What’s Wrong with the World

A very interesting discussion from which I learned a lot.

I understand why it's being conserved in upper class Belmont, but why is American 'civic culture' coming apart in blue-collar Fishtown? Okay, one reason for the moral mess in Fishtown (described by Charles Murray) is that the institution of marriage is collapsing there; but why? Is 'miseducation' to blame? Is it down to the diminishing influence of religious beliefs that underpin social morality? Why has the intellectual elite, apparently, encouraged working class people to abandon an institution on which they themselves place a high value?

For the safety of their inhabitants, I imagine the Belmonts in the United States could end up like Xanadu with walls and towers girdled round.

Why has the intellectual elite, apparently, encouraged working class people to abandon an institution on which they themselves place a high value?

THAT is indeed the question. The answer is ideology. The liberal elite promulgate an ideology of absolute personal autonomy. (Not all elites are liberal, but the majority are.) They see their traditional lifestyle choice as just one among many equally valid autonomous choices. But they deceive themselves. Because of their intelligence, they see and understand the benefits of marriage for themselves and their status. Yet they will not extrapolate beyond their own circles. They prefer to ensure that their own options remain open without any censure or disapproval.

The problem is that this ideology of personal autonomy, which they have foisted on the nation, affects different kinds of people in different ways. Those without the advantages of the elite suffer the natural disastrous consequences of such a philosophy, which for most amounts to pure short-sighted pleasure-seeking. Hence the dissolution of marriage in Fishtown.

For the safety of their inhabitants, I imagine the Belmonts in the United States could end up like Xanadu with walls and towers girdled round.

I don't know about England, but in America we've been experiencing a rise in "gated communities" for several decades. It's definitely strong in the larger cities in California, Florida, and the eastern seaboard. These communities are literally protected by fences and gates, hiring their own security police, etc.

This difference between traditionally virtuous liberals and traditionally vicious conservatives has been apparent for quite a while. If you look at real-life liberals, as opposed to the demonic fiends portrayed in right-wing polemics, you see lots of people getting married, either staying married forever or getting divorced once and then getting married again forever, having children within marriage, trying to raise them virtuously, worrying about promiscuity, drugs, etc. Those are the liberals I see in real life.

To tell the truth, that describes the conservatives I've known as well! So I can only vouch for one half of the formula. I guess the whole Sarah Palin drama showed the other, white-trash side of American family-values conservatives.

This whole divide was illustrated back in the 1990s, I remember, when Al Franken was feuding with Rush Limbaugh. Franken used to point to Limbaugh, Mr. Family Values, and all his affairs with young women. Franken pointed out that he himself, the liberal, had been happily married to the same woman for decades and that they had raised their children together. So this virtuous liberal/vicious conservative pattern isn't news.

As I'm sure you know, Murray's putting the blame on culture and ideology has been vigorously disputed. The counter-claim is that regarding industriousness, for instance, economic factors far outweigh cultural factors. I haven't gotten into the argument on either side - there are lots of graphs and numbers - but there is a real argument there.

A polemicist can always come up with a plausible-sounding story and present it as fact. Maybe it is and maybe it isn't, I don't know. One has to choose here between polemics and truth.

Jeff, your comment on the liberal elite promulgating an ideology of absolute personal autonomy is interesting. At the conclusion of reading "Church History in Plain Language" by Bruce Shelley I was overwhelmed by the feeling that the whole flow of history was toward a personal autonomy without God. I remember thinking, "What a work of Satan, a mastermind slowly working to bring the world down to his terms."

Yet we are created as individuals and are designed to be personally autonomous in one sense in our accountability to God, yet part of a whole in another sense. My lack of time and ability prevent me from considering this issue of personal autonomy from a philosophical point of view. What is right about autonomy? What is wrong? What are the dangers? What are the proper boundaries? And how do you explain this is a teenager? :-)

Do you have any suggestions on reading material?

The liberal elite promulgate an ideology of absolute personal autonomy. (Not all elites are liberal, but the majority are.) They see their traditional lifestyle choice as just one among many equally valid autonomous choices. But they deceive themselves. Because of their intelligence, they see and understand the benefits of marriage for themselves and their status. Yet they will not extrapolate beyond their own circles. They prefer to ensure that their own options remain open without any censure or disapproval.

If this is true (my crude caricature notwithstanding), then one could almost suspect a conspiracy in which a very well educated minority is trying to deprive the untutored majority of a civilised way of life they once shared with the rich and clever. Such a conspiracy could, in the long run, compel the well educated minorities who have devised it, to seek refuge from an enraged proletariat in those 'gated communities' that Jeff alludes to. And this doesn't make sense: it's national suicide.

So why do liberal ideologues persist in conducting a social experiment in which they are unaffected by any immediate disastrous outcomes, but not, one assumes, secure from the likely American catastrophe that will smash everyone?

