Paradigms of Social Justice and Obligation

VIII Legislating morality

    Many signs of growing intolerance dot the American ideo-scape. Leaders demand "zero-tolerance of drugs" in the silliest, and most frightening, routine. The mildest nonconformity results in ostracism, peer abuse, lost employment prospects, and official suspicion. Choice over the disposition of one's own earnings steadily declines; once just taxes and tithes, we must now add insurance, pension, company benefits, leases, passed-on business costs in products, and so on. The loss of control over one's own property represents an intolerance for your private choice. Whenever possible, the government "protects" the consumer from rash consumption - restricting medical drugs, prohibiting countless products, taxing and tariffing selected products, etc.

    When the term "legislating morality" appeared in the media lately, editorialists referred to the legislating of clearly religious morality - creating public demands out of private, even minority, beliefs. While all laws can be construed as some morality, laws are accepted and obeyed because they are socially functional. These acceptable laws are an institutionalization of ancient common law, or common sense fairness and justice. Specific victims had only to demand restitution or the fulfillment of obligations. However, where once mores grew out of practicality and tradition, modern Law consists of whatever remote, anonymous, and barely accountable rulers can get away with. Likewise, judicial precedent is whatever they have gotten away with. Concepts like brotherhood, fairness, equality, trust, altruism simply can't be expected to apply outside our tribal origins regardless of how sweet and virtuous they are.

    The relatively powerful special interests therefore continue to legislate and enforce their versions of morality - behavioral injunctions neither functional nor commonly acceptable. Totalitarian intrusions increase almost every day: vice laws, sex laws, censorship, travel laws, prohibited enterprise, occupational laws, zoning laws, etc. It seems unending public services can be beneficently provided; the cost of which is extorted "justifiably" from its captive beneficiaries. Since laws are much harder to remove once created - again because of the public good vs. special interest process - they accumulate thru the conservative/liberal cycle, with government gaining power in every phase. Broadly, in the conservative phase civil liberties are attacked while in the liberal phase economic liberties are attacked. This three decade cycle is reflected in the most fundamental measures of American society, eg., the money supply or federal regulatory growth, which has continued imperturbably since our country's beginning. [Batra]

    With such deterministic social cycles, one cannot help but ask what individual behavior is involved. Belief and behavior seem more reactive than self-initiated. Individuals seem capable only of reacting to their situations in our enormous, complex economy, though the economy is only the total of its economic players. Unlike the complexity of a social system, the main carrier of interaction between economic players is a quantity: money. However, much like a social system, the effect of interaction depends on individuals' values - here concerning money - values decided consciously or not. Perhaps the value of tolerance is debased as easily -as unknowingly- as the money supply. Comfortable mindlessness, so Ellen Langer describes, is a denial of alternate perspectives, with intolerance as a clear result.