Government and Morality

I would say no. Forcing people to be moral (You might argue that's all society does) is not a good way of implementing morality. On a more practical level, a lot of governments' funds are wasted on the promotion of morals, funds which could otherwise be used making people's lives better. Finally, very often, governments' support of morals end up oppressing people (the obvious circumstance being gay people). Also, they create a lot of practical problems not in the convenience of citizens (drug and prostitution-related crime (which accounts for a lot of violent crime) would immediately vanish along with the black market as a result of full legalization).

I do think that morality is important, but it is impossible, especially in pluralistic societies, to expect blanket systems to work for everyone or even most people. If You think prostitution is cool, who am I to judge? It doesn't hurt me in any way, nor infringe on my personal rights. And, in fact, if that makes someone uncomfortable, that's totally fine, too. It still doesn't violate anyone. If I do think that there is a real social problem involving the loss of morals (which I often feel is, in fact, the case), I join or fund or volunteer for some organization committed to bringing whatever morals I believe in to people (without forcefully stuffing it down their throat, as some may argue governments do). With the prostitution example, rather than calling prostitutes criminals and denying them their jobs, if someone is really against prostitution, they should go into brothels and try talking prostitutes out of it their jobs (maybe helping them receive other, better jobs, or maybe realizing that it's idiotic to try to keep people from working, and therefore, living), or pay someone to go around giving speeches on how it is wrong to hire prostitutes because You're watering the essence of the love in sexual contact by doing so.

The government should, in my opinion, make the laws that constitute the minimum moral expectations of a citizen. Even if being a moral saint is unattainable, there should be laws that lay out, within a reasonable limit, the minimal requirements.

Quoting darthbarracuda

The government should, in my opinion, make the laws that constitute the minimum moral expectations of a citizen

Could You give examples of what You think those minimum morals might be?
Also, why?

On second thought, there are cases where it is important to protect non-citizen entities. For example, animals or tourists or anything with emotions. So I make a qualification: I encourage the moral protection of non-citizens.

Maybe that can be rephrased as extending rights (even if not the same level of them) to non-citizens with emotional capacity.

Reply to David Minimum morals are the laws you have in your community. Laws pertaining to theft, murder, assault, etc. Typically they tell you what you cannot do, although they also tell you what you must do, like pay taxes, or go a certain speed limit.

Why this is the case is because humans are not perfect and cannot be expected to be moral saints.

Quoting darthbarracuda

Minimum morals are the laws you have in your community. Laws pertaining to theft, murder, assault, etc. Typically they tell you what you cannot do, although they also tell you what you must do, like pay taxes, or go a certain speed limit.

I would argue that the examples You do not qualify as moral laws. Perhaps they also happen to be agreed upon by many moral systems, but their existence, I think, is necessary from the only side of government which must exist, which is the one that upholds rights. That is, theft, murder and assault are all injurious to citizens (and also non-citizens, taking my qualification), thereby a violation of their rights, and against what the government must protect. Likewise, taxes allow the government to work, which in turn allows it to protect Your rights, and traffic rules protect individuals' safeties, their rights.

On the other hand, there are laws that are fundamentally not based on protecting citizens, but on controlling what things they can do because the related society views them as wrong. These are things like drugs and prostitution, and gayness.

Quoting darthbarracuda

Why this is the case is because humans are not perfect and cannot be expected to be moral saints.

Humans indeed are not expected to be moral saints, but the relative "sins" of my kin don't deny or threaten my rights or anyone else's. Of course being murdered is definitely injurious to myself. That qualifies it for being disallowed. On the other hand enormously decadent parties with all kinds of acts (including things that are currently illegal like drugs, prostitution, etc) that I think are disgraceful to the sanctity of life, which I might think are gross and representative of the failures of humanity and our society's materialistic emptiness, should be completely legal. I don't like them and I'd very much like to have them gone from our society, but I recognize that such a desire isn't about how I want people to act, it's about how I want people to be. You can't really outlaw a cultural element You don't like into oblivion (my goto example is the Jews in the Spanish inquisition, whom were a tiny minority to begin with, yet retained their identity for over a century of oppression). I mean this both in the sense that it is, on a practical level, untenable, and that it is a horrible thing to do (again, Spanish inquisition).

If we allow morals values to become a part of politics, where do we draw the line between which ones are valid and which ones aren't (especially in a multi-moral society with many moral systems). If You think about it, many of the current issues in politics are about this very issue– which morals the government should embrace.

