MORALITY and THE CONSTITUTION
I received a reply from a certain John to the question I had posed in my last post Whimsical Judgments where he thinks he had it answered. To the question:
By what or whose moral authority or standard is this judgment on Christian tradition being made?
John had replied: "Simple. The authority of the Constitution of the United States."
The Constitution of the United States, however, is a document written by men, who made no special claim to moral authority. It is a contract of sorts between the government and the governed, without auto-proclaiming its own the moral rightness. That moral rightness is assumed and comes from elsewhere, namely the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition that had largely shaped modern Western Civilization. If the Founding Fathers had embraced the principles therein and deemed them good, it was also due to the religious, moral and cultural conditioning that came by the christianizing influence on their civilization and their times.
John then goes on to cite section 1 of the 14th Amendment and adds, "These are beautiful words. No priest or prophet, saint or savior ever said such wondrous words."
But, the US Constitution and its amendments did not arise in a social and historical vacuum. Priests, prophets, saints and, particularly, a savior had actually been the sources of such wondrous words. The principle of human equality was fairly unknown in the ancient and medieval worlds. Emperors and pharaohs were gods, kings had divine rights, and the members of the aristocratic classes were not only socially superior to the common man, but morally superior as well. It took a savior, Jesus Christ, to enunciate the idea of human equality in the eyes of God, the Creator of all things, between rich and poor, strong and weak. It was a revolutionary way of viewing man in society, which we take all too much for granted today. The US Constitution, while still just a legal document, is tributary to this view.
John goes on to write, "Why this lovely clause, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" might as well put into the text the words 'your personal prejudices and distastes shall not have th force of law.'"
Yet, there is nothing in the US Constitution that prevents the "personal prejudices and distastes" of citizens from acquiring the force of law if these do not infringe on specified individual rights. In fact, laws are basically made this way all the time. One could even say that all laws really derive from these. But, laws are rarely passed for some irrational, inexplicable and mysterious reason. Laws are passed in order that society, for the purpose of creating or preserving an established order, might exercise a control over the actions of individuals, who might otherwise disrupt this order. The established order may need to be disrupted from time to time, of course, but there are also times when it is better left the way it is.
The 14th Amendment simply guarantees that laws, regardless of their morality or what might have motivated them, will be equally applied to all citizens. That hardly qualifies it as a moral authority. Instead, it is we who judge this to be a good thing, and we base this judgment on our own moral sensibilities, as John had done, acting in that way, really, as his own moral authority. That might answer the question as far as he is concerned, though I'll pose the question again, anyway:
By what or whose moral authority or standard is this judgment on Christian tradition being made?
The issue I had raised in my last post concerned a particular facet of two opposing world-views: the religious world-view sees certain sexual practices as morally wrong, and therefore, intolerable; the other sees no, or very few, sexual practices to be morally wrong. The latter view, however, does see the former view and its intolerance of cetain sexual practices to be, itself, wrong and intolerable. That is, presuming as it does that all or most sexual practices are not immoral, such a view subscribes to the paradoxical rule that it is forbidden to forbid, that it is intolerable to be intolerant, that it is wrong to be judgmental, all said acts being "bad" things, of course. It's also hard to have this sort of debate when the conclusion is assumed as the premise.
But I might pose a corollary question while I'm at it:
Who made up that rule? And by what or whose authority?
An earlier post THE NEW MORAL PARADIGM elucidates also on this theme.
I received a reply from a certain John to the question I had posed in my last post Whimsical Judgments where he thinks he had it answered. To the question:
By what or whose moral authority or standard is this judgment on Christian tradition being made?
John had replied: "Simple. The authority of the Constitution of the United States."
The Constitution of the United States, however, is a document written by men, who made no special claim to moral authority. It is a contract of sorts between the government and the governed, without auto-proclaiming its own the moral rightness. That moral rightness is assumed and comes from elsewhere, namely the Judeo-Christian ethical tradition that had largely shaped modern Western Civilization. If the Founding Fathers had embraced the principles therein and deemed them good, it was also due to the religious, moral and cultural conditioning that came by the christianizing influence on their civilization and their times.
John then goes on to cite section 1 of the 14th Amendment and adds, "These are beautiful words. No priest or prophet, saint or savior ever said such wondrous words."
But, the US Constitution and its amendments did not arise in a social and historical vacuum. Priests, prophets, saints and, particularly, a savior had actually been the sources of such wondrous words. The principle of human equality was fairly unknown in the ancient and medieval worlds. Emperors and pharaohs were gods, kings had divine rights, and the members of the aristocratic classes were not only socially superior to the common man, but morally superior as well. It took a savior, Jesus Christ, to enunciate the idea of human equality in the eyes of God, the Creator of all things, between rich and poor, strong and weak. It was a revolutionary way of viewing man in society, which we take all too much for granted today. The US Constitution, while still just a legal document, is tributary to this view.
John goes on to write, "Why this lovely clause, "No State shall make or enforce any law which shall abridge the privileges or immunities of citizens of the United States" might as well put into the text the words 'your personal prejudices and distastes shall not have th force of law.'"
Yet, there is nothing in the US Constitution that prevents the "personal prejudices and distastes" of citizens from acquiring the force of law if these do not infringe on specified individual rights. In fact, laws are basically made this way all the time. One could even say that all laws really derive from these. But, laws are rarely passed for some irrational, inexplicable and mysterious reason. Laws are passed in order that society, for the purpose of creating or preserving an established order, might exercise a control over the actions of individuals, who might otherwise disrupt this order. The established order may need to be disrupted from time to time, of course, but there are also times when it is better left the way it is.
The 14th Amendment simply guarantees that laws, regardless of their morality or what might have motivated them, will be equally applied to all citizens. That hardly qualifies it as a moral authority. Instead, it is we who judge this to be a good thing, and we base this judgment on our own moral sensibilities, as John had done, acting in that way, really, as his own moral authority. That might answer the question as far as he is concerned, though I'll pose the question again, anyway:
By what or whose moral authority or standard is this judgment on Christian tradition being made?
The issue I had raised in my last post concerned a particular facet of two opposing world-views: the religious world-view sees certain sexual practices as morally wrong, and therefore, intolerable; the other sees no, or very few, sexual practices to be morally wrong. The latter view, however, does see the former view and its intolerance of cetain sexual practices to be, itself, wrong and intolerable. That is, presuming as it does that all or most sexual practices are not immoral, such a view subscribes to the paradoxical rule that it is forbidden to forbid, that it is intolerable to be intolerant, that it is wrong to be judgmental, all said acts being "bad" things, of course. It's also hard to have this sort of debate when the conclusion is assumed as the premise.
But I might pose a corollary question while I'm at it:
Who made up that rule? And by what or whose authority?
An earlier post THE NEW MORAL PARADIGM elucidates also on this theme.
posted by A Voice in the Wilderness at 1:23 AM
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