Just to let you know, my posting ability is very limited these days and I may not be able to respond to your next post (at least not for a while). My apologies, but the real world demands more of my attention.
They're are many cohesive and functional societies whose laws arise from agreed upon moral underpinnings that in no way afford individual rights to large segments of its population. In fact, individual rights need not exist in a functioning society per se.
You are absolutely correct on this point and I apologize if it seemed I was arguing against it. I do agree that fully functional societies may base their laws on morals.
My point is that the US gov't was NOT one of those gov'ts and its founders argued that a more coherent and longlasting gov't would be one which avoided such practices (given their experiences). Religious (which at that time meant moral) divisions were responsible for many problems and so the anabaptist position of separation of church and state was championed.
They specifically discussed the concept of rights as the basis for our govt, and stated that a gov't which tells a citizen how it is best to live is an offensive one.
doesn't arise from agreed upon group moral standards ("God given rights"?).
This was a philosophical position about the state of human life. They said given by nature as much as by God (or nature's God). Its only bible thumpers today who are trying to turn it into some moral commandment from God. The founding fathers specifically said that those are the rights we inherently have, meaning by our existence, but went on to state that it is only by OUR preservation of them that we can enjoy them. God's not going to give us anything.
Realistically, there is no difference betweens morals and personal law
You assert this but have not presented a satisfactory argument in support of it. I agree that personal law can be created based on morals, just that it doesn't have to be, and in the case of the US should not be.
The actual issue I was addressing is that societal morals (the basis that governing laws are established upon) must have a logical basis and taken to thier most logical end you, I believe, would arrive at the most rights for the individual by maintaning only the minimum of societal laws. A result I think we'd agree is ideal.
Morals never have a logical basis. They can have logical structure but always hinge on personal desires/tastes as their basis.
While I agree that a minimum of societal laws is preferable, it has NOTHING to do with any moral position. My personal moral system, which is developed from premonotheistic systems, does not involve moral pronouncements of good or bad at all. And yes that involves killing as well as whether people should be more "free".
If hardcore Xianity with full inquisition came into force would not be anymore right or wrong to me than a hardcore liberal ideology with its form of societal indoctrination or that a hardcore anarchism came into being with no laws at all.
My position on gov't comes from an agreement with those who studied the natures of gov'ts and noted that diversity has never harmed a society, and that enforced unicultural standards usually resulted in fragmentation and societal setbacks.
I do prefer periods of less violent conflict and loss of knowledge and so support gov'ts which involve a focus on individual liberty, rather than social protection.
I see them as the logical basis from which a person would make choices and act if not under the restriction of group (or sometimes called societal) morals. Under this definition institued law comprises group morals for a society. In most cases inserting the word law where I used group morals would probably yield a stance you'd find more agreeable.
I see what you are saying and it is a valid position, though I disagree and feel my position is equally valid... and perhaps preferable. Once laws are viewed as an extension of morals, then people have a right to be offended when their gov'ts laws reject or hinder their own morality.
If people view the gov'ts business as inherently outside morals, and instead focus only on a practical preservation of YOUR ability to enact YOUR morals on a personal level, then it isn't so offensive when the laws allow someone to do something you might find morally detrimental to society as a whole.
One doesn't have to say "you are bad" so as to punish a killer or thief. It is enough to say that they have violated the rights of another, which they have agreed not to do by social contract (remember our founding fathers were influenced by social contract theory). Gov't laws are the negotiated contractual obligations between citizens, which is why certain things are banned from use. A majority could always agree to a contractual obligation some minority would not... protected rights removes or at least hinders that possibility.
A society NEEDS such concepts most definitely to protect itself but most certainly to protect its youth as well. By setting such a limit this stops unscrupulous adults from taking advantage of youth via unfair labor practices, unfair marriage practices that take advantage impressionable minds, unfair military practices and much more thus preserving its youth as best as it can for education, which should be the foundation of any society.
Given that societies have functioned without such concepts sort of undercuts your blank assertion that they need them. All you did in the above is state your own moral position which is certainly the modern belief which traces its roots to the Progressive movement of the late 1800s.