Alex asks, "So why do liberal ideologues persist...?" I suggest: Why don't you ask those liberals who are your friends, relatives, co-workers, etc., why they persist in supporting it? Granted, they're not likely to answer, "Well, I'm part of this conspiracy, and we...." So if your conspiracy hypothesis is correct, then asking real-life liberal friends, relatives, etc. won't get you very far, at least if they're part of the conspiracy. Even if your conspiracy hypothesis is incorrect, people are famously in unknowledgable about their own motivations. But it would be a good start, anyway. I mean, talking to real people instead of sitting in one's armchair and theorizing.

Aaron: Aren't the people who comment here 'real people'? Haven't I a good reason for thinking you're a real person that I'm talking to right now?

I don't believe there really is a liberal conspiracy to selectively undermine the American values which Fishtown once shared with Belmont. What I said was, "one could almost suspect" there's a conspiracy etc.

Yes, I do theorize from my armchair, but since you're theorizing about my theorizing from your armchair, we're even.

No conspiracy necessary. They all just agree about the "ideals" that are, as a matter of fact, messing up society big-time. I saw a sweet but somewhat naive friend recently describe a conversation she had with a supervisor who was evidently openly and proudly homosexual in which she said something like, "The only difference between you and me is that I have accepted the grace of God to help me try to live a holy life." I wanted to say, "No, the difference between you and him is that he is trying to destroy Western civilization and you aren't." Not, of course, under that description. But de facto.

David, I'm sure Jeff and I wouldn't say all the same things here, and who knows what a teenager will and won't listen to (depending on the teenager). But one problem with the brand of "personal autonomy" presently preached is that it involves literally creating one's own meaning. It's a post-modern personal autonomy.

Another problem with it, of course, is that it's a fraud. It's completely fake, because those who dissent from a quite specific, broad-ranging, and substantive set of dogmatic positions are denied autonomy, the right to "express themselves," the freedom to act according to their "sense of self," and all the rest of it. Hence, homosexuals have a right to tell the whole world about their sexual acts and anyone who won't hire them is attacking their "identity" and might as well be a murderer. But Christians in the UK are in many cases forbidden to wear crosses to work. And Christians all over the West who, however politely, express their own opinions about the homosexual agenda face the loss of their jobs. So much for personal autonomy and expressing one's identity.

One would like to think that a teenager who wasn't too far gone would be struck by that. Sometimes young people are sensitive to a sense of "the real" and are open to being shown that something is a fraud.

If you look at real-life liberals, as opposed to the demonic fiends portrayed in right-wing polemics, you see lots of people getting married, either staying married forever or getting divorced once and then getting married again forever, having children within marriage, trying to raise them virtuously, worrying about promiscuity, drugs, etc. Those are the liberals I see in real life.

Aaron, define "liberal'. In my personal acquaintanceship, I know plenty of conservatives and a fair number of liberals. In my experience, the ones who are going through serial relationships and children out of wedlock, and / or are raising their children without any particular rational hope of turning out virtuous adults who will ALSO have stable marriages and work patterns, are exactly the ones whose day-to-day lives are exactly the sorts of lives that embody the theories and sentiments of standard liberalism of the 60s to 80s. A few of these may vote right-wards (I decline to call that conservative), but they don't vote that on conservative principle, because few of them would recognize a non-economic conservative principle if it bit them. Among liberals over 40 that I know, the ones who have high education typically are living relatively stable marital and work lives, but only a very few of those are passing on religion to their children, and equally few of those are successful in passing on virtue systematically in any recognizable form to their kids (since you mention raising them "virtuously"). Just for example, a good share of the liberals I know simply do not think it of any significant concern that their children are sleeping around outside of marriage. Of the older conservatives I know who are not strongly religious, they are not succeeding in passing on social culture to their children: the kids are showing no particular respect for marriage, or civic-mindedness that finds any expression other than voting (if that).

Social cohesion is all of a piece. It has not yet been demonstrated that it can be achieved without an explicit societal and political commitment to retaining the coherence of social customs. Conservatism implies a particular respect for customs that liberalism has denigrated 10,000 times over.

Here is an insightful review of Coming Apart by Yuval Levin.

In the interview I was amused when he included weight differences between the classes as supporting his thesis. The weight differences between classes has always been one of the most obvious (and commonly noted until recent times I think) features of just such class differences. Whatever the reasons, it can't support any new thesis at all. It's just confirmation bias.

To follow up my post of 3:03:

I think that to a certain extent education does for some what sheer common culture did for the whole of society 50 years ago. Education enables you to (a) have a high enough income and enough leisure to note and consider the problems the degeneration of culture is going to have on your life, and (b) the ability to do something about it, something extra-customary. Thus the educated have an advantage in terms of absorbing the ills that stem from a loss of culture. But even the educated have trouble passing all of those advantages down to their children. Religion (the largest single component of heritable culture) together with education can do better than education alone, but religion has an added problem in the culture wars: where the degenerate standards (for the most part) merely allow or encourage people to step away from the older morality, the older customs, and the older standards, the degenerate culture positively attacks religion.

Two things:
The 1963 MPAA regulation on Abortion; and the rise in church attendance until 1963.

