The Morality of Government
This is another recycled post (see I'm good! No waste!) and though its a little different than the usual type of post I will be making, I think its important; if you want to judge government planning, you need to understand how we perceive government:
Somehow, maybe because we've lived so long in dictatorial governments of one kind or another- monarchies, empires, tribal rule, religious societies, etc-- we look to authority for morality. So, we end up trusting government's motives even when we should know better, and we see corruption as bad but legalized wrongs as okay, simply because they are legal.
Sometimes corruption is not what is actually immoral-- like under the Soviet Union, corruption could mean pay offs that allow people some freedom to move, to trade, to free their relatives from gulags. It might be unfair for some to be freed and not others but the corruption is at least saving some people. But it is very difficult for people to separate what is legal from what is right.
We often think, maybe unconsciously, that if something is legal, it is okay, it must be okay. It must be fair and right and moral. Or even if it is theoretically wrong, it isn't your fault - you are absolved of any sin. If the system is set up that way then you have no moral duty to go against it. Perhaps, in fact, your duty is to go along with it, to obey the law. And if something is against the law then it is wrong in some degree even just because it is breaking the law.
Because of this, we end up sustaining evil regimes and rules and institutions that we might otherwise break out of. It also explains why we inevitably expect government to fix any perceived problems seen in the market, rather than asking whether government could actually do something better than the private sector, we see a problem and say "this is a problem so government must fix it." So, the irrational faith in government is a serious problem, it distorts our world view and we don't even realize it. We have far too much faith in the moral authority of government, and hence its omniscience and omnipotence.
Here is an example. Someone, ostensibly a libertarian - the group least likely to trust government, seemingly least likely believe in the moral authority of government - was commenting on a blog post and made the following remark. With regard to why it is okay to accept government welfare he said this; I am paraphrasing: "You've already paid in to the program. The program already exists. It may be immoral but while it exists you may as well enjoy it. Heck, if there was a law that required all women who I wanted to have sex with to sleep with me, I'd be a busy man."
Now, it was an offhand remark which he probably hadn't thought through. And, he said that the program itself (welfare) might be immoral, so he was admitting that government can do wrong. However, he was essentially arguing that so long as the program or the law exists, it is morally okay to make use of it. Without necessarily realizing that he was saying so, this guy had just said "If government made rape legal, I would rape every woman I was attracted to."
The crazy thing is that he didn't realize it. The much more frightening thing is that nobody else seemed to either. The comment went by unnoticed. When I saw it, I pointed out the implications of what he'd said, and most people ignored my outrage. Then someone actually called me a PC nut-job and extremist and defended him. One person claimed that "if its legal, it can't be called rape!" Only one person agreed with me, but it wasn't a rigorous agreement, it was "I actually agree with that" as if it was a matter of opinion.
It isn't a matter of opinion. Just because government makes something legal doesn't change what it is- be it theft (legal under communism) or murder of a certain group (legal under Hitler) or slavery (legal once in America) or rape. It is the worse form of moral relativism to imagine otherwise, yet we are much more capable of it than we realize.
If one is oppressed and forced to engage in these immoral activities as happened under communism and under Hitler, they might be more easily forgiven, but we must still recognize that it is immoral and we must not think that we can happily engage in these activities without guilt simply because they were made legal - and that is what this guy was saying.
Until we can take responsibility for our own actions under any system, we will have a hard time fixing the system.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will add: maybe he thought it wouldn't be his crime (the rape) because the law made her have sex with him. So, government was raping her- he wasn't. Still, it is a strange sort of morality that makes it okay for him to oblige the government's sin and take part. And, slavery is no different - if the government makes it illegal for the slave to escape, does that negate the role of the slaveholder? Does that absolve him of any wrongdoing?
Somehow, maybe because we've lived so long in dictatorial governments of one kind or another- monarchies, empires, tribal rule, religious societies, etc-- we look to authority for morality. So, we end up trusting government's motives even when we should know better, and we see corruption as bad but legalized wrongs as okay, simply because they are legal.
Sometimes corruption is not what is actually immoral-- like under the Soviet Union, corruption could mean pay offs that allow people some freedom to move, to trade, to free their relatives from gulags. It might be unfair for some to be freed and not others but the corruption is at least saving some people. But it is very difficult for people to separate what is legal from what is right.
We often think, maybe unconsciously, that if something is legal, it is okay, it must be okay. It must be fair and right and moral. Or even if it is theoretically wrong, it isn't your fault - you are absolved of any sin. If the system is set up that way then you have no moral duty to go against it. Perhaps, in fact, your duty is to go along with it, to obey the law. And if something is against the law then it is wrong in some degree even just because it is breaking the law.
Because of this, we end up sustaining evil regimes and rules and institutions that we might otherwise break out of. It also explains why we inevitably expect government to fix any perceived problems seen in the market, rather than asking whether government could actually do something better than the private sector, we see a problem and say "this is a problem so government must fix it." So, the irrational faith in government is a serious problem, it distorts our world view and we don't even realize it. We have far too much faith in the moral authority of government, and hence its omniscience and omnipotence.
Here is an example. Someone, ostensibly a libertarian - the group least likely to trust government, seemingly least likely believe in the moral authority of government - was commenting on a blog post and made the following remark. With regard to why it is okay to accept government welfare he said this; I am paraphrasing: "You've already paid in to the program. The program already exists. It may be immoral but while it exists you may as well enjoy it. Heck, if there was a law that required all women who I wanted to have sex with to sleep with me, I'd be a busy man."
Now, it was an offhand remark which he probably hadn't thought through. And, he said that the program itself (welfare) might be immoral, so he was admitting that government can do wrong. However, he was essentially arguing that so long as the program or the law exists, it is morally okay to make use of it. Without necessarily realizing that he was saying so, this guy had just said "If government made rape legal, I would rape every woman I was attracted to."
The crazy thing is that he didn't realize it. The much more frightening thing is that nobody else seemed to either. The comment went by unnoticed. When I saw it, I pointed out the implications of what he'd said, and most people ignored my outrage. Then someone actually called me a PC nut-job and extremist and defended him. One person claimed that "if its legal, it can't be called rape!" Only one person agreed with me, but it wasn't a rigorous agreement, it was "I actually agree with that" as if it was a matter of opinion.
It isn't a matter of opinion. Just because government makes something legal doesn't change what it is- be it theft (legal under communism) or murder of a certain group (legal under Hitler) or slavery (legal once in America) or rape. It is the worse form of moral relativism to imagine otherwise, yet we are much more capable of it than we realize.
If one is oppressed and forced to engage in these immoral activities as happened under communism and under Hitler, they might be more easily forgiven, but we must still recognize that it is immoral and we must not think that we can happily engage in these activities without guilt simply because they were made legal - and that is what this guy was saying.
Until we can take responsibility for our own actions under any system, we will have a hard time fixing the system.
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I will add: maybe he thought it wouldn't be his crime (the rape) because the law made her have sex with him. So, government was raping her- he wasn't. Still, it is a strange sort of morality that makes it okay for him to oblige the government's sin and take part. And, slavery is no different - if the government makes it illegal for the slave to escape, does that negate the role of the slaveholder? Does that absolve him of any wrongdoing?
Labels: philosophy
posted by liberty at
11:12 PM
0 Comments:
Post a Comment
<< Home