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"You can't enforce spirituality with the government."

Certainly not. But basic moral absolutes which are common to all monotheistic religions in the world can be enforced, to the betterment of society as a whole and all individuals within it, except those who want to destroy morals.

Basic moral absolutes are what keep human civilization human. We are witnessing the destruction that ensues what such moral absolutes are jettisoned. Islamic Jihadis are not the only enemy at the gates.

(Thanks, EdR, for pinging me!)

risk wrote:
"You can't enforce spirituality with the government."

Certainly not. But basic moral absolutes which are common to all monotheistic religions in the world can be enforced, to the betterment of society as a whole and all individuals within it, except those who want to destroy morals. Basic moral absolutes are what keep human civilization human. We are witnessing the destruction that ensues what such moral absolutes are jettisoned.
162 -jeremiah-

Could you list the "basic moral absolutes" that are not enforced by the current State, local, or federal laws in this country?
Which ones have been "jettisoned"?

But basic moral absolutes which are common to all monotheistic religions in the world can be enforced, to the betterment of society as a whole and all individuals within it, except those who want to destroy morals.

I suspect that you and I furiously agree on a number of tertiary issues to this comment. But the real question your sweeping declaration raises requires us to think again on what sets the west apart from the eastern monotheists who would destroy our freedoms and our own laws, supplanting them with theirs. What makes our law different from theirs? The answer is right at hand. Freedom of conscience is the key, and the other differences are related. Without this distinction prisons overflow with the dissenters and criminals alike. Without this distinction, men in authority can justify their oppressive actions in terms of values that are beyond debate. To be precise, it is not on what we agree that allows us to be free from oppression in the name of "higher purpose" or "moral clarity," it is how we deal with our disagreements about those matters.

Freedom of conscience is an expensive freedom, isn't it? Aside from the cost in lives it has incurred, it is often excruciating to know what is right and be unable to require that behavior of others. This matter strikes deep into the issue of the rule of law. To paraphrase Winston Churchill, democracy would be the worst form of government, except that everything else fails. I'm sure he was thinking to some extent about the liabilities a society incurs from its commitment to freedom of conscience.

Laws are continually measured against this yardstick in a free society. So why is law a source of strength to democracies, and not a weakness? And why is law something that enables freedom in a democracy, yet puts a sword to the throats of citizens in other kinds of government structures? You know why. The law in democratic systems has three, and only three requirements:

To protect the sacred rights of the people.
To restrain the strong from oppressing the weak.
And finally, to contain government power.

I could argue that the second and third items are specific cases of the first. If law in a democracy does nothing else, it protects you from me.

What of freedom of conscience and the law? How else would we decide to handle situations where our government or our fellow citizens appeared in our own personal estimation to violate one of the three directives? What divides an issue of individual conscience from a matter of legal consequence in a democratic system of government? I refer to the list of requirements above. Given strong moral convictions, we are bound to disagree in our categorization of these matters. Without a strong commitment to that single sense of self-restraint, the whole structure of democratic rule would fall apart. For if I were free to declare that my beliefs were the only acceptable ones, and if I were free to impose my personal convictions on others, at that point, freedom of conscience would cease to exist.

And so we come to the most important requirement of a free people: that it both share enough of a common set of beliefs that they have a basis for widespread agreement on most issues, and that the people respect valid differences of opinion among themselves. This is where the law emerges as a cornerstone of freedom. This is what distinguishes us from other civilizations, including the one to our east, that poses as advanced and sophisticated but is mere camouflage for savagery. With a commitment to legal tenets that set their fellow citizens free, one can rely on the law to guide society from disagreement to disagreement while debate rages, especially when those disagreements form deep faultlines. Given these constraints, a strict limit on the scope and invasiveness of law should guide us in their authorship. A free people would want to minimize the reach and power of their differences in these respects. If one truly believes in freedom of conscience and in any democratic system's basis in the rule of law, it places us in a situation where our own beliefs and convictions must be tempered by our respect for other opinions, even when we ourselves believe we are right.

American government in its founding documents, if not always in its subsequent addendums, embodies a pure dedication to freedom of conscience. Therefore, each Constitutional amendment from the Bill of Rights forward, places a restraint on government in its ability to reach into the lives of individual citizens. None of these laws proscribes anything that would not infringe on another's basic rights.

Laws in the eyes of our Founding Fathers were the superstructure of a protective wall against tyranny, both of the governmental form, and of the rule of the mob. If the bricks in that structure were made of faith in a higher purpose in human existence, the mortar itself is the sense of restraint we all must feel in our judgment of others. It is no accident that our religious texts support these values.

Moral absolutes are critical in the establishment and defense of a democratic form of government because they instill a fierce sense of duty and inspire powerful convictions and faith, all of which is needed to fight through the obstacles that are ever present within and without a national struggle to find and keep freedom. Perhaps as much as we value our individual moral clarity, we must respect and defend another's right to decide for himself what is moral and correct.

We can measure the justice in our judgment in how it propels us to limit our interference in private matters of conscience. To argue otherwise is to argue for Shar'ia. When my personal moral conviction, derived from my own private understanding of the moral law become more important than protecting my fellow citizen's right to his own personal convictions, that is when oppression begins. In the west, we believe that all such convictions, while ultimately governed by universal truth, are still subjective when viewed from our own personal perspective. We know that no matter how deeply held our beliefs are, we may be asked to explain them, and to persuade others to reaffirm their agreement with us. And we know that sometimes we may lose the argument.

As my fellow citizen is protected from my personal convictions by the rule of law, he also may not impose anything of the sort on me. What protects you from me, also protects me from you. And you can bet that the most insidious and oppressive laws ever written had the express intent of protecting groups of people instead of individual conscience. You can bet that some of the most vicious tyranny often lurks under the guise of men's professed attempts to protect freedom and "collective" rights, as opposed to the individual himself.

I think of gun control laws in particular, but efforts to redefine marriage by fiat instead of widespread consensus also come to mind. When the minority attempts to dictate morality to the majority, it can be just as oppressive as mob rule. In the matter of marriage, a couple asks its community for a blessing for its union, and for economic incentives of one sort or another as it joins together. In a democracy, the community freely offers this blessing. Under the guise of "equal rights," activists today are trying to sell the idea that we must impose a new meaning to the ceremony of marriage. But that meaning is most significant not to the couple, to whom these activists ascribe collective rights, but to the community itself that bestows the privilege of marriage on a couple that meets its standards. In other words, activists today are not seeking an individual protection. They seek to impose on everyone in our land an acceptance of these new marital definitions.

Every law, every change to every law, and every exercise in justice must be examined carefully. What is often conducted in the name of freedom or community protection is often done for some other purpose, such as authoritarianism or reforming society by force. This is why governments must above all be restrained from being used as tools against individuals. Some of us would sell the American birthright of freedom for a mere sense of false security, or personal feeling, fleeting as it were, of satisfaction that our own individual values were being served.

The law is not there to be used as a tool for personal satisfaction. Finally, it is there to protect us from government and from each other.