Tuesday, November 13, 2007
Limits
What do we do as members of a civilized society, bound by the social contract, when what is legal and what is moral begin to diverge?
From Mark Steyn, in the November 19, 2007 issue of National Review:
There are two ways in which what is moral and what is legal can diverge. The first is illustrated in the quote above, where a threat is made to make immoral behavior legal. This is a particularly egregious case, where the government intends to act immorally with the intent to intimidate the populace. We can all pretty much agree that such things are wrong, and we can hope that the populace would act to throw out any government that would seriously consider such a thing.
However, there are many cases where there is no such consensus on what is moral. Abortion is an example that comes to mind, where a significant fraction of the populace considers it immoral, but it is legal. For those who think abortion is immoral, morality defines a boundary of behavior more confining than that of law. Law never acts as a personal constraint.
On the other hand, there are many cases where moral behavior has been determined to be illegal. This is almost always done with the safety and greater good of society in mind. Speed limits, for example, are intended to create a safe driving environment for everyone, up to a risk level that is acceptable to society.
And yet, virtually everyone speeds.
When the law is more restrictive than what is commonly agreed upon to be moral, there is always some push-back on the part of the populace, manifesting itself in petty infractions of the law. Even those that would argue that the social contract is truly binding generally do not feel compelled to turn themselves in at a police station for going 56 in a 55 zone.
Clearly there are extreme situations where the social contract breaks down, such as when the populace advocates an extreme injustice like slavery. However, here we have established that compulsion to abide by the social contract, even in normal everyday life, is not considered to be an absolute by nearly everyone.
Where, then, is the line beyond which the social compact is absolute, and by what logic do we determine which elements are truly inviolate and which are acceptable to casually break? Most will agree that it is acceptable to go faster than the speed limit, within reason. What about giving alcohol in small quantities to your minor children, with the intent of teaching them to respect it? What about buying cigarettes for a 17 year old? What about consuming small quantities of marijuana?
My first reaction to these questions is - what is moral is more important than what is legal, so I will follow my conscience. However, this logic quickly leaves the social contract in the dust. What, then, is my compulsion to follow any law, if my conscience is to be my only guide? Pure expediency? My desire to remain free rather than to be imprisoned?
Surely there is more to it than that.
More from Steyn:
Steyn is speaking from the point of view that a culture cannot be held together without a reasonably uniform moral code, and a legal code that reflects that moral code to a significant degree. That is certainly true, but given that we are moving farther and farther away from that, how are good citizens and moral people supposed to act in regards to the law? In particular, how are we supposed to act as law becomes more arbitrarily intrusive?
The social contract comes with the stipulation that we should accept the will of the majority. That is, we keep our end of the bargain and abide by the laws, or we leave. How literally are we to take that commitment?
Comments
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How literally are we to take that commitment?
Very. The problem is that people feel they have no place to go. In my view, however, that’s like saying “I know this isn’t MY house, but I’d be homeless otherwise, so I intend to camp on your sofa for the rest of my life.”
On a related note, Wendy reports that there is a drive to get to Mars within 50 years.
Mrs. du Toit | 11/15/2007 08:31 AM CDT -
The point of the social compact is to make society work by allowing people to live and work together peaceably.
That may be the goal of law, but with millions of laws, it’s impossible to obey them all. Obeying the law becomes a minute by minute risk/benefit analysis led by an individual’s moral compass. Low-fine frivolous laws need to be ignored, just to make it out of your house in the morning.
The social compact needs to be mostly binding, but it doesn’t exist in a 1 to 1 relationship with laws on the books.
princewally | 11/15/2007 10:27 AM CDT -
Well, true. We can’t possibly be aware of every law on the books, but we can abide by the ones we know of.
Mrs. du Toit | 11/15/2007 10:37 AM CDT -
I think you’re responding to a comment I made when I wasn’t logged in, but it hasn’t been accepted by the moderator.
princewally | 11/15/2007 02:10 PM CDT -
And one of the favorite statist tricks these days is a situation Jerry Pournelle puts under the label Anarcho-Tyranny: The government enacts dozens of laws / regulations that would be considered tyrannical, such that NO ONE can live a normal life without breaking them… but the government then enforces them so capriciously that the average citizen feels like he is living under an Anarchy, where the law is what someone (with the coercive power of the State) says it is.
SDN | 11/18/2007 06:41 PM CDT -
I think one of the problems we’re dealing with is that the original idea of “spheres of liberty” assumed that there was enough room in the world to allow for those spheres--those imaginary circles surrounding you, within which you were free to do as you pleased, so long as you did not intrude upon the liberty of someone else. The social contract dealt with our relations in society--but there was an existance outside society as well. So the question of, “what do we do when we come together?” was only one of the big questions.
