Who gets to "impose morality"?

If I had a penny for every time the phrase "imposing your morality on everybody" (and its ilk) was used in the Backroom, I could buy Creative Assembly and maybe SEGA, too. The phrase is usually used to strike out against arguments for making laws the user disagrees with.

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Originally Posted by Example

Person A: I think we should outlaw XYZ.
Person B: Stop imposing your morality on anybody!
Awkward pause.

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Person B then usually follows with a wry comment on the religious or political beliefs of Person A.

I was under the impression that most, if not all laws involved imposing one persons' morality over another. If this is the case, then the objection that one person - or one group - is imposing his or her morality over another person or group is hardly an objection at all!

So if some morals must triumph legally over others, then whose morals win? Should the majority decide the morals? Or does morality come from some other source?

Person A: I think we should outlaw XYZ.
Person B: Stop imposing your morality on anybody!

As person A I would reply: Why? You just tried to impose your morality on me?

Morality being decided by a majority would be a nice idea. But hey, I would love to see everyone in the backroom agree on what to drink with their steak at supper one night. So that won't work, too many different things to disagree on.

And as much as some people might (heck, will) dispute this, laws come from religion. For America, it is a combination of the 10 commandments and the New Testament. Actually, I think that is true about most any western nation. Eastern nations have their own religious sources for their laws.

You are right Alex, laws are about imposing one groups morality on anothers. But the fun part is deciding who gets to impose what on whom.

Azi

Well since I'm usually person B, I'd say that because I'm more often in favore of allowing, rather than restricting, I'm not impossing as much as what person A wants to do, since it is often more restrictive.

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Person A: I think we should outlaw XYZ.
Person B: Stop imposing your morality on anybody!

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Person A has no right to demand such outrageous things if they are not rectricted by the constitution and the carter of rights and freedoms. Somehow they sometimes suceed and everytimes they do they ruin society.


That is all. ~:handball:

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Who gets to "impose morality"?

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Whoever is right.

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So if some morals must triumph legally over others, then whose morals win?

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The Right. We cant afford to play a relativity game with the amoral(immoral) leftists who seek to tear down our society.

If some pinko tells you your imposing your morality on him, tell him its for his own good. :bow:

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

We live in a democratic society. The majority gets to impose it's morality on the minority.

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I totally agree. ~:cheers:

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

Whoever is right.

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Who decides what is right?

Lawyers and University Professors and whoever screams the loudest.

Azi

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

Well since I'm usually person B, I'd say that because I'm more often in favore of allowing, rather than restricting, I'm not impossing as much as what person A wants to do, since it is often more restrictive.

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So laws should be made (or remain unmade) so as to be as least restrictive as possible?

Example argument: banning alcoholic consumption for people under the age of 18. One side says "don't ban it" (or "remove the ban") while the other side supports the ban to reduce alcohol-related fatalities among teenagers. The morality of people (children, even) under 18 drinking alcohol is a fuzzy subject - the Ten Commandments don't bar it, and most (to my knowledge) religious systems don't cover it. But those who support the ban want (arguably) to save people from themselves (and, perhaps, save others as well).

Who is right in this case? Well, it is very likely that people could disagree on it, and that there would be no general consensus on whether one option is more moral than another. Who decides? In a democracy, like Cube pointed out, the majority does. So in a democracy, Person B really has no grounds to complain about the imposition of one morality over another.

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Originally Posted by Byzantine Prince

Person A has no right to demand such outrageous things if they are not rectricted by the constitution and the carter of rights and freedoms. Somehow they sometimes suceed and everytimes they do they ruin society.


That is all.

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I'm not sure I understand you (and I'm not sure I want to ~;p). Are you saying that Person A cannot impose his morals unless they are in the Constitution and this vacuous "charter of rights and freedoms"? First of all, in the US anyway, there is no charter of rights and freedoms outside of the Constitution. Secondly, consider this example.

You are Person A. You wish to ban the action of kicking another person in the shin (I know, you probably want that to be legal ~;p). I am Person B. I want to kick you in the shin (this is hypothetical). The Constitution is silent on the issue of shin-kicking and strangely, local law is too. So you decide to make a law banning shin-kicking. I protest that you are imposing your morality on me and there is nothing in the Constitution saying I can't kick you in the shin. What do you do? Besides kicking me repeatedly in the shins.

That's just an example. I don't think the Constitution protects shin-kicking. I also in no way condone the senseless kicking of shins - be they liberal or conservative shins, white shins or black shins, heterosexual shins or homosexual shins. Red Sox shins, however, are fair game.

I'm not sure if that answers your comment or if I misunderstood you, BP.

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Originally Posted by Sasaki Kojiro

Whoever is right.

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So, you are not a relativist, Sasaki? I apologize for mentally mislabelling you into the same category as JAG et all. ~;) However, I fear that the deciding or discover of who is truly right is about as easy as deciding whose morality "wins".

I think that the imposition of morality is only reasonable in cases where what you are concerned with affects people apart from the person actually performing the action. Nobody should have the right to impose their morality on people's private lives.

