So, are you really saying that only Republicans are hard working, law abiding and responsible? You're not really saying that, are you? I mean, 53% of the country voted for President Obama, they aren't ALL lazy, lawless, and irresponsible, are they? Perhaps people can disagree with you and still be good quality people. Perhaps you do not hold the monopoly over "good" and "right".
Legality or illegality is a political compromise. Morality or immorality is a personal choice. Political compromises are generally acceptable minimums of behavior that provide for the greater good and allow peaceful relations between people (assuming they all have a somewhat different and individualized codes of conduct and morals)
I think everyone voting that the two are unrelated are fooling themselves. They are entertwined both ways. What we choose to make illegal is highly informed by the communal morality. And, conversely, people's sense of right and wrong is partly informed (subconciously, apparently) by its legal status. Don't think your evaluations are unaffected by it.
I don't think there is give and take when a law is enforced. One can't say I give you public nudity law, but you give me my mar1juana. There is no choice. Law is more like majority super-impose standard of conduct to the society. Not all laws have a morality component, for instance traffic rules.
I was thinnking about the importance of codifying morality to maintain awareness of it. There are many things that people would concede are wrong if they were confronted with the consequences of it but are widely accepted before the awareness was raised. Racist language or pollution are things that people used to engage in without thinking about and now think twice about because people have worked to show why these things are bad. But, it's easy for people to let things slide morally and be hard-hearted or unthinking without a codification of one-time moral conclusions. It would be of-so-easy, for example, to litter without thinking of the consequences if we didn't have a stigma on littering written into law and into social mores with Don't Mess with Texas propaganda. Whether it is the 10 Commandments, the Law of the Torah, the Beautitudes, the Constitution, the laws of the State of Texas, professional ethics, it preserves and simplifies moral decision-making to write it down that one should not do this and that. And so these codes, even the amoral ones, take on a moral aspect as they stand in as a proxy for moral decision-making.
Have you been reading some developmental psychology RR? Kohlberg perhaps? This is a very interesting and very important topic. There is no one right answer, and how a person responds will depend on their level of moral awareness/development. Understanding moral development helps you understand all kinds of differing and conflicting viewpoints in society. The best way to think of it I think is to think of a child’s development. A young child will take anything they want as long as they think they can get away with it. Then the child learns to make deals. “I’ll give you something if you give me something I want back.” Then the child wants to be accepted and therefore conforms to the norms of a group. Then comes an understanding of right and wrong based on rules, and so on. Here’s a better explanation of Kohlberg’s six stages. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kohlberg's_stages_of_moral_development#Stages The theory suggests that people are periodically faced with certain dilemmas that force them to reconsider their background assumptions about right and wrong. “The law says to do this, but if I do this I will hurt this person, so maybe the law isn’t right?” In theory there are dilemmas at each stage that can lead a person to higher levels of moral awareness. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heinz_dilemma This kind of development has been studied and known for a long time with respect to moral development in children, but in recent years research has been done on it with respect to the behaviour of people in organizations, and a very similar developmental continuum has been found. Generally new employees are not trying to take anything they can, but they are initially focused on self interest, and after they get established they do try to fit in as much as possible, and so on. William Torbert is one person doing this kind of research.
Oh, yeah? I didn't see you blasting Rachael -- unless boinking is blasting! (hmmmm....I'm sure that would be a blast as well.)
If your point is a blanket statement that legality has nothing to do with right or wrong I don't think that is the case. As I stated laws are meant to codify a shared morality of a society and as such are meant to be what that society considers right. If a law is divorced from what the society considers right or wrong it is either an ineffective and/or one that needs to be changed. As I noted to the other poster in regard to the issue of civil disobedience there are times when laws are running counter to what a society considers right and in such times they will be challenged. That isn't to say that all laws though are divorced from right or wrong as even MLK states in the quote cited by another poster.
2 different things legal/illegal has to do with consequences and punishment right/wrong is morality the problem is that man has to decide the legal/illegal but has no business deciding the morals let someone more just, more pure, more truthful and more loving than man make the morals and man then has a much better shot at getting the laws right when man alone decides what is right and wrong then right and wrong become completely relative to personal and group bias
RR -- I agree with your basic premise... legal does not equal right, nor does illegal equal wrong. I also agree with finalsbound and DonnyMost... in that victimless crimes or consensual crimes should not exist. Frankly, legal and illegal should not have anything to do with right and wrong. Legal and illegal is about protection within a society. Right and wrong is about morality. Morality is subjective. Everyone is and should be guided by their own moral compass, which is influenced by their church, family, community leaders, televangelists, spaghetti monsters or just their own personal faith. it is important, but should not be dictated by society. This is idealistic and not rooted in the reality of our society, but... IMO, in a free society, all citizens should be able to do as they please. The only exceptions -- the laws -- should apply when someone else's freedoms are being infringed upon without their consent, or they are otherwise being harmed. (consent is further defined by age, mental capacity, etc.) But, that's just my opinion... I could be wrong. EDIT: oh, and I guess I agree with rhester too ^^
Again, you misunderstand my point. My statement that legality has nothing to do with right or wrong was meant to respond OP's question whether legality is a good predictor of right and wrong. You took it out of the context. I find you are repeating my statements to make a point that legality reflects accepted standard of conduct, which I think is largely correct but doesn't address OP's question. That is because it is too obvious to argue whether legality reflects accepted behavior by the society at large. Of course it does. Essentially your position begs the question why does shared morality by the majority necessarily reflects right or wrong? That, I think, is precisely what OP wanted to know.
On a personal level sometimes but on a societal level yes. Lets say we didn't have laws could we count on everyone's personal morality to create a functioning society? Chances are probably not. In the end society agrees on accepted standards of right or wrong and codifies them into laws. Those laws might not match up exactly with any individual's personal morality but they are the base moral guidelines and the shared expression of morality for the society. Its true for any individual legality might not be a predictor of what is considered right and wrong but for a society as a whole they are the indicator of what is considered right or wrong. What is considered right in Saudi Arabia is very different from what is considered right in Amsterdam. That is reflected in their laws and from that you can draw an inference that most Saudis or Dutch morality agrees with their laws. "Right" and "Wrong" are relative and subjective concepts that very greatly from individual to individual but to say that they are divorced from laws brings up the question of why have laws at all if they don't have some moral basis.
I take issue with your subjective statement. I think there are a set of basic rights that are absolute in the sense of right or wrong, such as freedom of speech, freedom of association, etc. For instance, one's sex choice behind closed doors. IMO, it is not gov't's business to tell an individual what is right or wrong in that context based on general accepted standard of conduct by the society. Texas used to have sodomy law that criminalize private oral/annal sexual conduct, especially targeting at homosexual behavior. That, the choice of my sex conduct in my home, is my absolute right, and legality of it can't tell me it is wrong.
I guess the saving grace of American values and laws are that they're organic and inclusive. We have freedom of faith, expression, relative social diversity and an adversarial and deliberative legal system. That means when laws get too impersonal or morals are too judgmental, we can and do change them; and that we generally do so with everyone's input.
Laws are always impersonal or judgmental and I think that's the function of the law, not the reasons for changing laws. Laws are changed when the standards set by those laws do not reflect majority's view of acceptable conduct, and the minority's sense of order is always going to be disturbed by such change.
