How Much Morality in Politics?

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

This isn't rocket science. People should be allowed to do whatever they choose so long as unreasonable harm isn't done to someone else. A standard of reasonableness is longstanding in our legal system so don't bother going there. In the case of blackmailing an employee for sex, I think it's pretty clearly a violation of her free will and pretty clearly unreasonable harm. It doesn't have to be life and death - the ability to work, providing for yourself and or family is very important as well.

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This isn't as clearcut as you seem to believe. Philosophers have been grappling with this problem for a long time. For example, should I be allowed to grow flowers in my backyard if they worsen the allergies of my neighbor? What if I could sell those flowers for $1 million? What if it causes the allergies to get worse by 1%?

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

There are tons of different types of secular morality and many are based on religious morality. My main interest is why some people think secular morality is innately more relevant then religious morality?

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

My personal view of course is that both secular morality and religious morality are going to be deeply flawed if those are the only ways to run a country.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Of course the rub is whose morality should reign supreme? If we choose democratically then we get into issues where some societies have more then 50% of people who want to live under Sharia law...

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That's why our constitution is unique, as a living document open to interpretation and changing contexts. Separation of church and state, the ability to make amendments, SCOTUS, etc.

Holy books can have strict orthodox and fundamental sects, or liberal and fluid interpreters. But I don't see anyone adding "Scriptural Amendments" to the Bible, Torah or Koran.

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Originally Posted by Loki

This isn't as clearcut as you seem to believe. Philosophers have been grappling with this problem for a long time. For example, should I be allowed to grow flowers in my backyard if they worsen the allergies of my neighbor? What if I could sell those flowers for $1 million? What if it causes the allergies to get worse by 1%?

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My knee jerk response is yes. OTOH, should you be allowed to grow poison ivy? Knee jerk, no, unless you have a fenced yard, perhaps. I think both of these questions are much less straightforward than whether it should be legal to require your employees to have sex with you against their will. These sorts of questions can, and have been, parsed out ad nauseum over human history. The interesting thing is what is considered reasonable does evolve over time, forcing them to be re-evaluated. But none of that means it's impossible or impractical to do.

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Originally Posted by EyeKhan

Sorry for what? You took the time to bring them up so I posted my thoughts. Are you apologizing because you didn't take the time to read and comment?

The main advantage of this argument, and it's key problem, is you can use it to basically argue against doing anything to improve our civilization. I humbly believe that it is possible to build an institution with the ethical standards and the integrity to provide a truly objective assessment of truth and fact in many if not most cases. There will always be subtle and borderline cases that will remain a gray area where people would have to agree to disagree; in fact this would end up being the vast majority of disagreements because the blatant stuff would go away, which is of course the whole point.



This isn't rocket science. People should be allowed to do whatever they choose so long as unreasonable harm isn't done to someone else. A standard of reasonableness is longstanding in our legal system so don't bother going there. In the case of blackmailing an employee for sex, I think it's pretty clearly a violation of her free will and pretty clearly unreasonable harm. It doesn't have to be life and death - the ability to work, providing for yourself and or family is very important as well.



That's the biggest pitfall of true democracy, the tyranny of the majority. There again has to be an objective institution to keep this sort of thing in check. In our case, the institution that has kept the religious fundies in check, in spite of the majority sentiment, has been the supreme court. It's not perfect, take the "in god we trust" on our money for an example of failure, but with a reference document to work from and a high degree of integrity, you can have a workable check on this kind of thing.

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Well it seemed like you put a lot of thought into the responses but I wasn't looking to discuss those individual points since they were just examples.

Anyway I think we agree on the problems of the tyranny of the majority. However I don't think you can create a complete objective non-partisan organization. Possibly in a limited sense but not for major things. One politician may say that Reagan won the cold war and another can say he did not. Depending on your point of view you can come to legitimately different conclusions without deliberately stating falsehoods.

Let me play devil's advocate for the sex with the secretary situation a little further. Clearly she does have a choice just to stop working there. She is not entitled to a job. Heck if we did not have laws on prostitution could not an owner make regular sex a job requirement? People would then be free to take or not take the job.

Morality is what makes a difference between good and evil. Without it, fascism becomes acceptable and Adolf Hitler becomes a good option.
The problem of politics is that it is not driven by morality, but driven by convenience.
So they use moral arguments to justify their convenience. But politicians are more interested about controlling others instead of serving a population.
So morality or not morality, politics is about the same. However, as population lose a sense of morality, anything becomes acceptable, and inmorality would prevail over morality within the society.
One good example of this is how acceptable it has become to savebankers instead of saving citizens.
Another example is how acceptable it has become that bankers abuse people.
In the end bankers win and future generations will pay.

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Originally Posted by Lewkowski

Let me play devil's advocate for the sex with the secretary situation a little further. Clearly she does have a choice just to stop working there. She is not entitled to a job. Heck if we did not have laws on prostitution could not an owner make regular sex a job requirement? People would then be free to take or not take the job.

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It would be in his rights - but from a moral perspective it would be wrong. Your example is not as complicated as you think it is.

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Wouldn't the public elect representatives who more or less represent their views? If 90% opposed gay marriage, would they really elect people who thought that a gay person's right to marriage is something to be protected?

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I really think the reasoning needs to go differenlty, and they need to adopt a agreeable premise throughout society that actions that are done in agreeable circumstances and don't violate other liberties should be legal. As in gay marriage, as in safely usuable drugs, essentially if you can do it without directly hurting others in an unagreeable fashion then it should be allowed. If that premise is agreed upon then as Wraith said issues of gay marriage will be allowed independant of whether you think it's worth doing, or moral.

Also in reality, on this particular issues, I would wager the majority of the U.S. support it. I don't know how many "real americans" support it :D.

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Originally Posted by Lebanese Dragon

Also in reality, on this particular issues, I would wager the majority of the U.S. support it. I don't know how many "real americans" support it :D.

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I'm sure a lot more would claim to support principle than would actually follow through on it.