Fair enough. But how do you define what affects just the private life of one person and not society (or segments of society)?

I could and would argue that homosexual marriage, the issue in which the imposition of morality complaint is used the most, is a concern of society.

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Originally Posted by Alexander the Pretty Good

I'm not sure I understand you (and I'm not sure I want to ~;p). Are you saying that Person A cannot impose his morals unless they are in the Constitution and this vacuous "charter of rights and freedoms"? First of all, in the US anyway, there is no charter of rights and freedoms outside of the Constitution. Secondly, consider this example.

You are Person A. You wish to ban the action of kicking another person in the shin (I know, you probably want that to be legal ~;p). I am Person B. I want to kick you in the shin (this is hypothetical). The Constitution is silent on the issue of shin-kicking and strangely, local law is too. So you decide to make a law banning shin-kicking. I protest that you are imposing your morality on me and there is nothing in the Constitution saying I can't kick you in the shin. What do you do? Besides kicking me repeatedly in the shins.

That's just an example. I don't think the Constitution protects shin-kicking. I also in no way condone the senseless kicking of shins - be they liberal or conservative shins, white shins or black shins, heterosexual shins or homosexual shins. Red Sox shins, however, are fair game.

I'm not sure if that answers your comment or if I misunderstood you, BP.

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What don't you inderstand? If the person is trying to ban white people from let's say drinking, there's a charter here in Canada that prevents that from hapening. IF you want kick someone's shin, you can't because obviously that's assault, and may I add a piss poor example.

If someone like Hilary is trying to ban the game Grand Theft Auto, hypothetically, that would breach some law of needless censorship I'm sure, and so it's impossible. The constitution is not absolute though, so there's always gonna flexibility in what should banned and what shouldn't. But not that much.

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Originally Posted by Byzantine Prince

What don't you inderstand? If the person is trying to ban white people from let's say drinking, there's a charter here in Canada that prevents that from hapening. IF you want kick someone's shin, you can't because obviously that's assault, and may I add a piss poor example.

If someone like Hilary is trying to ban the game Grand Theft Auto, hypothetically, that would breach some law of needless censorship I'm sure, and so it's impossible. The constitution is not absolute though, so there's always gonna flexibility in what should banned and what shouldn't. But not that much.

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the funny thing, tho - is who the hell wrote the constitution in the first place?

some old dead white christians (or deists - whatever the current belief is)
who says that what they wrote was the way things should go?

why is this the rock on which my life is based?

do the dead get a say in my life today just because they happened to beat the king? because might makes right they get to say what can and cannot be changed?

this is a never ending arguement - people with no respect for authority shouldnt use the defense of the constitution as a reason for their aims. it is a cover

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Originally Posted by BP

What don't you inderstand?

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Specifically, I was confused over your use of the English language:

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Originally Posted by BP, earlier on

Person A has no right to demand such outrageous things if they are not rectricted by the constitution and the carter of rights and freedoms. Somehow they sometimes suceed and everytimes they do they ruin society.

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To me, that leterally means: Person A has no right to demand [the banning of certain things] if [the bannings] are not restricted by the Constitution and the charter of rights and freedoms. Somehow [Person A] sometimes succeeds and [every time] [Person A] does [Person A] ruins society.

I interpreted it to mean what I posted earlier. :book:

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Originally Posted by BP

What don't you inderstand? If the person is trying to ban white people from let's say drinking, there's a charter here in Canada that prevents that from hapening. IF you want kick someone's shin, you can't because obviously that's assault, and may I add a piss poor example.

If someone like Hilary is trying to ban the game Grand Theft Auto, hypothetically, that would breach some law of needless censorship I'm sure, and so it's impossible. The constitution is not absolute though, so there's always gonna flexibility in what should banned and what shouldn't. But not that much.

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This is also confusing to me. And I didn't think it was that bad an example.

Basically, what you are saying is "You can't impose your morality on me because that's against the law." Which is in itself an imposition of morality. On Canada.

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Originally Posted by TuffStuffMcGruff

the funny thing, tho - is who the hell wrote the constitution in the first place?

some old dead white christians (or deists - whatever the current belief is)
who says that what they wrote was the way things should go?

why is this the rock on which my life is based?

do the dead get a say in my life today just because they happened to beat the king? because might makes right they get to say what can and cannot be changed?

this is a never ending arguement - people with no respect for authority shouldnt use the defense of the constitution as a reason for their aims. it is a cover

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Just remember that that consitution has been changed and updated, although not as much as a Microsoft program patching.

Also the current law and its interpretation will differ somewhat to the law that existed when the consitution first came into effect.

Why are you confusing things? There's no way someone can ban something simply because it's immoral. If that were true then threesomes would be illigal.

Things don't work that way. 'Imposition of morality' holds no bearing, and is semantiaclly contradictory. My morality is not the same as your morality, but my sense of justice has to be the same as yours, or else one of us is going to jail for sure. ~;)

BTW It could be argued that morality is independent of law but a valid law is dependent on morals. Moral outcome is the consequences from ones actions. You can lie, cheat and steal but at some level there will be negative feedback for negative actions on a social and individual level.

