Should morality be sole guiding force?

  • Thread starter Thread starter Maxirad
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
M

Maxirad

Guest
Should morality be the only guiding force for all policy in the United States?
 
Yes, but with a caveat that “morality” doesn’t translate into a theocracy.
 
Do you mean government policy, business policy, or what?

In any case, there are other factors besides morality in any prudential judgment, although morality should always be a top consideration for a Christian.
 
Should morality be the only guiding force for all policy in the United States?
Morality should be an important factor in governmental policy, but there are other factors to consider, although when you look at these other factors they may involve morality to the extent that the policy should be dedicated to the well being of the populace and it is a moral good to promote the general welfare of the country and world.
 
Morality should be the foundation of everything, but deciding where to put a water facility is not a moral decision in and of itself. If one has two or more moral options, then one must use non-moral criteria to decide, no?
 
This is not a simple yes or no. Whose morality? Even religious groups don’t agree on what’s moral.
 
Should morality be the only guiding force for all policy in the United States?
The obvious answer is NO!

Trying to control people completely through policy and law would eradicate the acceptance of free will. We also lack universal agreement on ‘what is moral
 
The obvious answer is NO!

Trying to control people completely through policy and law would eradicate the acceptance of free will. We also lack universal agreement on ‘what is moral
Anarchy is not a good alternative.

Pope Benedict:
Code:
"If we cannot have common values, common truths, sufficient communication on the essentials of human life–how to live how to respond to the great challenges of human life–then true society becomes impossible."
Commentary by the Practical Catholic:

"How true this is. Where there is no communication, no culture, no shared experience, there is no society; because there is no people. There remains only a vast and foreboding, unforgiving sea of individuals ready to crash upon each other and the world with the slightest wind. Without a common basis, we have not the vaulted pluralism we’re taught to embrace, but Babel, in all the confusion and madness of a society with no binding forces. Already we are seeing the tensions of this fragmentation breaking out across cultures.

“Without common values and truths, such as in the socieites we find ourselves in, we find the fabric of society torn like Joseph’s cloak, by a great many tribes which would like to lay claim to the title of favored. Leftists, conservatives, anarchists, nihilists, secularists, objectivists, the shallow, the entertainers, the entertained, all vying for control against each other. Tribalism can indeed spawn differentiation, but without some common ground, and in the face of increasing jargon not only in the academies but in the cultures; we shall be left with madness. In the end this tribalism can only result in the decline of all their claims, and the alienation of one from the other. Babel is the happenstance when society tries to become God.”
 
From George Washington’s Farewell Address - 1796

"Of all the dispositions and habits which lead to political prosperity, religion and morality are indispensable supports. In vain would that man claim the tribute of patriotism, who should labor to subvert these great pillars of human happiness, these firmest props of the duties of men and citizens. The mere politician, equally with the pious man, ought to respect and to cherish them. A volume could not trace all their connections with private and public felicity. Let it simply be asked: Where is the security for property, for reputation, for life, if the sense of religious obligation desert the oaths which are the instruments of investigation in courts of justice ? And let us with caution indulge the supposition that morality can be maintained without religion. Whatever may be conceded to the influence of refined education on minds of peculiar structure, reason and experience both forbid us to expect that national morality can prevail in exclusion of religious principle.

“It is substantially true that virtue or morality is a necessary spring of popular government. The rule, indeed, extends with more or less force to every species of free government. Who that is a sincere friend to it can look with indifference upon attempts to shake the foundation of the fabric?”

We’ve been down this road before.

Ed
 
Your reading comprehension is very different than mine.

I didn’t see it as an either or question, that total anarchy was the only option vs having a theocracy and some form of sharia law.

Obviously morals provide us with policy guidance, tempered by our constitutional rights etc.
Anarchy is not a good alternative.
 
The obvious answer is NO!

Trying to control people completely through policy and law would eradicate the acceptance of free will. We also lack universal agreement on ‘what is moral
Making morality the guiding force of policy decisions does not equal instituting a theocracy and depriving people of their rights, nor trying to control them.

It is a moral decision to permit freedom of religion, for example, and to bake it into the constitution.
 
Making morality the guiding force of policy decisions does not equal instituting a theocracy and depriving people of their rights, nor trying to control them.

It is a moral decision to permit freedom of religion, for example, and to bake it into the constitution.
So you are saying the OP was nebulous and thus ill defined?
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top