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.

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.

"If the natural tendencies of mankind are so bad that it is not safe to permit people to be free, how is it that the tendencies of these organizers are always good? Do not the legislators and their appointed agents also belong to the human race? Or do they believe that they themselves are made of a finer clay than the rest of mankind? The organizers maintain that society, when left undirected, rushes headlong to its inevitable destruction because the instincts of the people are so perverse. The legislators claim to stop this suicidal course and to give it a saner direction. Apparently, then, the legislators and the organizers have received from Heaven an intelligence and virtue that place them beyond and above mankind.

"They would be the shepherds over us, their sheep. Certainly such an arrangement presupposes that they are naturally superior to the rest of us. And certainly we are fully justified in demanding from the legislators and organizers proof of this natural superiority." -- Frederick Bastiat, The Law (1850)

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In reality the legislators aren't superior to the rest of us. Mostly they're inferior. For they don't create or produce the values that working men and women do in order to sustain life and raise people's standard of living.. Rather, they destroy values

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. 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.

Reasoning with people is different from catering to their intellectual whims. I'll make note that you're calling him names.

200 years is a VERY short time for any peoples who have lived on the earth. Also for 80% of those 200 years we were a nation of people who understood self evident truth. Now we have become a nation or relative truth or deniers of any such truths at all.

This is also nothing new.

Pontius Pilate asked the basic question for all humanity when he asked Jesus, “What is Truth?” The irony of the scene is powerful and poignant because the Eternal Truth stood before him incarnate as a human person.

Jesus said, “My sheep hear my voice.” He said it in answer to his enemies’ demand, “If you are the Messiah, tell us plainly.” Jesus answered, “I have told you.” Then he said two things about faith: “The works that I do in my Father’s name testify to me” and “You do not believe, because you do not belong to my sheep. My sheep hear my voice.”

There are only two kinds of people in this world... those who hear truth and respond, and those who are unwilling to hear truth and reject it.

There are no others.

Even the most “unchurched” of our founding fathers knew that there was self evident truth, even if they did not always agree on WHAT that truth was, they sought it out, the reasoned it out, because they did believe IN it.

Even the Bible does not ask you to mindlessly believe, but commands rather:

Come now, and let us reason together, saith the LORD: though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as white as snow; though they be red like crimson, they shall be as wool.

If ye be willing and obedient, ye shall eat the good of the land: But if ye refuse and rebel, ye shall be devoured with the sword: for the mouth of the LORD hath spoken [it].

Are really just tired of the Truth?

By all means let's prosecute Muslims who commit overt criminal acts. But by definition, embedded in our Constitution, the US cannot criminalize a religion. Which is a very good thing, IMHO.

Let's be real here. No one's advocating criminalization of any religion. For the past 20 years the only religion under attack and now under threat of criminilization has been Christianity, the very source for the principle that undergirds all our rights.

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