Though these two things go hand-in-hand, they represent, in my view, polar opposite approaches to morality. Church attendance is voluntary and manifests morality from the inside out. Governing body regulations are compulsory and manifest correct behavior (not necessarily morality) from the outside in. (There is of course, some crossover between the two: Church attendance can instill correct behavior from the outside and regulations can cause an inward morality, but I'm not really interested in the actual methods as much as the "outside-in vs inside-out" moral pressure.)

So...

Which of the two ways is more effective in increasing morality?

Which of the two is more acceptable in a free society?

Uh, yeah, Chucky, let's try that for child rape: You know, having laws against it is an "outside-in" approach and libertarians might not consider it as "acceptable in a free society" as just sort of, I dunno, preaching sermons against it and trying to convince people to go to church and give it up, so...

If you're trying to talk about abortion intelligently, even in an example, you're really going to have to deal with the fact that we're talking about tearing children limb from limb. Seriously. Soundbites just won't cut it.

Gosh, Chucky, this time you are completely out to lunch. You seem to have simply (and embarrassingly) failed to note the basic fact: the MPAA is an industry SELF-MONITORING body. It is not governmental. It is not coercive. It is not compulsory. It is an explicit example of inside-out sort of pressure.

http://www.mpaa.org/about/history

Churches say "thou shalt not kill".

Laws say "If you kill we will put you away and throw away the key."

So, for a person who could seriously contemplate premeditated murder, which one of these two is more acceptable and which more effective in a free society?

Alternatively, why must it always be either/or, instead of both/and? Why can't society be composed of people and institutions who recognize BOTH legal obligations toward each other AND extra-legal obligations toward each other, which support each other cooperatively?

My lack of time and ability prevent me from considering this issue of personal autonomy from a philosophical point of view. What is right about autonomy? What is wrong? What are the dangers? What are the proper boundaries? And how do you explain this is a teenager? :-)

Do you have any suggestions on reading material?

David, I was just discussing this very question with my son a few days ago. Personal autonomy is indeed a good, and one uniquely connected to Christian doctrine, but it is just one good among many. Only the Church arranges all of these "goods" into a proper hierarchical schema, illuminating their true limits vis-a-vis other goods. There is a Catholic sensibility to be acquired about them, which is soaked in over time, preferably by long immersion in the kind of faithful communities that live these things out.

For general reading, then, the social encyclicals before the Second Vatican Council are a great place to start; politically you can't go wrong with "Immortale Dei". With respect to absolute personal autonomy as a disorder of liberalism, James Kalb's "The Tyranny of Liberalism" is an excellent analysis.

Practically speaking, if one has the luxury of choosing, where should one choose to raise a family, put down roots, and build a life - Belmont or Fishtown?

In Fishtown, the rot is harder to ignore and the pressure to conform is greater. If you can afford it, get out of Fishtown. The reality is that there are still in-between places here and there, so you may not be stuck with Belmont.

So why do liberal ideologues persist in conducting a social experiment in which they are unaffected by any immediate disastrous outcomes, but not, one assumes, secure from the likely American catastrophe that will smash everyone?

Alex, I guess the simple answer is that they are inflexibly devoted to a principle: any practical failures must therefore be the fault of something else. Most likely the principle of absolute personal autonomy serves as a moral justification for their own choices. To give it up, to admit its failure, has unsettling personal consequences.

My lack of time and ability prevent me from considering this issue of personal autonomy from a philosophical point of view. What is right about autonomy? What is wrong? What are the dangers? What are the proper boundaries? And how do you explain this is a teenager? :-)

I would say you should get familiar with the Lutheran theological ethicist Gilbert Meilaender's writings. There is no single book to which I can point you, but you'll benefit greatly by reading any or all of them if you can. He never, ever phones it in. There are also a good many articles you can google up that he's written, including those from First Things such as this one. In Meilaender the subject of autonomy is sprinkled throughout his works. Reading him is an experience. Deeply philosophical, yet highly accessible to the layman, and with much pastoral advice thrown in to boot. The latter is so rare and valuable in such a gifted scholar and much of that I wish I'd known earlier in life.

Murray's argument isn't really about liberals and conservatives at all: he introduces a (somewhat nicely sliced) definition of the new upper class, and mentions the fact that they're liberal-leaning (though as Andrew Gelman points out, this is probably largely on cultural issues), but he takes pains in the rest of the book to emphasize that his descriptions of the new upper class apply to both liberals and conservatives. (He has slight variations on his well-known "How Thick Is Your Bubble?" quiz based on whether the respondent is a conservative upper-classer or a liberal upper-classer.)

David Frum argued convincingly that Murray downplays the economic side of the story, but Bryan Caplan and Tyler Cowen pointed out that stagnating incomes can't be the whole story. (For example, it seems implausible that the sharp fall in religious attendance among the white working class in the last half century has purely economic causes.)

Murray's argument isn't really about liberals and conservatives at all: he introduces a (somewhat nicely sliced) definition of the new upper class, and mentions the fact that they're liberal-leaning (though as Andrew Gelman points out, this is probably largely on cultural issues), but he takes pains in the rest of the book to emphasize that his descriptions of the new upper class apply to both liberals and conservatives.

That's certainly true. I was adding my own observations with respect to the paradox of liberal elites behaving, in some ways, like good traditionalists.

