Back in the day, liberals opposed middle-class morality by opposing the notion of legislators "legislating morality." Today they are busily legislating their own morality, as in born-alive abortion bills in the liberal states, and non-gendered bathrooms, and diversity and inclusion.
The truth is that all government and all legislation amounts to "legislating morality," even laws against murder. The whole point of morality, and of laws, and of human society, is to replace the rule of power with the rule of law. And law inevitably borrows from somebody's notion of good and evil.
Back in the day, the Roman paterfamilias, the patriarch of the Roman family, had the right to rule all members of his family and his slaves, up to and including the death penalty. And in the feudal era the feudal lord dispensed justice to his serfs. A real feudal potentate could dispense all three of the high, middle, and low justice. But as time went by the state interposed itself between the family and the individual family members, and between feudal lord and the individual, and took away the powers of the patriarch. You will notice that the state today does not permit family members to imprison another member they consider to have committed a crime against the family. Only the state can do that.
The question is not whether we legislate morality but who gets to do it. The American idea of no establishment of religion is a modest attempt to avoid having one agent, the state church, with the sole power defining the morality to be used in legislation. But that is not the worst case. The worst case is what we call totalitarianism, where all power, religious and political, is concentrated in the government.
Many people in our society think they have risen above a narrow view of legislating morality by opposing gender roles and strict rules about sexual activity and imagine that they are therefore enlightened and liberated.
But, in fact, the removal of rules creates a danger that power will rule. Did the sexual revolution liberate the sexes, or does it pressure young women to agree to sex and submit to sexual harassment in the workplace? I would argue that the current #MeToo movement is a movement of women that want society to reimpose rules about sex and punish men that violate the rules. Do abortion laws liberate women from unwanted children, or do they help men pressure women into submitting to sex in the first place and "getting rid of it" later?
Does the abolition of gender roles liberate women to work in the workplace, or does it force women out of the home into the workplace who would prefer to live as wives and mothers? I would argue from my reductive Three Peoples theory that while People of the Creative Self want a world in which individuals can chart their own life courses the People of the Responsible Self want clear rules about what to do and what not to do. So who gets to set the rules? And can rules be set so that both people can choose which philosophy to follow?
There is a way, that if you are a creative person you join the church of creativity, a community of people that believe that people should choose their roles and not be forced into rigid gender and life roles. If you are a rules person then you join a modestly strict Christian church where the members all believe in following Biblical morality. But you will notice that there is always a temptation for liberals to enforce their world view on the deplorables, and a similar temptation for Christians to anathematize non-Christian world views. This would require the state to relax its rules and allow intermediary institutions to enforce rules upon their members.
Liberals luridly imagine a dystopia where everyone is forced into fundamentalist Christian morality in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Deplorables imagine a dystopia where everyone lives in a liberal arts college and is named and shamed for any discouraging word about race, gender, and LGBT.
Everyone lives in fear of being bullied around by someone else legislating morality and lives in anticipation of people like them living free as air when their own true morality is universally accepted and applied. But the fact is that the whole point of human society is to soften the hardness of power into the softness of rules that even the powerful have to observe.
There is a name for this taming of the powerful: the legislation of morality.
The truth is that all government and all legislation amounts to "legislating morality," even laws against murder. The whole point of morality, and of laws, and of human society, is to replace the rule of power with the rule of law. And law inevitably borrows from somebody's notion of good and evil.
Back in the day, the Roman paterfamilias, the patriarch of the Roman family, had the right to rule all members of his family and his slaves, up to and including the death penalty. And in the feudal era the feudal lord dispensed justice to his serfs. A real feudal potentate could dispense all three of the high, middle, and low justice. But as time went by the state interposed itself between the family and the individual family members, and between feudal lord and the individual, and took away the powers of the patriarch. You will notice that the state today does not permit family members to imprison another member they consider to have committed a crime against the family. Only the state can do that.
The question is not whether we legislate morality but who gets to do it. The American idea of no establishment of religion is a modest attempt to avoid having one agent, the state church, with the sole power defining the morality to be used in legislation. But that is not the worst case. The worst case is what we call totalitarianism, where all power, religious and political, is concentrated in the government.
Many people in our society think they have risen above a narrow view of legislating morality by opposing gender roles and strict rules about sexual activity and imagine that they are therefore enlightened and liberated.
But, in fact, the removal of rules creates a danger that power will rule. Did the sexual revolution liberate the sexes, or does it pressure young women to agree to sex and submit to sexual harassment in the workplace? I would argue that the current #MeToo movement is a movement of women that want society to reimpose rules about sex and punish men that violate the rules. Do abortion laws liberate women from unwanted children, or do they help men pressure women into submitting to sex in the first place and "getting rid of it" later?
Does the abolition of gender roles liberate women to work in the workplace, or does it force women out of the home into the workplace who would prefer to live as wives and mothers? I would argue from my reductive Three Peoples theory that while People of the Creative Self want a world in which individuals can chart their own life courses the People of the Responsible Self want clear rules about what to do and what not to do. So who gets to set the rules? And can rules be set so that both people can choose which philosophy to follow?
There is a way, that if you are a creative person you join the church of creativity, a community of people that believe that people should choose their roles and not be forced into rigid gender and life roles. If you are a rules person then you join a modestly strict Christian church where the members all believe in following Biblical morality. But you will notice that there is always a temptation for liberals to enforce their world view on the deplorables, and a similar temptation for Christians to anathematize non-Christian world views. This would require the state to relax its rules and allow intermediary institutions to enforce rules upon their members.
Liberals luridly imagine a dystopia where everyone is forced into fundamentalist Christian morality in Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale. Deplorables imagine a dystopia where everyone lives in a liberal arts college and is named and shamed for any discouraging word about race, gender, and LGBT.
Everyone lives in fear of being bullied around by someone else legislating morality and lives in anticipation of people like them living free as air when their own true morality is universally accepted and applied. But the fact is that the whole point of human society is to soften the hardness of power into the softness of rules that even the powerful have to observe.
There is a name for this taming of the powerful: the legislation of morality.
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