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Quote of the Day: An Unjust Law Is No Law at All
Published in Religion & Philosophy
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You can’t really make thos argument on a society competing for a large variety of morals and values.
Or can you?
What is unjust in a society that believes it is morally and ethically justifiable to circumcise their young girls? Vs young boys?
What is unjust in a society that believes it is unjust to murder the unborn? Vs unjust to force women to carry resource stealers to term?
How do you maintain a lawful land when the concept of just laws is built on shared moral values and there are no shared moral values?
Dr. Martin Luther King had a few words to say about this:
https://lawandreligionforum.org/2012/01/16/martin-luther-king-on-just-and-unjust-laws/
So far all I’m up to is explaining my homeboys Augustine and Aquinas.
Well, something often is just or unjust whether we agree on it or not.
Not a question I know how to answer. If there is an answer.
Your questions are great illustrations of why our nation’s principles and rules – documented in the Declaration and the Constitution – took the form they did. In a heterogeneous society, morals can’t be dictated. The best you can do is set up “rules of the game” that require people to respect each other’s rights to life, liberty, and property (i.e., don’t hurt others or take their stuff). Such rules enable different people with wildly different beliefs to function cooperatively and with as little friction as possible.
As Randy Barnett observed, the Constitution governs those who govern us by limiting their power to a few, enumerated functions. This keeps majorities – or well-organized minorities – from using government’s power to oppress others.
Unfortunately, Progressives have hacked away at these safeguards for over a century and have weaponized government power against their political opponents. Populists on the right are now retaliating. Where this downward, tit-for-tat spiral will end – or if it will end – is anybody’s guess.
I think it’s the exact opposite. That a country with few laws is only workable in a largely homogeneous nation.
Our constitution is not suitable to large and fractured diversity of moral values and this break down is what results in more government interference to maintain the order.
Large government intrusion is needed in low trust/highly dependent/close quarter environments (which is why cosmopolitan urban centers go left). You still maintain a lot of the homogeneous values that breed high trust in rural environs that keeps those areas more free.
I think this idea that any amount of any people of any belief can live peaceably and freely close together is a conservative ideal that defies observable reality.
And you can’t make Aquinas’ argument to two people living under the same laws with vastly different values. Person A sees Person B’s just law as unjust and violates it (because an unjust law is no law). It leads to a breakdown in laws.
It reinforces the need for people groups that share similar moral values and backgrounds should live under governments of their own design. Which reinforces subsidiarity more than anything.
One moral foundation must always dominate a society. Otherwise, laws cease to represent moral necessities and become mere whims of fleeting powers and negotiations. A heterogenous society can only be fruitful and stable with a clear and resilient foundation shared by all.
We can consider objective truths and measures. Does the procedure cause one fleeting, quickly forgotten pain or recurring pains? Does it remove something never missed or something which denies one pleasure during intercourse? Is the purpose objectively disordered and unjust, such as to deny pleasure to women but not to men?
Again, we can seek objective truths. By what logical basis is a baby newly born inherently deserving of all protections and a baby in the womb is not? What are the qualities that distinguish one from the other? How is a born human yet incapable of any self-care or expression fundamentally superior in moral value than an adult chimpanzee? Society answered such questions about the fundamental qualities of common humanity in relation to slavery. Regarding the mother, we may look to other laws to verify that it is never permissible to kill an innocent person to spare oneself hardship.
Objective morality is possible but depends on basic facts about reality. That is why every religion addresses both a fundamental definition of reality and consequent standards of appropriate response to reality (morals). Laws are a social expression of ethics — application of moral rules to specific scenarios.
The more serious the moral dilemma, the more unified a society must be in its resolution. Federalism only works to the extent that states are permitted to cooperate as separate though allied societies. If they are joined into one society with equal application of laws and cultural mores, then one morality must rule.
And indeed any Christian must answer that there is one truth, one reality, for all of us. Cultural distinctions, like personalities, are justifiable only as various expressions of truth, beauty, and justice. As a personal habit which rejects justice must be struck down, so must any serious cultural particular be rejected if it is corrupt. As Steyn noted in America Alone:
“In a more culturally confident age, the British in India were faced with the practice of `suttee’ — the tradition of burning widows on the funeral pyres of their husbands. Gen. Sir Charles Napier was impeccably multicultural: ‘You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: When men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks, and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours.'”
Are you proposing a totalitarian society in which thoughts and beliefs are dictated and policed?
