Legislating Religious Morals?

[Captain Adverse]

Law should act to punish the willful or negligent harming of another.

Any other use of law (force) is dubious and must be carefully considered.


There may arguably be social value in certain moral standards... but the spiritual value of morality only exists when it is chosen, not coerced. :shrug:

There are thousands upon thousands of laws and they are increasing at an exponential rate as legislators seek to justify their existence (and thus their salaries and perks of office). The body of law is so vast that the legal precept "Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse" has become farcical.

Once upon a time that precept was understandable, if exercised harshly, because the law was based upon simple religious precepts everyone was made aware of through the prietstly class. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, etc. However, as other members state, most of such laws were also based on simple ethical considerations even the non-religious could understand.

The problem is that as societies became ever more complex, so too did the moral restrictions placed upon citizens. Many of these restrictions were and still are based soley on religious precepts. Prostitution, gambling, drug use, and other "vices," where the victim is primarily the person engaging in the vice. It has come to a point where there is so much law, even those who enforce and adjudicate it are unable to know it all. As a result citizens are in a constant state of legal peril because no one knows if they are violating some minor law or other in their everyday activities.

The rules need to be simplified so that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is no longer merely wishful thinking. The first step would be to eliminate all laws based solely upon religious moralism. The OP is correct, any reading of the sections where instruction in life are given by Christ, the admonition is for each person to live their own lives by the guidance He provides, and by so doing set an example that will naturally attract others. No where does He demand or command others to enforce such rules, in fact He strictly prohibits it.

As Goshen indicates, law should be limited to addressing willful and deliberate (and I add TANGIBLE) harms. All other laws should be carefully weighed and considered as to their long-term effects on individual liberties in comparison to the positive effect they have on society as a whole.

 

[Goshin]

There are thousands upon thousands of laws and they are increasing at an exponential rate as legislators seek to justify their existence (and thus their salaries and perks of office). The body of law is so vast that the legal precept "Ignorance of the Law is No Excuse" has become farcical.

Once upon a time that precept was understandable, if exercised harshly, because the law was based upon simple religious precepts everyone was made aware of through the prietstly class. Thou shalt not kill, thou shalt not steal, etc. However, as other members state, most of such laws were also based on simple ethical considerations even the non-religious could understand.

The problem is that as societies became ever more complex, so too did the moral restrictions placed upon citizens. Many of these restrictions were and still are based soley on religious precepts. Prostitution, gambling, drug use, and other "vices," where the victim is primarily the person engaging in the vice. It has come to a point where there is so much law, even those who enforce and adjudicate it are unable to know it all. As a result citizens are in a constant state of legal peril because no one knows if they are violating some minor law or other in their everyday activities.

The rules need to be simplified so that "ignorance of the law is no excuse" is no longer merely wishful thinking. The first step would be to eliminate all laws based solely upon religious moralism. The OP is correct, any reading of the sections where instruction in life are given by Christ, the admonition is for each person to live their own lives by the guidance He provides, and by so doing set an example that will naturally attract others. No where does He demand or command others to enforce such rules, in fact He strictly prohibits it.

As Goshen indicates, law should be limited to addressing willful and deliberate (and I add TANGIBLE) harms. All other laws should be carefully weighed and considered as to their long-term effects on individual liberties in comparison to the positive effect they have on society as a whole.

Yup. Now, I'm not necessarily saying there should NEVER be a law that punishes someone for something other than willful/negligent/tangible harm of an innocent... but that any proposed law that isn't clearly and purely of that marque should be viewed with great suspicion, held up to intense scrutiny, analyzed and discussed and debated at considerable length, and passed only if a large supermajority think it is absolutely sine-qua-non for their well-being of their society. Even then the punishment for breaking a law that is not a "non-aggression principle"* law should be relatively mild in comparison.


*The Non-Aggression Principle: "Thou shalt not initiate force or fraud against an unwilling and innocent party."

 

[EdwinWillers]

I read an interesting bit of Libertarian science fiction a couple years ago, by L Neil Smith. It included a colony on an asteroid (small population) that was a "hyperdemocracy"... that is, "one person, one veto". It delved into the free rider problem a little but admitted that there may be no good solution to same.