I do think there are times when moral governments make sense. This is in an entirely homogenous group where everyone has a deeply indoctrinated belief system and morals are, within this closed off political region, absolutely universal. These are places where I, and probably anyone on this forum, who feels the need to think past the status quo, would be very unhappy. Nonetheless, I would argue that it is reasonable and practical for such a society to exist. What I'm mentioning is essentially theocracy. The issue, of course, is when enough people do not concur with the morals of this society. An example that comes to mind is the Amish. Of course, they do not have political autonomy and therefore no control of their laws, but were a state in which every individual is Amish to exist, it should be reasonable for this state to have laws based on their religion for the reason that practically everyone will believe in them. Of course, there will be dissenters, but in such a homogenous society, so deeply indoctrinated, they are essentially equivalent to terrorists attempting to undermine a system that works for everyone else. They are also extremely few. The other important fact about the Amish is that they have non-fragmented beliefs and the introduction of new ideas of beliefs which could change some peoples' leanings are fairly unlikely, given their isolation. In other words, this is a one-party group. I do believe that dissent and change are important in the advancement of society, but people like the Amish might not necessarily be interested in that kind of advancing, and so it seems a logically consistent idea to me.

On the other hand, I don't think that an Islamic state is practical. Islam is an immense religion undergoing and extremely dynamic process whereby there are lots and lots of different opinions about proper morals. Islamic states have, living in them, ranges from the most extremist factions imaginable, to the most modern and secular Muslims to even non-Muslims, and major ideological differences (like Sunnis and Shias). Likewise, Israel has hugely varied types of Jews and lots of non-Jews, rendering it invalid for a moral government. On the other hand, a small neighborhood with only a particular sect of very isolated Orthodox Jews, would be a reasonable place for a theocracy.

Goverments make rules and some people will use the word 'moral' about most if not all of these rules. You have to wear a seatbelt and it's for your own good. Me, I don't like that: I'd rather we all went to hell in our own way. But i comply, because I'm a compliant sort of a fellow. We would save more lives by making the speed limit 10 mph, but for some reason that's unimaginable, neither moral nor immoral.

This discussion is irrelevant in places where the government is unaccountable to the people. Where governments do whatever they want, there isn't much debate allowed.

There is a difference between the morality of behavior that is conducted in private (like sodomy and veganism) and behavior that is conducted in public (like nude sunbathing). I'd prefer my government to have no interest in my private life (in as much as it is private) and to take a restrained approach to public morality. There may be extensive disagreement about what can happen in public. For instance, opinion will vary about how dangerous public nudity, prostitution, public urination, public drinking, public sex, and so forth are. For some any or all of these are a horror, for others they are merely a matter of taste.

Is sex in a toilet stall a public or private act? I say private and moral. What about prostitution conducted in a brothel--public or private? Prostitution in a hotel room? It would be private, it could be moral--assuming it was consensual. Sex in a bath house? Some people think these locations and acts are immoral, others prefer it. But private behavior can result in public health hazards. What then? Brothels and bath houses are likely to encourage the transmission of infections during unprotected sex. Is disease then a moral issue?

Public nudity is practiced in San Francisco, and yet the San Andreas Fault has held on.

Quoting mcdoodle

Goverments make rules and some people will use the word 'moral' about most if not all of these rules.

What I am posing is that perhaps a government without those rules is one we should strive for. Much as many people believe in divorcing the government from religion, and cling to it, particularly in the US as a principle of a modern democracy, I am suggesting that this ideology should be extended beyond the separation of church and state, but that we should instead advocate for the separation of state and morality.

Mind You, separation of church and state in no way implies that religion shouldn't exist or even be an important social force, merely that it is not within the realm of the government (and inversely that government is not within the of religious institutions). The reason for this separation, presumably, is the desire for coexistence between people of different religions: they needed a unified way of being controlled and keeping society from descending into chaos, while allowing each respective group, to, to some degree, do what they felt they had to. I'm suggesting that this has roughly been sort of reached by various governments of plural societies, but that for greater coexistence, we should really distill governance to something even more fundamental, that being the bare minimum necessary to assure everyone's basic rights are met.

The government should play no role in morality; the government has no right to prescribe what is right and wrong on the citizenry. The idea of the government having a monopoly on both violence as well as what is seen to be right is abhorrent. Roles of the government should be limited to the protection of property rights and the prevention of force and/or fraud via the rule of law.

Quoting Mustapha Mond

Roles of the government should be limited to the protection of property rights and the prevention of force and/or fraud via the rule of law.

What about education and public goods, like roads?

Quoting Mustapha Mond

The government should play no role in morality; the government has no right to prescribe what is right and wrong on the citizenry.

If the government isn't going to tell you what's right and what's wrong, then who is going to tell you this, your mother? If everyone's own mother decided for them what is right, and what is wrong, how could there ever be any consistency in morality?