Sorry, I’m busy with this book:
What, beyond the rule of law (that is, laws apply to every citizen regardless of race, creed, position, or wealth) and respecting others’ rights to life, liberty, and property, do you propose for your one moral foundation that would dominate your ideal society?
This is why meaningful law has to be local, totally decentralized. Broad interventionist law with wide scope and pertinence at a national level in a giant country like the US ends up totalitarian or just chaotic heading toward totalitarianism. We put only trade and national defense at the national level, even when we were small and new. That is why we were unique and so successful. We’ve gotten off our roots and can’t seem to figure out why everything is becoming dysfunctional. Life is simply too complex and we are the most diverse folks on earth and always have been, even when we were mostly just European.
Again, laws apply ethics. Laws do not originate without implicit reference to religious assumptions. Rule of law is a standard of particular religions.
Christianity, generally outlined, has been moral foundation of the USA. Judaism flourished here because the two faiths share most basic moral tenets.
American culture is currently unraveling for two reasons in this regard. First, the expansion of government powers by corruption and unification of state cultures by technologies increasingly forces common standards on all states beyond an alliance of only basic agreements. Second, the pretense of secular indifference to moral assumptions makes recognition and discussion of shifting foundations difficult.
Religion is inescapable. Again, religions contain two parts: (1) a fundamental and comprehensive definition of reality, (2) a moral response to that basic reality.
Dominance of a religion cannot be replaced by nothing. It can only be replaced by another religion. In other words, beliefs can only be replaced by contrary beliefs. Historically, religions have normally referenced supernatural elements; and so most people associate religion only with supernatural systems. But a definition of reality can include supernatural elements or not.
Modern religions are mostly forms of material statism. Engagement of reality is organized around government, rather than with its limited assistance. The purpose of life and means of fulfilling that purpose are entirely subsumed into government and political organization.
Secularism is in fact a return to god-kings, Gaia worship, and other pagan devotions. But it remains nebulous until formally asserted under dictatorship. The crushing of “homophobia” for example a religious action: enforcement of a moral dictum in response to a claimed reality.
Basically, I agree. But the US Constitution represents an alliance of various peoples with shared cultural roots. It would not have emerged had peoples from 18th-century China, Arabia, Congo, and the Amazon been stuck together. Beneath the state cultures of early America lied shared assumptions about reality and morals.
Even federalism depends upon some basic cultural unity. Otherwise, what distinguishes one nation from another?
Specifically, which Christian ethics do you want codified into law?
For example, life imprisonment only makes sense as an alternative to the death penalty if one acknowledges the immortal soul and hope of spiritual redemption.
If the only justice that matters is earthly justice, then murder cannot be reconciled and the murderer’s potential for repentance is insignificant compared to the costs of keeping him or the risks of releasing him. But if we assume that God is wondrously merciful and that a murderer might yet become able and willing to love, thereby preparing his soul for salvation even if he remains imprisoned until death, then that duty of society to afford wicked souls every chance at redemption might be worth the financial and social costs of keeping him alive.
Post-Christian societies abandon corporal punishments because materialist worldviews focus on pain and pleasure, disregarding the fleeting nature of moderated pains in preference for extended and much more disruptive prison sentences.
On abortion, Christians and Jews had reason to believe babies in the womb were inherently precious long before scientific research verified the full humanity of the unborn. “Before I formed you in the womb I knew you.”
Our religion is why we treat enemies in war and competitors in commerce as fellows in humanity due basic considerations, rather than in the tribal terms of cultures like WWII-era Japan or communists. Christians have not always lived up to the “love your enemies” paradigm, but it is always there to challenge us.
What we believe the world to be, what humanity is in relation, inevitably shapes decisions large and small about what laws are due and necessary.
Post-Christian Westerners believe in the perfectability of earthly society, so they prioritize and empower government. They believe evil is born of ignorance, that “awareness” in a way forces justice, and thus they favor heavy-handed indoctrination.
Beliefs matter. Laws are instituted by belief. They are obeyed by belief or else by fear.
I thought Stina was pointing out the disadvantages of “a society competing for a large variety of morals and values.”
At a minimum, you’d need to have the moral foundation that recognizes those rights.
In Locke, the recognition that G-d created us and that we are G-d’s prized possessions is the foundation of human rights to life, liberty, and property.
(It’s not uniquely Christian. Locke is basing his theory on a pretty generic theism.)
I bet early proponents of a vague deism assumed that such generic belief could be sustained. But without really taking interest in God’s nature and insisting on particular revelations, deism devolves into agnosticism and finally atheism.
God is a personal and active being of love, but “god” the unknowable watchmaker might as well be Zeus, Thor, or Buddha for all post-Christian “spiritual” people care.
