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Everyone thinks the angels are on their side, and everyone thinks that they're acting out of love, driven by the best possible intentions, and everyone thinks that the world that would exist if they had their way would be the best possible world for everyone, would be paradise. Well, not everyone. Not the economic hitmen or the military dictators. But the punks, the hippies, the socialists, the anarchists, the biologists, and the crazy street preachers.
Among progressive circles, it's popular to say that conservatives want to legislate morality. By this, we mean that they want to do things like outlaw abortion and discriminate against everyone who isn't heterosexual. Those are their morals, and we consider them misguided. Could it be said, though, that everyone wants to legislate their own morals, and that the critical difference is simply the source of our morality? That conservatives want to legislate morality based on the Bible, which goes against the separation of church and state, whereas we want to legislate our morals, which are based on letting people do as they will unless it harms someone else?
If not, what is the basis of what progressives want to be the law? Is it the Bill of Rights? Is it John Stuart Mill's Harm Principle? If so, what is the basis of thinking that one of those things should be the basis of the law? It can't be purely objective, because pure objectivity makes no ethical distinctions between the process that creates penicillin and the process that creates the atom bomb. Even things that can objectively be said to exist- such as pain, or happiness- cannot be called good or bad without being somewhat subjective. I would ideally want a legal system that lets people do all things- and only things- that do not harm others, but even that cannot be said to be entirely objective, because it's based on the subjective judgment that decreasing suffering is the morally correct thing to do. If, ideally, we would not set morality as the basis of the law, then what would be the basis of the law?
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