Now, as you rightly point out, I don't see hyperdemocracy working at anything above the tribal level... maybe 50-100 people tops... due to the "contrarian" problem. SOMEBODY will vote "Nay" to "destroying the killer meteor about to smash the planet" just out of sheer cuss-headedness... and no society can function like that at much more than anarchy level. (Which, as we've seen, also doesn't work above the tribal-size or community level).

So the top end has to take into account filtering out the contrarians and sheer idiots, and would have to be well below 100%.

IIRC the original Articles of Confederation required a 2/3rds majority to do pretty much anything, and it turned out to be extremely difficult to get anything at all done that way. To override a Presidential veto requires a 2/3'rds majority of both House and Senate, and is a very rare event. Amendments to the Constitution also require large supermajority (can't recall offhand whether 2/3 or 3/4) and throughout much of our history Amendments have rarely been passed.

So the question becomes how to structure a system which is flexible enough to get the necessary done, but restrictive enough to prevent too much personally intrusive legislation from being passed without a large supermajority support.... tricky.

QFT - although I've considered the possibility that there exists a difference between imposing a "rule" on a legislative body working within their legitimate purview and defining what that purview is. Working within the former, supermajorities may not be necessary at all and the issue of hamstringing such a body diminishes to what we'd consider "normal" difficulty under a simple majority. Dunno.

The issue in my mind is the inculcation of the principle.

If we did things the way of of old-time Federalism (ie restricting the scope of the Fedgov to Article 8 and leaving the rest (including almost all criminal legislation) to the States or local gov's), that would be a good start. Possibly prioritizing certain specific forms of legislation, and saying XYZ emergency measures can be temporarily enacted via simple majority; ABC routine legislation by 60% majority; but any legislation that could be considered to infringe on any citizen's natural rights, or which could be used to put any citizen in prison for more than 3 days or confiscate his property would require a 75% majority to pass. Something like that maybe... details would have to be hammered out. Any "exemptions" to a law would require special conditions like 90% majority and those who would be exempted don't get to vote.

Actually, I think this is a perfect example of the principle in practice. If you look at article 8, section 1, it is the embodiment, the core principle in practice that made this country what it was.

So I don't think it at all coincidental that those who do not believe in the principle of freedom have made Article 1 Section 8 their primary target, and why it's been under constant, unremitting pressure from the left for so long. They dare not attack the principle on which this nation was founded, but if they can steadily erode its practice, the principle becomes moot - as it has today under the banner of the "general welfare."

While we're fantasizing about what we'd do if we got to re-engineer society (LOL), I'd like to change the Presidency (and perhaps Governorship) dramatically as well. Instead of the President alone wielding executive power, I think if that executive power is going to remain so potent it needs to be spread out a little more. Say we instead elect a Prez (who mostly does the day-to-day and CIC stuff), a First Citizen elected from among the State governors(who does most of the ceremonial and PR stuff), and the Senate elects a Prime Minister from the House... and the Presidium cannot issue ANY executive order without all three signatures on the paper! Or maybe two out of three for emergency measures like repelling an invasion or sending aid to a hurricane zone or something. Just an idea that I've had for a while.

Honestly, if we simply returned to the Constitution for direction on what the president may and may not do, the issue of an imperial presidency would, I have to believe, go away. Personally, I think we've allowed the slow but steady wholesale redefinition of everything that once defined us as a nation so much that we've forgotten what we were once like. Any notion of us being a constitutional republic has long since vanished and I firmly believe that the Constitution is our only viable roadmap back to that.

Not sure what the answer to the free rider problem is though, other than "pay your own way" as much as possible. Still, though, I think it is in society's interest to have some kind of social safety net; we don't want to get Dickensian with the poor and those trampled by the uncaring elephantine movements of big business.

Yeah. And I'm fine with the concept of a "social safety net" - but we need to remember that nets are for catching things and that nets need to be routinely emptied, lest they break or the contents inside spoil.