Very likely.
But Locke was not a deist himself. And in Letter Concerning Toleration he’s in favor of religious liberty for different specific denominations.
Some people sincerely believe that Jesus was a socialist. I think that that belief is based on a misreading of the Bible, and people have made the counter argument better than I can. Still, the fact remains that others sincerely believe that he was. And it’s not just people on the fringe. The “Social Principles” section in the United Methodists’ Book of Discipline, comes close to outlining a Socialist society, and supports government policies that provide for (among other things):
Why are their religious ethics less valid than yours? Once you’ve established the groundwork for your religious ethics to become the law of the land, what happens when a good Methodist or another Barrack Obama becomes President?
“our Creator”
Why do you characterize it as a conservative ideal? I would categorize it as belonging in the liberal/Progressive camp.
Do Progressives tolerate different beliefs?
Truth is what matters. If you believe something to be true and believe recognition of that particular aspect of reality is important with regard to law, then you will fight for that recognition. If it is a less important truth or a matter which does not require involvement of laws and politics, then you will be more willing to compromise and tolerate wrong beliefs.
All people act this way — not just Christians, a subset of Christians, social conservatives, or anyone else. All people believe legal justice should accord with truth, though we perceive and understand it differently. To hope that truth as one knows wins out in democratic competition and negotiation is not to forbid others from participation or rule over them without regard for free will.
All views are “valid” in the sense that all are democratically admissible. Not all are true.
What distinguishes my application of Christian morals from socialist interpretations? Continuity and logic.
The same Church which by divine authority chose books to be selected and rejected for the Christian Bible has anointed kings and established ethical principles like subsidiarity (limited, local governance) over millenia, collegially refining understanding. That is how this discission began — citing skilled and disciplined Christian thinkers on whose logic further arguments were built. Some Christians (even popes) say ridiculous things, but the dogma is continuous as debates rage on. Not even a pope has authority to reverse or undo doctrines of beliefs and morals.
Debates about truth citing the Bible (revelation) are like debates proceeding from any other premises. Whether citing the book of Samuel or Einstein’s theories, both good and bad arguments are possible. Disagreement does not require equivocation.
Again, there is nothing extraordinary about what I have been saying. For Democrats to win, Republicans must be able to lose. Democrats are generally wrong and Republicans are… more tolerable. What will I do if Democrats are elected and legislate like Democrats? I will argue against them (for truth) and, per Augustine, and disobey grossly unjust laws regarding serious matters.
It doesn’t matter how people are wrong — politically, religiously, aesthetically, etc. Every person should argue for the truth as he or she sees it. With God’s grace, our errors will be corrected and our wisdom manifested in right conduct.
Sorry if I have not understood you correctly or droned on too long.
I’d say it’s demonstrated in American history that homogeneity of moral understanding is a prerequisite for a society functioning peaceably and cooperatively (the Civil War being a counterexample, but I would argue even slave-holding founders knew slavery was immoral).
But, as Americans diversify and become more secular (rejecting natural law and objective truth) we become more contentious and incompatible. Blame Darwin for progressive arbitrariness and capriciousness (Great article at the Claremont on The Left Side of History) eroding our society. The Obama administration might agree that “unjust law is no law at all,” because they decided it was right and just to spy on the Trump campaign, for example. They’re not lawless, they’re SJWs.
So, I’m basically with Stina on this and I think the only hope for peaceful coexistence with the Left is a divorce agreement between the red and blue states, which is highly unlikely.
Stick with the real one. I don’t matter.
I would rather live in a country in which no one’s religious views (including “secular religious” views) are forced on those who don’t believe them. That’s why I believe that the framework set up set up by the Founding Fathers is worth restoring. Once we again live under a rule-of-law framework in which all are treated equally under the law and the government restrains me only to the extent that it requires me to respect others’ persons and property, I will be satisfied.
That my neighbor is Muslim, Druid, Atheist, or even Progressive does not bother me as long as they respect my rights as I respect theirs.
Afraid that window is closed. The Left is obsessed with power and conformity. You will never be left alone. And the framework the founders set up was wholly dependent on natural law (rights come from Nature’s God, not government). The Left simply doesn’t believe that anymore.
I have a different diagnosis. The source of America’s worst disgraces – slavery, the mistreatment of Native Americans, Jim Crow, eugenics – was not difference of opinion, race, sex, class, talent, wealth, or religion. Rather it was that people divided along such lines were able to subvert government’s coercive power to advance their own ideas and interests through force.