One of the indications that you were entering a Fishtown neighbourhood in Europe, used to be the rampancy of mindless graffiti. Graffiti is a sort of warning of the extent to which nihilism in a sub-culture has taken hold.

Now, graffiti is becoming almost ubiquitous. A couple of years ago I remember spending a miserable day being appalled by the graffiti and litter in Delft (birthplace of Vermeer). I must have been crazy to expect anything else.

I would say you should get familiar with the Lutheran theological ethicist Gilbert Meilaender's writings.

We used to have "moral theologians". Now we have "ethicists". Peter Robinson noted the shift in terminology with some amusement in the interview. Not to pick on you, Mark, but is there supposed to be a difference?

One of the indications that you were entering a Fishtown neighbourhood in Europe, used to be the rampancy of mindless graffiti. Graffiti is a sort of warning of the extent to which nihilism in a sub-culture has taken hold.

I agree. Graffiti is one indication in the U.S. as well. But we're a little behind Europe when it comes to graffiti. I would say that all graffiti-plagued neighborhoods are Fishtowns, but not all Fishtowns have a graffiti problem.

As Alex says (and he knows way more than I do) graffiti now seems to be everywhere in Europe. On the only trip to Europe I've taken in decades (to Leuven, three years ago) it was depressing. It didn't seem to be a "neighborhood" indicator at all anymore. More just part of the decor. Ick.

Lydia:

Uh, yeah, Chucky, let's try that for child rape: You know, having laws against it is an "outside-in" approach and libertarians might not consider it as "acceptable in a free society" as just sort of, I dunno, preaching sermons against it and trying to convince people to go to church and give it up, so...

My question was NOT "Which of the two ways is more effective in modifying BEHAVIOR" but "which of the two ways is more effective in increasing morality". I made the distinction that compulsory regulations and laws don't actually change morality - though they do induce correct behavior (to an extent).

My concern is that Christians tend to mis-prioritize the two things: working rigorously for laws to tame bad behavior while neglecting the better answer - evangelizing - to tame inward immorality. As I've pointed out before, laws are by nature tyrannical, and we should be careful what we push for because once the government has a power, it can always be modified to work against its original intent.

If you're trying to talk about abortion intelligently, even in an example, you're really going to have to deal with the fact that we're talking about tearing children limb from limb. Seriously. Soundbites just won't cut it.

I am decidedly pro-life. I know exactly what abortion is. My point - again - is that the best way to stop abortion is to change the morality of the women who are considering it. First off, that morality starts with promiscuity. Laws against abortion don't affect that behavior, but inward morals do. Secondly, laws won't stop a woman who really wants an abortion from getting one. The answer is to stop women from wanting abortions and, even better, to stop them from putting themselves in the position to "need" an abortion in the first place.

Tony:

Gosh, Chucky, this time you are completely out to lunch. You seem to have simply (and embarrassingly) failed to note the basic fact: the MPAA is an industry SELF-MONITORING body. It is not governmental. It is not coercive. It is not compulsory. It is an explicit example of inside-out sort of pressure.

http://www.mpaa.org/about/history

I knew it was not a government agency. I assumed its regulations were compulsory within the movie industry however.

The link you provided calls the Hays Code in existence prior to the sweeping revisions of the 1960's "the movie industry's restrictive regime of self-censorship". If it's called a "restrictive regime", then it must have been an "outside-in" form of morality (at least from the POV of the filmmaker.)

Alternatively, why must it always be either/or, instead of both/and? Why can't society be composed of people and institutions who recognize BOTH legal obligations toward each other AND extra-legal obligations toward each other, which support each other cooperatively?

If you notice, I said "these two things go hand-in-hand". Laws reflect the morality of society - hence the anti-abortion language of the MPAA's Hays Code was normal given the morality of the country at the time. The question is whether the reinstitution of the Hays Code would change people's views on abortions now. Or, could such a reinstitution only come about if society once more grew to abhor abortion (and the immorality that leads to it)? It's a chicken/egg thing. It's a legitimate question. We've seen the effectiveness of propaganda on a society. There is an argument to be made that strict regulation of media could change society for the better. The question becomes, however, "who decides what 'better' means?"

Let me just say this also - violent crime should always be illegal (and yes I believe abortion to be a violent crime). It is the priority of government to protect its citizens. So using violent crime, or any crime in which one person's rights are violated by another, as an argument against my position is irrelevant IMO. It's a strawman.

Finally, let me leave you with this: In a perfect world, there would be no need for laws. We don't live in a perfect world - hence, laws. Trying to achieve a perfect world through laws is a contradictory exercise.

Thank you all for your thoughts on autonomy, for the introduction to Murray, Kalb, Meilaender, and also to First Things. You will not have to guess too hard about what I am doing on my day off.

This bit of political philosophy has real application inside families. What I had not seen so clearly before is the central role of autonomy in the liberal mindset. The discussion with our youngest (18 year old) son is along the long of preferences and whose preferences get satisfied, the father's or the son's. I do not want to be oppressive, yet the point of life is not about satisfying preferences; which seems to be a conservative point a view. I'd like for my son to see that he may be taking a more liberal stance than what he might want to hold later in life. Wish me well.

