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November 08, 2004

Law, morality and 'Jesusland'

Saturday and Sunday were a bit of kick-back days for me. The weather was perfect, I puttered about the house and garden ... occasionally joined in on some online discussions. I very much enjoyed a discussion of law and morality over Jeff Harrell's place.

I'm going to repeat myself here:

I certainly wish the mere mention of morality wouldn't send some into anaphylactic shock. Frank discussions of morality and ethics should be a regular and accepted part of all political debate. It's time to realize that calling for increased taxes on high earners is as morally based as calling for restrictions on late-term abortions.

Did I just startle a few people? Good. We really need to keep in mind that all law is based on morality. Let me further state, all law is derived from, and subservient to, morality.

Don't sputter, dears. I realize that in the last several days post-election that the "morality" meme of whirling-dervish Democrats in trying to explain the GW re-election starts from the assumption that law and morality are separate. Further, the Democratic cry has been how awful it is to face the prospect of Rampaging Evangelicals (who are, at this moment, assembling with pitchforks and torches) trying to "shove their religious agenda" down the throats of the intellectually superior liberals.

If you think I exagerate about the histrionic cries of "The Christians are coming! The Christians are coming!" with all their loathing and mockery born of severe bigotry, Michele's post on 'Jesusland' with attendant links points out the insanity. It would probably be a bit funnier if some of the ranters just were not so earnest about it. Layne says

I've got a big problem with Jesusland. If you want to worship the ghost of a jew from the Roman Empire, that's cool. Enjoy it! But when you people and your bizarre mystery cult claim the goddamned president as your prime convert who rules by the voices in his head, I call bullshit. I don't care so much about party politics, but I will fight long and hard to prevent this country from becoming a Complete Theocracy -- if you can call the intellectually vapid mishmash of evangelical Christianity a true Theology.

Ken seems to have a few problems with "jews", too.

Or how about James "I'm practicing my dhimmitude, rah-ly I am" Wolcott who thinks Christians are the problem not Islamists.

unapologetic Christian Crusader in the White House whose reelection giving lie to the notion that Abu Ghraib was an aberration [ed note - pssst, Jimmy, it was an abberration] and that the deaths of thousands of Iraqi civilians weigh upon America's conscience. This morning America could not look more like a grinning aggressor to the Arab world, an aggressor with fresh marching orders. ...

I'm not depressed, being filled with far too much healthy loathing for millions of my fellow Americans to let myself droop. I do have a column that is (over)due, so blogging will be light until the weekend, when the statue of Jesus will be installed on the White House lawn.

Notice how quiet these people were as Kerry spent the last few weeks of his campaign pounding his Catholic creds? Of course, most of us realized that the Dems were doing it in the grand tradition of nudge, nudge, wink, wink. One is given a pass to talk about God, only if one is insincere about it and only doing it to assuage the Jesus-boobs.

What is the fear here? I understand that some of the demagoging is in an effort to belittle and dismiss GW voters. Having to confront the fact that 59 million people heard your message and shrugged is a bit humbling and the Left has never been too keen on humility. Having invented 'victimology' they know their loss is not their fault. It is a part of their morality.

Simply, morality is a set of rules based on values that facilitate people living within a community. Certainly the Founding Fathers operated on a morality of man as divine individual and government power as derived from individuals to secure these divine rights. The morality of Western Civilization rests on the consent of the governed and, most importantly, we have a covenant with each other to operate in as voluntary a manner as possible with one another, to seek adjudication of our grievences and to accept the outcome of that adjudication.

Just as Kant said that in order to even begin to discuss the rights and obligations that arise from human beings with free-will we must first operate from the assumption that free will exists, so does Western Civilization assume that human beings are ends in and of themselves and not vehicles for others. That is our basic morality; and it is something that much of the Left rejects. This may be why the Left cloaks their objection to Western morality by trying to tie it exclusively with Western religiousity and shuffle it off into the realm of irrational, anti-intellectual, ghostworshipping mysticism. The Left wishes to delegitimize the arguments of their opponents by pretending they are above morality, even as they are operating from their own.

Why would they do that?

Because the question is not moralism vs secularism. The question is whose morality and how much of it will be enacted into law.

When the Left delegitimizes the morality of people of faith, or people who subscribe to the values derived from faith, they wish their own morality to operate unopposed and undebated.

The Left's morality is as fundamental in its dogma as any jihadist following the "submit, convert or die" fundamentalist ideology of Islamism.

Posted by Darleen at November 8, 2004 07:00 PM

Comments

D,

I couldn't find a place to email you on your site- am I just too tired?

Anyway, you've made some wonderful points about morals so I thought you'd like this web site.

http://www.charactercounts.org/knxwk382.htm

I particularly like his comments titled ZEAL. Let me know what you think.

Posted by: Mieke at November 9, 2004 08:48 PM

An incredibly well-written post. Thank you for stating so eloquently what I have been trying to put into words for weeks, now.

Posted by: Michelle at November 9, 2004 09:44 PM

If you accept, as you appear to, that the authority of the law is contingent to the authority of those it represents (and likewise for the state), and furthermore that all men are equal in authority (as the DOI seems to imply), then surely it follows that the law should give no preference whatsoever to any morality?

This is an issue of negative versus positive rights, which neither the left nor the right seems to understand. My point of view is that at present the GOP endorses far more positive rights (or "interventions") than the Dems and is therefore the greater evil. They still talk the talk of small government, but they lost sight of the philosophical basis for that a long time ago. Their actions are inconsistent with the principle of liberty.

Belief in liberty is what makes me a liberal. The American word for this is libertarian, for extremely interesting reasons, don't you think?

Posted by: David Turner at November 16, 2004 03:57 AM