mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) (07/05/85)
>If the government started to round up innocent people and kill them, >would government sanctification make it "moral". Hitler's actions were >completely legal (at least, within Germany and Austria). They sure weren't >moral. > The above was extracted from an ongoing discussion of Affirmative Action, but I wish to illustrate a different point, that I tried to make a while ago in an article that was apparently illegal to transmit to Germany. The Nazi slaughter of Jews was not moral by the standards of anyone who is respectable to the readers of this net. But by their own standards they were acting not just legally, not passively morally, but according to a moral imperative. They were gaining points in whatever passed for a Nazi heaven in the same way that a Christian gains points by doing good deeds. I think that was the ultimate horror of the Nazi empire, that the notion of good and evil could be so turned around, and so passionately believed. I'm not going to quote Himmler again. Look for the older article in which I tried to make much the same point a few weeks ago. In contemporary terms, different groups have very different ideas of morality. As many posters have noted, followers of Khomeini can go straight to heaven for massacring a bunch of Americans and dying in the process. It is for them right, moral, and necessary to perform acts that are to most of us totally repugnant. On a lesser scale, you will find such differences round the world. We cannot say what is moral; doubtless some of our moral imperatives are totally repugnant to some people. Laws cannot make things moral that were immoral, or vice-versa. Similarly, it is impossible to construct a set of laws that permit only moral acts and prohibit only immoral ones -- at least it is impossible if the law is to apply equally to everyone. Laws should be the minimum that permits society to function both freely and efficiently. We can argue about the means to that end, but I think that both libertarians and socialists on the net would agree on the objective (fundamentalists might not). -- Martin Taylor {allegra,linus,ihnp4,floyd,ubc-vision}!utzoo!dciem!mmt {uw-beaver,qucis,watmath}!utcsri!dciem!mmt
mms1646@acf4.UUCP (Michael M. Sykora) (07/08/85)
>/* mmt@dciem.UUCP (Martin Taylor) / 5:59 pm Jul 4, 1985 */ >Laws should be the minimum >that permits society to function both freely and efficiently. We can >argue about the means to that end, but I think that both libertarians >and socialists on the net would agree on the objective (fundamentalists >might not). This is indeed the view of utilitarians and libertarians , but I don't see how socialists fit in. It seems to me that they wish to introduce laws promoting their own moral agenda, quite apart from considerations of freedom and efficiency (I assume you mean efficiency in the production of material wealth). >Martin Taylor Mike Sykora