Today, it’s much less true. So much of what we do intrudes upon others. We simply can’t get away from other people. So the social contract is EVERYthing. Why must we have seat belt laws? Can’t we kill ourselves by stupid driving if we so choose? No, we can’t--because other people are usually involved, and (at a minimum) their insurance rates are ruined by our idiocy. Can’t we smoke in public? No, because our smoke ruins other people’s lungs. What actions do we take, today, that affect only ourselves?
The question for us, I think, is what happens to the laissez-faire ideal of leaving people alone as long as they do no harm, when we start living smashed up against one another? Do we accept more and more limits on our own liberty because we’re so focused on what our annoying neighbors are doing?
Andrew | 11/19/2007 01:58 PM CDT -
I think the area into which you’ve strayed, Andrew, is a good thing to discuss, but one on which we’re on pretty shaky grounds when it comes to our history… specifically Original Intent and the Founders.
These can become (all too easily, unfortunately) aggressive discussions no better than how many angels you can fit on the head of a pin.
We can’t resolve them to anyone’s satisfaction, lest we figure out a way to bring the Founders back to life and ask them.
It is my opinion (based on my research and study) that if you asked the Founders if they were willing to risk their lives and fortunes so that some asshole could drive with his rap music on Break-Everyone’s-Eardrums level, they would have laughed. If you would have asked them if it applied to situations of porn, adultery, sodomy, or sexual freedom of teenagers to have access to condoms, not only would they be aghast at the suggestion, they would have shot you (on the spot) for daring to bring up such a despicable topic in front of a woman.
I hate to keep bringing this guy up, but Nock wrote about this subject A LOT and it is where some of the background of the discussion comes (from American Farmer and me).
Just as we have a list that describes the order in which to use the boxes:
1. Ballot box
2. Soap box
3. Ammo boxWe also have an order (that was WELL understood by the Founders) when it comes to these matters:
1. Manners
2. Religion
3. LawManners always comes first. Manners and social customs are the glue that binds a society together. But what happens when manners fails? The manners themselves don’t fail, but people fail to adhere to them, either because we’re from different cultures, or you never bothered to learn them.
Second comes religion, upon which behavior is controlled by a higher authority (that which is written in stone). But what happens when we no longer have consensus on religious morality?
Lastly comes the law, and “the law” should not include those things that are covered by 1 or 2, but… sadly, which is where we find ourselves today in such a pickle. It is where people go when 1 & 2 have failed. “The Law,” like the ammo box, is a LAST resort, but given the collapse of manners and religious morality in our society, it is no surprise that it seems to be the first place people go for redress.
“Anything goes” is not what Americans were about. The Founders, as well as the rest of The People who lived during the formation of the country, WERE bound to manners and religious morality. This is why we see little articulation of these matters in the law historically… and we have to go to social, not legal, history to learn about it. But they were in effect… moreso… in magnitudes greater than any law that binds and requires compliance.
We should not have to have laws that restrict smoking because manners require that you ask if others are bothered by your smoke. You shouldn’t have to use your seatbelt, because no one with couth would sue you in an auto accident PERIOD, let alone try to make you pay for their mistake. “No false witness” did not allow people to make false statements in court, or attempt to steal someone’s money by using the courts. Just being unable to settle your financial matters and having to go to court was a sign that neither of the parties were honorable people. Court was the bastion of scoundrels.
Now we have TV commercials that encourage people to sue others for damages, when they were at fault, or at least partly responsible for the auto accident. Further, an auto accident is now seen as an opportunity for a windfall and a lottery-size award. What’s up with that? What honorable person would do that?
Answer: No honorable person would do that. You take your risks in life and don’t attempt to burden others with your misfortune.
Those are and were a combination of manners of religious morality that were binding.
So what do we do without them?
We resort to the law.
I, unfortunately, do not see the masses suddenly becoming couth, nor do I see a sudden surge in religious morality that is strong enough to reduce the masses belief that their common practice of treating the Seven Deadly Sins as the ideal, and as somehow the bastion of the normal.
America will exist so long as she is moral.
The Founders knew that.
Do we?
Mrs. du Toit | 11/19/2007 02:37 PM CDT -
I am absolutely in agreement with you. And it’s true that manners and religion--or even non-religious ethical code--are no longer things we can take for granted as shared and understood. So we do rely on law too much. And the lack of space between us makes us go to law far too often.
Andrew | 11/19/2007 06:55 PM CDT