Reply to Metaphysician Undercover

The government shouldn't be in the business of prescribing to you what is right (just like a religion would do). If the government told you that killing off the minorities was morally right would you follow it?

If you require a hierarchical power like government to tell you what is right then that is a terrible thing. Shouldn't one be able to judge these things himself and come to one's own conclusions about what is moral?

Matters of force, fraud and violence should be dealt with by the law, but matters of conscience (such as drugs, prostitution and homosexual marriage as mentioned in the OP) are matters for the individual to decide on. As long as your drug use or use of prostitutes doesn't harm anyone else, then it is up to you to conclude on its morality.

Reply to David That is more of an economic question than a moral one in the current neoliberal climate; as public works and expenditure on projects such as roads, causing a deficit, would actually be beneficial in preventing the destruction of money. But on a broad scale, I would argue the state should be kept as small and limited as possible.

What did John Locke mean when he wrote in "A Letter Concerning Toleration":

"It is neither declarations of indulgence, not acts of comprehension, such as have yet been practiced or projected amongst us, that can do the work. The first will but palliate, the second increase our evil."

Any thoughts on what he meant by "acts of comprehension"

Reply to David

It has always seemed to me to be a huge mistake to believe that law has anything whatsoever to do with morality. There many acts that are considered immoral which are entirely legal ('stealing' a man's girlfriend, for example) and many acts that might be considered moral which are wholly illegal (blocking a road to prevent the delivery of WMDs, perhaps).

Law is dedicated to social order and the deterrence of acts which disrupt it. It is not a moral touchstone and it certainly has nothing to do with moral education.

Reply to Bree

Fellow feeling, of the "I understand where you're coming from" variety. The trap, as he indicates, is that understanding, getting yourself into the mindset, or whatever the modern jargon is for the touchy, feely approach, is but a step away from justifying the offense and thereby becoming the offender.

First, I don't think that governments can avoid "promoting morals," even if that's not prima facie or overtly/directly what they're doing; that's because in my view, laws necessarily reflect stances of ethics/morality.

Aside from that, it's worth pointing out that governments do a lot of things that aren't either protecting citizens or "upholding morals" (both) in a narrow sense, as they do things like minting money, creating national parks, issuing licenses, and on and on.

In so far as a government acts, its actions can be evaluated as moral, immoral or neutral. The actions of most governments appear to me to be mainly utilitarian in nature, centered in self interest, attempting to provide the greatest good for the greatest number of its citizens.

Laws are constructed to insure the rights of citizens and to enable commerce as well as protect the lives of the citizens it serves. Victimless crimes such as prostitution are statements of cultural values/traditions/ideologies, which are enshrined into laws. Such laws I think would come under that category of the government protecting citizens against themselves, similar to helmet laws or seat belt laws.

Justice is key to the construction and operation of a nation, without some measure of justice no nation can operate. Even the most unjust dictatorship or other form of government, requires a certain amount of justice to function. I doubt any state is even close to truly just. Overall, I think self interest & the 'tragedy of the commons' dominates the course of justice in society. Each nation chooses its own path, and its laws tend to follow that path. Nations share many of the same central principles so it is not surprising that similar actions are though criminal in many countries.

Whenever more than one person decide to live as a group they need to make behavioral adjustments to make the coexistence cooperative. This limits the expressions of human emotions to mutually accepted levels. Members bring to the table different skills/abilities and needs. For this reason a group is stronger than the sum of all the components. This how a society forms and develops.

When a society grows large, the division of work process naturally assigns the accepted rule enforcement to certain individual/s. This is government in nutshell.

Agriculture brought the need of territoriality.

All humans possess greed and fear. This causes the need to defend/attack other groups. As a result, societies chose the physically and emotionally strongest as their leaders. This later turned into kingship. Greed causes abuse of power.

Man's need to understand the forces of nature beyond his control brought in the idea of religion, which caused priesthood. The idea of obeying the prevalent religious ideologies without question gave more force to authoritarian concept. Later kingship merged with priesthood to varying extents to create ruthless and abusive god-kings, and ruling priests, losing the original concept of good for all members.

After much agony man settled on democracy format.

Thus the government is only a tool of a society. Democracy tends to hear the voice of all members of the society. This a better form than autocracy.

Any government that rules too much makes society unhappy. The rule that rules the least is the best. And a society left mostly to its own devices is most progressive. A happy medium is always desirable. Government needs to use its enforcement abilities sparingly and wisely, interfering only as needed.

The sense of power makes human beings proud. The more check a society, as a whole, has on its government, the more benefits it derives from the existence of its government.