Legislating Morality

Micah Watson on Legislating Morality. That you "Can't Legislate Morality" is one of those stupid truisms that isn't true. An excerpt:

As Hadley Arkes has argued, if it is wrong to torture other human beings, then we do not content ourselves with mere tax incentives to encourage citizens to stop. We know that the wrong of torture requires that this choice be removed altogether from the domain of what is acceptable. You can enjoy the symphony, a NASCAR race, or the latest offering at the movies, but the logic of morals and law removes the option of torturing your neighbor for your weekend’s entertainment—even if your neighbor annoys you.

An interview with Arkes, by the way, will be published in Touchstone in early 2011. You may (and should!) subscribe here.

 

Comments

[GL]

Dr. Watson is spot-on. The only way to avoid legislating morality is to not legislate at all, and to not legislate is to not govern and to not govern is to choose anarchy, which is the state of lawlessness. The choices are then to legislate morality or lawlessness. And to choose the latter is even to make a moral choice. Making a moral choice, then, is inescapable.

[Rob G]

There is, however, another sense in which the "you can't legislate morality" argument is correct: the one which states that laws do not make men moral. This was the original usage of the phrase, I believe, but over time it morphed into the meaning normally understood today, used usually by liberals who object to moral (i.e., religious) arguments being incorporated into political discussions.

Laws do not make men good, they simply prescribe/proscribe certain behaviors. A man may be a moral monster and a scrupulous "law abiding citizen" simultaneously.