Hum, does this mean that liberals are holding on to the youthful mindset of someone who simply wants their own way, as opposed to an older, more reasoned approach? Maybe I should not go there.

"the movie industry's restrictive regime of self-censorship". If it's called a "restrictive regime", then it must have been an "outside-in" form of morality (at least from the POV of the filmmaker.)

It couldn't be so severely restrictive that the movie-maker who followed the code didn't decide that living within the industry's own voluntary code was more worthwhile to him than trying to live outside that code. That's what an internal code means. The chess club's rules are "restrictive" too - according to its rules, the knight cannot take the pawn directly in front of it. How restrictive is THAT? It means I cannot play "knight takes all" chess! Restrictive regime! Oppression! Compulsion! No fair!

What you mean is that the internal industry standard chafed at some movie makers, and they wouldn't have chosen to act in accordance with the standard of their own personal internal sense - the reason they did is because they felt obliged to by the existing standard. Well, that's exactly what standards and codes do, even the ones that are voluntary.

Finally, let me leave you with this: In a perfect world, there would be no need for laws. We don't live in a perfect world - hence, laws. Trying to achieve a perfect world through laws is a contradictory exercise.

In a perfect world we won't need laws? Really? What about laws for driving on the right side of the road? What about laws that inform us as to what our "fair share" of community costs looks like? What about laws that set out standards for what constitutes unreasonable air pollution and what constitutes mere insignificant particulates?

And even if it were true that laws would cease to be necessary when men are perfect, that doesn't prove that you don't need laws in order to achieve that condition. Your point is logic-free. If there were a way to achieve a "perfect world" by human endeavor it could well be the case that the road to it passes through a period of laws. Even the Communists allowed for that.

In fact, we won't have a perfect world until men are perfect, which means not until men are free of all sin, which means not until the end of this age, the coming of Christ, and the Final Judgment of all. After that, all men will not only be perfect morally, but all men will know in detail God's exact will for them and know each other's intentions as needed, so all will be in effect governed by Divine Law whole and entire. Short of that, men will not be free of disordered wills and will not always know each other's intentions and expectations automatically, and so men will always need human laws. Thus even the ideal form of human society before the eschaton does consist of human society governed by laws.

Rather than arguing about abortion and child-rape and other non-starters, I have an example that more perfectly fits what I'm getting at:

All Christians will agree that fornication is wrong, that Christianity condemns it, and that it is at the root of many problems in society so...

Should Christians actively push for a law outlawing fornication?

Why or why not?

Be consistent!

Tony,

Your post comes across to me as a series of contradictions. I'm not sure which points to argue with!
You seem to be arguing with me, yet your arguments end up agreeing with me. I'm lost. (Your first sentence alone is nearly incomprehensible.)

All Christians will agree that fornication is wrong, that Christianity condemns it, and that it is at the root of many problems in society so...

Should Christians actively push for a law outlawing fornication?

No one is saying that every sin must have a law against it. Law is a matter of prudential wisdom. Laws against telling lies, insulting people, gluttony, boasting, etc. would do more harm than good.

As for fornication, well, eighteen states once had laws against fornication. I could warm up to the idea. The ubiquity of this particular sin is behind most of our current social problems, from abortion to fatherlessness to pornography, and the resulting dysfunction and criminality. Why not make it a little harder?

I mean, CNN is reporting that a 17 year old honors student in Houston, whose parents divorced and abandoned her, and who works two jobs to support her siblings, has been jailed for missing too much school due to her work schedule. If she can do jail time for that, fornicators ought to do a little more, don't you think?

I assumed its regulations were compulsory within the movie industry however.

I am repudiating that your word "compulsory" has any useful sense here. The movie industry is (and was) made up of a bunch of private parties. Any one of them could refuse to follow the MPAA's rules any time they chose. The harshest possible punishment would have been "you can't be a member of the MPAA anymore". Non-members of the association didn't even have that to worry them. That isn't compulsory compliance, that's voluntary compliance. Membership in the club was voluntary, so complying with club rules was necessarily voluntary.

My first sentence (to repeat) is that member movie-makers found complying with the rules more beneficial than not complying.

Jeff writes:

Those whom we think of as members of the liberal "elite" turn out to be living fairly stable and traditional lives, at least in comparison with everyone else. With superior intelligence, education and wealth, they manage to avoid the worst consequences of the ideas they promulgate through the institutions they control.

I believe we are witnessing a parasitic cycle where the new elites benefit indirectly from the destructive ideologies they promote. (This avoids talk of conspiracy, which caused distractions above.)

A "Belmont" liberal is personally sober, but his cultural permissiveness helps weaken the social capital of his cultural and political rivals. Sometimes this happens to opponents in his own party. Urban politics, and thus Democratic politics, would look much different if those in "Fishtown" still had intact family life and strong cultural capital. And an intact lower-class might be a bad thing for Belmont Republicans' political strength, too.

As for political programs, talk of outlawing fornication is pretty foolish.

