The Conservative Social Justice Warrior

What "You can't legislate morality" means to me.

(Hang on, this is likely to get lengthy.)

First, a couple of algebraic equations to simplify matters.

Legal <> Moral
Illegal <> Immoral

Not only are legality and morality not fungible, the former, collective terms are often used by people to violate their own, personal moral code, or to demand that others do so. But let's look at the most easily-digestible side of those equations first, to understand the most common meaning of "you can't legislate morality."

A number of moral stances that are easily discernible as cornerstones of civilized behavior, whether through secular logic or mystic commands, and common among virtually all civilized cultures, are generally exempted from the "You can't legislate morality" meme, although (and I believe, because) those particular stances are intensely moral and almost universal. I think of them as the big four: killing (or physically damaging) people, stealing, enslaving and lying. Regardless of where you got your information, it's not hard to see that absent a societal revulsion and condemnation toward those four acts, "might makes right" would flourish and civil society would never have an opportunity to arise from the ashes. Thus civilized societies (or those striving to become civilized) forbid one person from killing, stealing from, enslaving, or lying to, another person.

So those four intensely immoral behaviors, being almost universally recognized as immoral, are somehow exempted from the phrase "You can't legislate morality."

That transforms "You can't legislate morality" into "You can't legislate against acts that you personally consider immoral unless those truths are almost universally recognized, or so many people will ignore your demands that you might as well have never attempted to do so in the first place."

Witness any number of behaviors, from speeding to extramarital sex to various prohibitions against drugs, alcohol, gambling, and prostitution, that have been declared "illegal" and which people still engage in with impunity. That's because most people's definitions of "immoral" don't include those particular "illegal" acts. In light of those behaviors, "You can't legislate [your personal, not universally recognized] morality" makes perfect sense, and helps explain why there's so much contention in politics today. Governments in general have gotten far away from attempting to enforce only those universally-accepted moral behaviors necessary for the establishment and growth of civil society, and are infested with millions of laws that declare various behaviors either forbidden or required, when those behaviors are not universally recognized as either good or bad, but are simply the pet peeves of the members of the political class that were "in charge" when those particular laws were written. Thus the intense battles over who holds the One Ring.

And for most people, when considering their own personal actions, their personal morality trumps what's written in the rule book passed down from on high (whether that height be Mount Sinai, Mordor on the Potomac, or some other source).

Thus "You can't legislate morality." It won't work. Way too many people will ignore your edicts for them to be effective, unless you're willing to don the Jackboots and start fining people (stealing), throwing them in prison (enslaving), or shooting them if they resist imprisonment (killing), thus being willing to violate three of the "big four" moral issues... in the name of "morality."

So that's the easy part, that most people have little problem understanding and accepting. But now we have to move the shoe to the other foot, and that's not nearly as palatable to most people. If you had a bad reaction to the three terms I put in parentheses in the previous paragraph, you may choke on what's coming next.

While you can't legislate morality (as defined above, minus the big four), because people will simply ignore the laws and do as they damned well please, you most certainly can legislate immorality.

For some strange reason, the same people who balk at being told they can't do moral things because they're illegal generally seem to be fine with the inverse concept that they can do immoral things because they're legal.

Apartheid was legal.

The Holocaust was legal.

Slavery was legal.

Colonialism was legal.



Legality is a matter of power, not justice.

The belief that "legality" declared by the political class not only can, but should supercede one's own personal morality is the single biggest threat to peaceful civil society in the world today.

Absent that widespread belief in the general population, Trump would be no threat to anybody except people he personally interacts with. As far as that goes, no madman, from Hitler to Mao to Pol Pot, would have been able to kill 10 million, 20 million, or even more people without that widespread belief in the general population.

So "you can't legislate morality" is a much more powerful statement than even those who generally agree with it understand.

I'll have to think about whether the label itself works for me. But to robo's point



yeah.  I do think some on the right absolutely do that, too.  Though to c.e.'s point, lately, at least, the left seem to be a lot louder and prouder about it.

yeah, I think we need a better label to capture the dogpiling and shaming scenario.

I'm on board with social justice, anyway. I'm just not on board with screeching, shaming people for their opinions, etc. It's not only annoying, but a really lousy way to convince people.

To note -- some of my relatives were strongly opposed to same sex marriage. I didn't shriek at them and call them bigots because that does nothing but lock them into their opinion. Through talking with them, I've brought one over to think it should be legal. I'm pretty proud of that.  I've brought another into at least uncertainty over it; he doesn't support it exactly, but no longer actively opposes it. Yeah, I want better, but that is a start.

This is what I think "warriors" (I'm good with that label) often miss -- as frustrating as it can be to really want something and see others opposing it, you generally accomplish much more with calm discussion.

Yeah, some you will never convince. But some you will. And they won't just be bullied into resentful silence.

I'm not saying, by the way, that we should never push aside those who stand in the way of something we think is right. Sometimes you gotta. But at the grassroots, ground-level, with people we meet, persuasion is often the wiser course, IMO.

I've always read "You can't legislate morality" to mean that you cannot dictate someone's moral values. I.e., you can pass a law against something, but that doesn't mean everyone will now agree that that thing is immoral. Likewise, you can mandate something, but that doesn't mean everyone will therefore consider it a moral duty.

It's misreading/misusing the term to interpret it as "You can't pass laws dictating a certain type of behavior." Because you certainly can. We can disagree about the efficacy or legitimacy of those laws, but all laws are in fact putting limits on behavior, and thus enforcing a particular moral model.