[coloradan]

Suppose that, due to a tragic set of circumstances, the Taliban Party candidates sweep Congress and the presidency. If the government is free to legislate morality, I think we can agree the resulting legislating would greatly suck. Only two things would keep such a government from enacting all sorts of bad laws: the Second Amendment, and a general prohibition against the government legislating morality. Only the latter option is nonviolent. (And, given that the Hildebeast was elected, can you be so sure the Taliban party can't possibly win?)

[ggekko]

"prohibition against the government legislating morality.."

There is no general prohibition against legislating morality. Every legal system since Antiquity is an attempt to codify moral precepts. Whether it is Justinian's Code or English Common Law, the law seeks to proscribe unaccepatble human behaviors in society.

The American Constitution and Bill of Rights represent a codification of specific type of Christian Protestant and Judaic concepts concerning human morality and the accountability of State Power to Divine authority. Certain Enlightenment notions regarding the dignity of the individual were also grafted on in the form of the Bill of Rights.

In the hypothetical example of the Taliban Party coming to power what would prevent Islamic Law being imposed on the rest of the country is the codification of the Christian docrine of Free Will in several Ammendements to the Constitution. Sharia could only be imposed coercively and that would require a suspension of the Constitution in order for such a scenario to play out.

The American legal system, derived from Christian Protestant and Judaic concepts, is the true guarantor of authentic pluralism in society.

It is worth noting that Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia also developed extensive and complex legal systems. At the Nuremburg trails the Nazis defended themeselves by asserting that evrything they had done while in power was legal under the German system. It was only after Porsecutors invoked the Natural Law doctrine (which presupposes a higher morality against which leagl systems can be judged) that convictions were obtained against the Nazis at Nuremburg.