Smarter steps are to allow businesses and employers to reward socially beneficial behavior, like marriage, and to punish and stigmatize socially destructive behavior like fornication.

Some of our commenters might be new here, but in the past we've talked about how socially conservative habits and customs are actually banned in the US.

Many states and urban centers consider marital status a protected class in housing or employment. So you can sue if a landlord refuses service to you because you and your unmarried girlfriend want to move in.

Getting rid of those laws would allow landlords, hoteliers, and perhaps covenant-controlled neighborhoods to bar people in shack-up relationships from their areas. This would create centers of culturally conservative power, and give geographic examples of how this personal virtue creates "good neighborhoods" and "bad neighborhoods." (Right now this connection is so abstract that you practically need to be a social scientist to notice)

We still segregate by marriage, but only through wealth. The functional, but poor people of the "fishtown" class deserve neighborhoods of their own.

Further, there should be corporate shareholder activism to allow individual hoteliers in major chains to refuse service to unmarried couples in areas where it is still legal. Many private businesses have incorporated anti-trad policies in New York City and spread them even without legal pressure.

No need to ban fornication, just unban its stigmatization and society will do most of the work.

Since the motion picture code has come up, I should mention that I thought I read Screen Actors' Guild regulations that presently bar movie studios from requiring moral behavior from their employees. I can't find it now, so perhaps I misread something.

Jeff Culbreath:

No one is saying that every sin must have a law against it. Law is a matter of prudential wisdom. Laws against telling lies, insulting people, gluttony, boasting, etc. would do more harm than good.

Where to draw the line though?

As for fornication, well, eighteen states once had laws against fornication. I could warm up to the idea. The ubiquity of this particular sin is behind most of our current social problems, from abortion to fatherlessness to pornography, and the resulting dysfunction and criminality. Why not make it a little harder?

I can only imagine the consequences of a law against fornication...
"What are you in for?" "Fornication" "Bummer, Me too."
The prison system would overflow and be broken in record time! And would the threat of jail time stop the fornicators? Did it stop the consumption of alcohol in the 20's? Does it stop the consumption of illegal drugs now? You can't outlaw something popular and expect it to magically stop!

I'm with Murray N. Rothbard on this one:

Compelling moral actions or outlawing immoral actions, therefore, cannot be said to foster the spread of morality or virtue. On the contrary, coercion atrophies morality for it takes away from the individual the freedom to be either moral or immoral, and therefore forcibly deprives people of the chance to be moral. Paradoxically, then, a compulsory morality robs us of the very opportunity to be moral.

Government coercion is not the answer to our problems - no matter how easy a solution it presents. It's easy to just say - "outlaw bad behavior" - and walk away, but we are, in essence, shirking our responsibility as Christians if we do that. It's our job - as lights in the world - to exemplify good behavior, to offer a choice, an alternative, to an immoral world. We are supposed to live a life free from fornication and teach others to do so. Of course it would be easier to have the government do the job for us.

I mean, CNN is reporting that a 17 year old honors student in Houston, whose parents divorced and abandoned her, and who works two jobs to support her siblings, has been jailed for missing too much school due to her work schedule. If she can do jail time for that, fornicators ought to do a little more, don't you think?

I agree that the laws we have on the books right now (as in the case of the 17 year old) are oftentimes just plain stupid. But I would argue that the problem is not "bad" laws: the problem is the concept of 'coercive morality' behind such laws. I'm sure the intent of whatever law the 17 year old broke was good - it's just that any such law carries with it the force of tyranny. That's the rub: how much tyranny are we OK with? And, can the tyranny we once agreed to be turned upon us?

If we allow the government to regulate our sex lives, what will they do with such power? Even more to the point: what CAN they do with such power?

Rothbard errs in plenty of areas. He sees the individual, not the family, as the basic social unit. In the vice in question, the freedom of the tempted is already compromised by passion or a weak will.

We also can't ignore social pressure as a weight upon freedom. A virtuous man in a climate of loose morals is less free, and faces more temptation, than he would in a better society. So there is a trade-off.

The vice in question also tends to beget fatherless children. Their freedom should be taken into account as well. It is an even less self-regarding action than a bachelor's drug use.

That said, laws should be no more strict, but also no more permissive, than the community can bear without bringing the law into disrepute.

Government coercion caused many of our problems, why can't it cause some of the solutions? The libertarian position is often just an abdication of responsible authority to those who wield authority irresponsibly.

I do think tearing down anti-trad laws is a necessary first step. So I wish libertarians would target those laws more often than baiting trads into playing the tyrant in their stock scripts.

Aren't you afraid you'll start discrediting liberty by associating it with vice?

Kevin,

Good points all.

The thing most people forget about libertarianism is that, while it promotes individual liberty, it also promotes individual accountability.

This is lost in our society:

Fatherless children? The government will support them!

Squander billions in investors money? The government will bail you out!

Just for fun, here's Charles Murray's quiz to determine whether you are living in an elite cultural bubble:

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/2012/03/white-educated-and-wealthy-congratulations-you-live-in-a-bubble.html

I scored a 57.

