by Patricia Anthone, America Outloud:
“You can’t legislate morality,” we often hear people say of the endless disregard for the rights of others. This common lament can even be heard from ostensible conservatives about the callous disregard for even the most defenseless human beings that is shown by a fast-growing portion of society.
But the assertion that we don’t legislate morality is utter poppycock, of course!
ALL consequential morality consists of respect for the equal standing of others’ lives and rights.
The purpose of law is to provide codified defense for the equal standing of each person’s life and rights. Our nation’s framers would today and DID in 1776 argue that enforcing a practical regard for the rights of others (morality) is the ONLY LEGITIMATE pursuit of governmental force (law).
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Consider the purpose of government as stated by our Declaration:
“All men are created equal; endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.
That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed.”
We have established laws against the infringement of others by force, fraud, theft, coercion, or invasion, all of which proceed from the MORAL foundation of respect for the equal standing of each person.
The Left’s aggressive effort to destroy and replace Western Civilization has included propagating doctrines that undermine the functional and shared morality that forms the foundation of our society.
LIE #1:
Most of morality is subjective, relative, and individually defined. It cannot, therefore, be the aim of any law.
This lie forms the basis of blaming crime on the flaws in society rather than on its perpetrators. Victims of crime are finding recourse to the law increasingly challenging to pursue and insufficient in result. Ideologues who subscribe to this lie respond to increasing crime with efforts to reform the whole of society with broad regulatory constraints on the general population rather than by punishing the perpetrators of crime. Not only are criminals not punished, but the self-defense of their victims is hobbled. The resulting spiral serves only to fuel more fervent demands for deforming society.
LIE #2:
Morality that is shared consists of favor shown, by force of law, to collectives that are officially recognized to be disadvantaged, marginalized, or otherwise oppressed by the majority population.
This lie results in the force-of-law pursuit of “equity” among collectives, an effort requiring constant intervention by authorities whose focus is on evening the statistical score rather than on protecting the legitimate rights of individual human beings. Note that it is the people in power who both bestow the coveted label of “oppressed” and administer its “remedy.”
Both of these lies diminish the accountability of authority to the individual person while increasing the latitude given to those in power to exercise authority in arbitrary, ideologically driven, and capricious ways.
Worse still, these lies advance the destructive idea that we share no values or moral code as a people.
Unlike most nations, the people of the USA are not bound together by race, religion, language, or ethnicity. Only our common subscription to the core value of our founding purpose, respect for the equal standing of each person, binds us together as a nation. This makes the USA especially vulnerable to the efforts of the Marxist Left to undermine our sense of shared values and, with it, our national identity. The more eroded our sense of shared value and morality, the more atomized society becomes, and the more isolated and distrustful individuals necessarily become. It is scarcely safe to assume any common ground with our fellows in American society anymore.
However, the campaign to dissolve and replace national identity is not limited to America. It’s being prosecuted aggressively throughout the West.
Just as Leftist ideology tells you to dismiss the evidence of your eyes and ears in observing objective, physiological reality, it also seeks to discredit and ultimately undermine our civilizational identity.
When we can no longer assume common ground with our fellows in society on even the most fundamental tenets of human decency: the value of human life, the MORAL wrongfulness of violence against others, of theft, fraud, and other harm, we will cease to be civilized. The “Mad Max” world of might-makes-right that emerges will then be ripe for totalitarian control.
The antidote is simple, if not easy.
We must restore knowledge of and subscription to the foundational morality on which our civilization is built. We must restore our common understanding of why and how this bedrock allows human flourishing:
> Consenting, interdependent exchange; therefore, specialization, progress, and prosperity – are all reliant on the equal standing of each person’s fundamental rights – including property rights.
> Even our survival as a society relies on our moral regard for the equal standing of others, without which stores are unable to operate, goods cannot be safely made, transported, or sold, essential services cannot be rendered, etc. Our highly advanced, specialized, and complex society requires securing the rights and, thereby, the participation of the individual person.
> When the force of law is not constrained by its accountability to flesh-and-blood individual persons, force is not at all constrained. (Ideology and the abstract pursuits ideology animates do not offer constraints on the use of force. In fact, they do the opposite, justifying grotesque infringement on the rights of people in the name of some “greater good.”) Tyranny is inevitable when individual persons have no recourse.
It’s important to note that I am not suggesting that we engage in yet another lobbying campaign about the failed public schools. I am calling on each of us to engage and actively teach these basics to those in our own personal and professional spheres.
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