the ability to persuade by reason.

A sniper can take him out and save the 50 people. But we can't do that, because the end of saving 50 innocent people's lives does not justify the means of blowing the terrorist's head off.

Are you insane? (/rhetoric) Of course the sniper takes out the terrorist. It's moral and ethical to use force in self-defense against a person that is initiating force. The means -- using force in self-defense -- justifies the end. The end is saving 50 people.

"No exceptions to the immorality of initiatory force exist. No matter how "noble" the ends, they never justify the means of initiating force, fraud, or coercion against any individual. Any government or activity that depends on or uses initiatory force, threat of force, or coercion is immoral and destructive... While all governments have the power, none ever have the moral right to initiate force or coercion against any individual. The only beneficial and moral laws are those designed to protect the life and property rights of individuals from initiatory force, the threat of force, and fraud. In turn, the only moral use of force is for self-defense: That is for protection of oneself, property, or country from force initiated by other individuals or governments. ...Self-defense by any means, including force, is not only a basic moral right, but a moral duty."
INITIATORY FORCE -- THE PRIME EVIL

LOL...you can’t weasel out of what you posted, no matter how hard you try.

I don't have to "weasel" out of ANYTHING with you...YOU WEAKLING.

I just posted a quote that proved you were lying about me accusing you of something dishonest.

I DON'T LIE ABOUT ANYTHING.

You can't respond on the level to my challenges so you post these false accusations. You wus

Throughout the ages, men have ruled over - lorded it over - other men, for their own gain. This heart attitude, finding its expression in the practical world, always leads to tyranny. Always.

But the advent of Christianity turned that worldly way of doing business on its head.

"Jesus called them to Himself and said to them, “You know that those who are considered rulers over the Gentiles lord it over them, and their great ones exercise authority over them. 43 Yet it shall not be so among you; but whoever desires to become great among you shall be your servant. 44 And whoever of you desires to be first shall be slave of all. 45 For even the Son of Man did not come to be served, but to serve, and to give His life a ransom for many.” - Mark 10:42-45

This Christian principle of servant leadership - of self-sacrifice on behalf of others - is the true foundation of American governance.

Remind you of anyone round these parts?

Deacon

"Be he a Baptist, Scientologist or Zoroastrian, in the heat of battle Deacon will call down Divine retribution on all net sinners, and will never miss an opportunity to blather endlessly about his religion. Deacon is fervent and earnest, but seldom contributes anything of interest or substance to the discussion. Occasionally Tireless Rebutter or Philosopher will rouse themselves engage Deacon in battle, but they soon lose interest because of his utter predictability.

Credit the following: http://redwing.hutman.net/%7Emreed/

Mike Reed mreed@hutman.net

Mike Reed Illustration mikereedillustration.com

What are you talking about?

I made NO CLAIMS about anything in post #34.

I asked a QUESTION!

"are we going to outlaw every religion but that of the majority."?

Are you really this dishonest or can't you keep track of the exchange?

LOL...you've changed your own post. It was not framed as a question at all.

Right. So we're going to outlaw every religion but that of the majority. - Jorge

No question marks in it, which any reader can scroll back and see for themselves.

Basic disagreement. Until humans are perfectly good, no government composed of humans can be perfectly good.

Any less than 100% good government is by definition evil to varying degrees. Until men (and therefore governments) become good, it is best to limit the ability of men in power to domineer over others. Therefore a more limited government is by definition better than a less limited one.

With the obvious caveat that a government must be strong enough to fulfill its prime obligation, which is indeed to prevent the initiation of force against its citizens by actors either inside or outside its area of control.

There is also, BTW, the unfortunate fact that people differ greatly in their definition of what constitutes “good” in a government. Until all agree on a definition it seems pretty silly to think that we could devise a truly good government. Until then it seems wiser to settle for a limited, lesser evil government.

This Christian principle of servant leadership - of self-sacrifice on behalf of others - is the true foundation of American governance.

You know, I have probably read a good many hundreds of books on American history, and I see very little of this in our history. Although there has been a good bit of pious posturing in that direction.

Even stretching your definitions, few leaders would fit. Washington perhaps, who apparently had a geniune aversion to public life and served out of a sense of duty. With that exception, every leader I can think of was serving at least partly out of personal ambition. This is true because without that ambition driving them they never make it to a position of power.

Your interesting theory also directly contradicts the Constitution and the Federalist Papers, which make it clear that the true foundation of American governance is the expectation that most men act out of their own self-interest, so we design a government system that works because they do.

I don't believe that because men become Christian that power no longer has a corrupting influence on them. The past 1700 years of Christians in political power backs me up on this pretty thoroughly.

John Witherspoon, signer of The Declaration of Independence:

"He is the best friend to American liberty, who is most sincere and active in promoting true and undefiled religion, and who set himself with the greatest firmness to bear down on profanity and immorality of every kind. Whoever is an avowed enemy of God, I scruple not to call him an enemy to his country." - [speech at the College of New Jersey (Princeton) , May 17,1776]

There is abundant documentation from this period. Only if you carefully cherry-pick the evidence can you hold the theory that all or most of the Founders were aggressively fundamentalist Christians of today’s type.

They were also not secularists by today’s standards, as others try to claim.

At the time, aggressive religiosity was considered to be in poor taste, more than anything else. Christianity was accepted as a background to society, for the most part it was not something people got excited about, either in favor or against. Most of the Founders were Christians, although many were not terribly devout, and some of the leading Founders were not Christians at all in any traditional sense.

America became much more religious in the Second Great Awakening from 1800 to 1830. The first Great Awakening was roughly from 1730 to 1745, so the Revolution occurred during a lull in religious activity in America.

“Certainly we can, although darn few of us can maintain it permanently. I certainly know I cannot.

“But even those who are good are not thereby qualified to rule over others and enforce their will on them.”

Are you equating goodness with perfection? Being good is a very simple daily decision.

If a good person chose to rule over others and force their will on them, they would cease being good.

Basic disagreement. Until humans are perfectly good, no government composed of humans can be perfectly good.

You've injected the "perfect" qualifier. Not even God is perfect. Uh Oh! Now I've done it. LOL! There can be a good government despite some people being not good. They just can't be employed by the government.

Do you think we should all give up trying to make good government because it's impossible for humans to be perfect? Opps, you suggested perfectly good government, not the attainable, good government..

Ask a person when they want the government to initiate force against them and their property and do the same to their loved ones. I think the vast majority of people would say never. Ask those persons if a government that never initiated force against them would be good government and I think the vast majority would say that that is good government.

Ahh, but here's were some people are hypocrites. They want, under the color of law, force initiated against other people

I’m not sure why it is that people today have such a hard time understanding the Founders’ concept of self-government and self-control. A government doesn’t have to be “perfect” to respect individual rights, for instance. It’s a matter of focus. The government can control everything we do, or the government can allow us our God-given, inalienable rights. If we’ve allowed ourselves to become so wicked that the government has to control everything we do to “protect” us from ourselves, then we no longer are a free people. A truly free people are a moral people.

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