Chucky Darwin, I don't think you understand that justice is an end in itself. If other evildoers are discouraged from their evil by viewing the punishment, that is a desirable secondary effect, but it is not necessary. So, the just execution of adulterers is a good in itself, even if people keep committing adultery. Though I do suspect that the rate of adultery would drop in a nation that enforces the Biblical laws on adultery. (Don't tell me about the Islamic nations, they usually only punish the woman, not the man)

And if you notice, I am accepting your criticism of prison, but for slightly different reasons. Prison doesn't work at discouraging sin because it is an unjust punishment. I do not see prison recommended as a punishment anywhere in the Bible. It is not surprising that an unjust punishment causes worse recidivism than a just punishment.

And I do roughly agree with what has been said by all about how to change a society. My post discussed the goal of that change.

I got a 48, but I think that's because I don't watch TV. Which is a "bubble" aspect I'm proud of.

48, huh? How's the view from that ivory tower? ;-)

I flunked the TV questions as well.

I got a 40 on the test. The test is clearly wrong, because there is no way I'm upper middle class. Seriously, there isn't any way to pin that label on me, financially or otherwise.

I do not see prison recommended as a punishment anywhere in the Bible.

So time to bring back stoning. You pilgrims are getting grimmer each day.

The prison system would overflow and be broken in record time! And would the threat of jail time stop the fornicators?

Overly simplistic. Jeff isn't saying "outlaw fornication immediately", jeepers. You can go step by step, build up a culture in which laws support other institutions protecting marriage (as Kevin says), and laws protecting marriage in certain cases and classes (like preferring married couple for adoption) and so on, and step by step get it so that a law that forbids fornication is culturally only a small step.

And would the threat of jail time stop the fornicators? Did it stop the consumption of alcohol in the 20's?

Good example, because it is exactly the difference between imposing by rule a new practice with virtually no support in customs, and getting rid of an existing practice by not supporting it in law. In fact, in the 1800's, having laws against fornication did prevent some occurrences. If you have a culture that is mostly observing a customary rule against fornication, a law against it can indeed increase observance of the rule.

Compelling moral actions or outlawing immoral actions, therefore, cannot be said to foster the spread of morality or virtue. On the contrary, coercion atrophies morality for it takes away from the individual the freedom to be either moral or immoral, and therefore forcibly deprives people of the chance to be moral. Paradoxically, then, a compulsory morality robs us of the very opportunity to be moral.

Rothbard too vastly oversimplifies the matter. Do the 10 Commandments somehow make it less possible to be moral? Of course not. Did the Mosaic law of Exodus and Leviticus, imposing a wide variety of penalties for breaking these laws, make it less possible to be moral than if the penalties did not exist? Of course not, once again. The matter is much more complex.

Just for example: true virtue rests not only in doing the right outward action, but in doing it for the right reason, wanting to do it, and indeed delighting in it as the rightful action. But achieving this requires habituation to the good, to the right actions, and this habituation requires support all over the social spectrum, including from law. Sometimes it is sufficient for law to support it without definite prohibitions against it. But for those actions which have stronger passions attached, stronger measures can be needed. In some cases, laws prohibiting immorality as a _last_stand_ against immoral behavior, backing up a system of other cultural customs that inhibit, can improve the habituation that leads toward true virtue: the truly reprobate refrain from the action when they might be caught, the less reprobate refrain always, because they might be caught at any time, the typical not-yet-committed to virtue refrain because even those less interested in virtue refrain, and so on up the chain. Those who refrain always become habituated in _not_ doing the action, and some of them find that this become easy, and indeed preferable, so that eventually the obedience to the moral choice comes from inside instead of from outside.

This latter change doesn't happen where the person, while not doing the act, longs for it and habituates himself toward wanting it. This interior fault, however, is the province of the churches - they should be teaching against this. Working together, then, Religion, social custom, and laws can indeed assist in making the compliant more virtuous.

There are other mechanisms by which laws against immoral acts can assist in a culture of virtue, too.

I got a 52. Was it that I have never lived in a small community, or that I don't watch those tv shows (I don't watch any during regular seasons, only later when I can get them without ads), or that I have never had a good friend who was only able to get Cs in school? Dunno, but I suspect that 52 is only a rough approximation of my insulation from what Murray calls Fishtown life. A majority of my neighbors are white collar, but it is probably only a slight majority, maybe 55-45. My nearest 4 neighbors are blue collar.

I thought it was funny that you couldn't count graduate school as "years lived at or below the poverty line." I have mixed reactions to that. After all, poor is poor, and poor for four to six years (depending on how long one is in graduate school) does at least have somewhat of an effect of taking one outside of a "bubble of privilege." On the other hand, graduate students do tend to live in a world of their own in some respects.

John Takashi, David Frum's analysis is a useful counterweight to Murray, but Frum's numbers suffer some critical failures. First, you cannot rest at noting the number of people at the poverty level in 1990 and then again at 2000. That doesn't tell you what you need to know. The number of people who were at the poverty level in 1990 who were ALSO at the poverty level in 2000 is vastly more informative. It is well known that during a large portion of the last generation, a significant portion of the poor are those immigrants (both the legal ones and the illegal ones) who came here with nothing but the shirts on their backs. If 80% of the people who were at the poverty level in 1990 were above the poverty level in 2000, and they were simply replaced (plus a little) by immigrants, that tells a vastly different story than just saying that the number at the poverty level went up.