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Originally Posted by BP

There's no way someone can ban something simply because it's immoral.

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Absurd. Murder is immoral. So is shin-kicking (arguably). Both are banned. Because they are immoral.

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Originally Posted by BP

Things don't work that way. 'Imposition of morality' holds no bearing, and is semantiaclly contradictory. My morality is not the same as your morality, but my sense of justice has to be the same as yours, or else one of us is going to jail for sure.

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Who makes laws? Legislatures. Legislatures, nine times out of ten, are made up of human politicians. These politicians use someone's morality in making legislation - either their own perception of what is moral or their constituents' perceptions. When these laws are legislated, the morality of either the politicians or their constituents is being imposed on the people represented by that legislature.

So, "Imposition of morality" does hold bearing and is not semantically contradictory.

Society as a whole decides. If you want to kill someone society has decreed that you can not. Now you can choose to live with that, or you can leave find some other people and form a society where killing is okay. And the dead should never get a vote. To paraphrase Chesterton "Tradition is the means by which the dead majority prevent the rule by the oligarchy of those who merely walk the Earth."

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Originally Posted by JimBob

And the dead should never get a vote. To paraphrase Chesterton "Tradition is the means by which the dead majority prevent the rule by the oligarchy of those who merely walk the Earth."

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When do the dead get a vote? In the Constitution? That's also absurd. To literally apply ithat line of thinking would require society as a whole to update its descisions every time there is a murder trial - because the past laws against murder could be made by someone already dead.

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Originally Posted by Gelatinous Cube

We live in a democratic society. The majority gets to impose it's morality on the minority.

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Not true we live in a republic made to protect the minoity so the mob dosent run them over wiht here morals ~:cheers:

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The only difference between a Republic and a Democracy is that you get to choose not to vote for the guy who allowed morals you don't agree with to enter the system.

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No in a republic there are certain things that the majority may not change. It doesnt come up to a vote.

Good point there Gawain, though I may not neccassarily like that fact all the time.
But otherwise, if the majority of people t hought those who have extra marital sex should all be stoned to death, that means that that would become law, just because that's what the majority believed.

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

Good point there Gawain, though I may not neccassarily like that fact all the time.
But otherwise, if the majority of people t hought those who have extra marital sex should all be stoned to death, that means that that would become law, just because that's what the majority believed.

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but the supreme court would, most likely, strike the law down based on the fact that it was unconstitutional

even though the majority believed it and the majority would be governed by it, dead people's laws that didn't even pretend to have divine inspiration trumped the will of the majority

i smell archaic paternalism...

the fact is - the supreme court votes to stop laws based on a superlative morality (one whose legitimacy and roots i dont fully understand). it trumps majority rule.

if one believes in social darwinism or agnosticism, there is no real reason for this to happen - majority rules - superlative "morality" is a non-issue

i believe that this nations laws are based on the constitution, the bill of rights, european christian thought and the testaments, old and new.

i dont believe in any of it, but it is the way that the country was designed to work

to change the foundation would be to change everything, even the things that we tend to be comfortable with.

i am just not sure that from such a nihilistic perspective that there really is any impetus to actually change the system

Morality should never be imposed if it doesn't give a collective benefit. Also everyone in the collective should have a choice to leave the collective if they disagree.

The rules should be based on the collective will of the people, but constrained to prevent mob rule or the oppression of the innocent minority by the whims of the majority. They should be based on the theories of fairness and equality.

There must be a method to assess the will of the people, which in turn must be tempered through review by individuals who have selected to ensure fairness and equality. Pretty much like the Constitutional Government of the United States of America. Democratically elected representatives and a strong judiciary to review it all.

You can't impose morality. You can impose punishments and sanctions against those who act illegally. But that won't stop people from trying to impose their morality on others.

ichi :bow:

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Originally Posted by Steppe Merc

Well since I'm usually person B, I'd say that because I'm more often in favore of allowing, rather than restricting, I'm not impossing as much as what person A wants to do, since it is often more restrictive.

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No Steppe, you're not. You frequently say that people that have religious leanings shouldn't be allowed to engage in discourse on politics. I like you, a lot, and I respect a lot of your other viewpoints, but this sort of secular fundamentalism is every bit as intolerant as islamic or christian fundamentalism.

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Originally Posted by ichi

The rules should be based on the collective will of the people, but constrained to prevent mob rule or the oppression of the innocent minority by the whims of the majority. They should be based on the theories of fairness and equality.

There must be a method to assess the will of the people, which in turn must be tempered through review by individuals who have selected to ensure fairness and equality. Pretty much like the Constitutional Government of the United States of America. Democratically elected representatives and a strong judiciary to review it all.

You can't impose morality. You can impose punishments and sanctions against those who act illegally. But that won't stop people from trying to impose their morality on others.

ichi :bow:

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Well spoken. It doesn't always work... but we're not perfect.

Azi