What's sort of frightening to me is that you appear to view the role of children as cogs mandating the best educational environment so as to work for society, rather than as individuals that should be free to make decisions and learn from life including potential errors regardless of what is "best" for society. You think that is less exploitative? All you've done is trade forced matrimony and physical labor by one group, for monasticism and mental labor by another. You have not advanced the concept of freeing children to do what they want.
In a rational society the basis of making anything illegal must be that there is vast evidence that letting the act happen is so extremely detrimental to society that it warrants restricting freedom
That position is contradictory to what you just said about needing to have age based laws. Even during the worst periods of child labor abuse, society itself was not being harmed to an extent that could be classified as "extremely detrimental". Indeed much of society benefitted from such activity.
I would have thought my point was obvious here , that yes, one killing would not have a detrimental effect on society, but if killing was legal in any and all instances
You missed my point. I was trying to suggest that while your position appears to support laws against killing, in fact it supports laws requiring the killing of many individuals. If the focus of govt is what is best for society, rather than the individual, and moral considerations are worthy, there is no bar to the sanctioned elimination of whole groups of minorities.
Only by limiting the focus of gov't to individual rights, and not by societal engineering, can one avoid such purges and persecutions. Witness the War on Drugs if nothing else.
If people in government could not hold enlightened moral positions while the general populous couldn't then the US would have started as a theocracy and still be one today.
Read their writings. There were theocratic communities within the colonies. The founding fathers cut the gordian knot by removing moral position taking from gov't. Thus their moral positions could not effect their neighbor's behavior just as much as their neighbor could not effect their own. It was not an idea of "let's have the least morals imposed as possible, and those that are based on enlightenment principles, such that society is bettered and most people can live free."
I see nothing circular about my argument. In the end I'm a proponent of a minimal of moral standards based solely on logical precepts derived from the most information possible. Following this criteria you arrive at the most individual rights and you would certainly arrive at the conclusion that gay marriage is not immoral except in the most limited of moral standards ordained by religion.
You have not set out how logic and information ends in your conclusions.
In any case, if I agree with your position that people need to be protected from personal choice, in order to prevent possible abuse or help society become stronger, then I see no reason why people could not logically bar gay marriage on those same accounts.
In fact, that was the argument for antigay laws and regulations to begin with. It was seen as a potential weakening of one's intellectual and physical health, which I might add continues to be true if looked at from a purely statistical point of view as gays do suffer from greater levels of physical and psychological problems, and its encouragement could be viewed as just as detrimental. Why not? Your argument for age laws is based on the same thing... potential for problems based on some statistical correlations or personal moral repulsion to an activity (and thus it must be unhealthy).
Let's say all people were encouraged to focus their sexuality on procreation and so not using others just for sexual pleasure. Wouldn't that have a benefit for society and reduce the potential for exploitation all around? Or at least couldn't it be logically argued that way?
Certainly, individual morality, but philosophically (and realistically) law is group morality, it's an agreed up set of social rules that the vast majority of a social group will abide by even in deference to their individual morality.
I don't want to be killed or stolen from, thus my contract with other members of a society is that they should not do such to me nor me to them. That is it, regardless of whether I think killing or theft is moral or not... and let me point out there are cases where people feel both are morally justified yet agree the act is criminal.
Laws regarding taxes and driving are equally contractual agreements with no (or very few) possible moral grounds.
Sorry for the long post, but your response was well written and deemed a good response. Thanks for taking the time. We both agree that individual rights are key, by the way, I just think we differ philosophically as to how a society realistically arrives there.
I agree and return the compliment. I'm sorry if my time requirements prevent me from much further discussion. As I stated before, I think your view is valid, just not wholly correct regarding the intended form of the US gov't (there is a difference), and not preferable.
It is very easy to mix morals and laws, and I see the enlightenment and the formation of the US gov't as a part of the drive to remove the two from each other as explicitly as possible. Since it is possible to construct laws without moral underpinnings, and instead focus on what freedoms people take for themselves based on personal desire which is the concept of the social contract, morals are superfluous except for how one lives one's own life.
Again, thanks for the debate. Well written.
holmes {in temp decloak from lurker mode}
"What a fool believes he sees, no wise man has the power to reason away." (D.Bros)
™ Version 4.2