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To: BillOfRights;freeeee
To follow up on #190:

Libertarians say that it is immoral to initiate force or fraud. I agree with this, with a little change: "it is immoral to initiate force other than in order to enforce morality." (Without this amendment, you couldn't use force to stop fraud.)

But the problem is, the Liberals would not agree to it when it did not suit them! You know how irrational they can get. They would call you immoral, claiming that you wanted to force your morality on them.

This is to make the point that there is no such thing as absolute morality. There is no morality that everyone agrees on. I wish there were, but there isn't. Morality is determined by ... oh, I hate to say this ... the majority. Too bad!

200 posted on 02/19/2002 11:03:43 AM PST by Smile-n-Win
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To: Smile-n-Win
Morality is determined by ... oh, I hate to say this ... the majority.

I think you're confusing morality and law. The two most certainly are not one and the same.

For example: A person is prohibited from reading objectionable material. If he refrains from doing so because he fears legal problems (force), is he moral? No. Fear and morality are different. He didn't refrain because he thought it was the wrong thing to do (moral decision), he refrained because he's scared of men with guns (fear decision). To the casual observer the end result may seem the same, and to many that's all that really matters, but in reality, that individual is not one bit more moral than without the law.

To make matters worse, once people begin to assume law is morality, they believe anything legal is moral. So lets take another example, some person who believes that law is morality. Say there is no law against trespass. He then trespasses, without contemplating the moral implications, because he has abdicated moral decisions to a majority vote. Is he moral? No. Is trespass moral because the majority says it is? No.

See the problem?

203 posted on 02/19/2002 11:23:33 AM PST by freeeee
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