Secondly, Frum frequently uses median values of groups. Unfortunately, the groups are defined in terms of (fairly arbitrary) percentiles of income. You cannot draw useful conclusions about the median values of arbitrary percentiles. If Frum really wants to engage real information (instead of mere data) he needs to do things like identify income groupings (probably not in terms of percentile at all) that point at distinct motivational and behavioral meanings at the boundaries. Of course it is true that people with 100,000 a year behave differently from people with 20,000 a year. But you don't know where between 20,000 and 100,000 is the correct place to draw the line without asking what the behavioral differences amount to, why it matters that you do X instead of Y.

Finally, SOMEBODY out there needs to examine families (probably often on the cusp of middle class), where some of the members slide up into solid middle class (or upper), and other members slide down into lower class. What causes are going on there? I have seen this, and I don't think the explanation is *fundamentally* economic, since they all started from similar points. Is the cause (whatever it is) also applicable to people who stay in the lower class? I can say that I have seen a major difference in results with parental attitude about whether the kids should assume they will be going to and finishing college.

We used to have "moral theologians". Now we have "ethicists". Peter Robinson noted the shift in terminology with some amusement in the interview. Not to pick on you, Mark, but is there supposed to be a difference?

I can't answer that question Jeff. Ethics predates Christian theology of course, as a branch of philosophy, but this just demonstrates that it is incomplete without theology. I only used the term "theological ethicist" because I know that is the term Meilaender applies to himself. But in my own way of thinking, as long as you have two words chained together that represent the two realms of faith and reason, whether spelled out as philosophy and theology, two cities or whatever, you've got a serviceable term for Christian purposes.

The most important thing in my view is that there is a place for philosophy in moral reflection. Meilaender has a chapter entitled "The Place of Ethics in the Theological Task" in the book "The Limits of Love" that is pretty good. I've seen the need for this type of thinking at the most basic and critical level in my own life in ministering to others. Namely, if you don't learn to answer and deflect the criticisms in some way you'll get in simply trying to follow the Golden Rule, you'll never be able to do it because it involves breaking social norms and is inherently controversial.

I missed Murray's reference to ethics. What did he say? Now if he says that the proliferation of ethics classes to try stem immorality is a symptom that we no longer have shared values, then he's right. Meilaender has said the same thing. Not even Aristotle believed you could educate people into being good persons. You'd just make them better liars and cheats. But still there must be a philosophical basis for morality if you think acting morally is reasonable. So I'd frown on Murray if he's trying to make much of a shift in terms because, again, I'd call that confirmation bias and specious.

I got a 40 on the test. The test is clearly wrong, because there is no way I'm upper middle class. Seriously, there isn't any way to pin that label on me, financially or otherwise.

Well, it just got pinned on you, like it or not! And I would have guessed 40 or lower before you even took the test. Now go out and shoot up some beer cans or something.

I'm not taking that ridiculous test. I don't give a rat's ass what my score would be because it would mean exactly nothing to me. If there is one thing I've learned in the last few years in my studies of history, it is that the world is awash in pseudoscience. It tells us how to think. Ralph Ellison in his brilliant "Shadow and Act" remarked on this.

. . . from the very beginning I wanted to write about American Negro experience and I suspected that what was important, what made the difference, lay in the perspective through which it was viewed. . . . It's also a relatively unexplained area of American experience simply because our knowledge of it has been distorted through the overemphasis of the sociological approach. Unfortunately many Negroes have been trying to define their own predicament in exclusively sociological terms, a situation I consider quite short-sighted. Too many of us have accepted a statistical interpretation of our lives and thus much of that which makes us a source of moral strength to America goes unappreciated and undefined. Now, when you try to trace American values as they find expression in the Negro community, where do you begin? . . . You can find sociological descriptions of the conditions under which they live but few indications of their morale.

The ugliest episodes in world history are deeply indebted to pseudoscience (though not exclusively), as well as the seemingly minor things. As as an example of the latter, Michael Pollan speculated, probably correctly, that a staple of the American (indeed the world) diet for generations was radically reduced as unhealthy by the influence of a single article in the NYT one day. How we eat, what we think, how we act is more determined by the "latest studies" or "latest data" or what our professors told us. The world is awash in psuedoscience and social science of extremely dubious veracity. And we're all just standing around waiting for the next prophet such as Murray to tell us what we're like based on his lastet test, because we're not sure what we're like, or should be, ourselves. There is merit in Murray's books, but I simply can't accept his starting point of creating or recreating an understanding of us based on social sciences and statistical understandings. Then he tells us --surprise!-- he doesn't know what it all means. Of course he doesn't. No one does or can because you can't understand man or his communities statistically. I just can't accept this as a starting point for anything useful. I have a different answer to the question "What is man" than what is implied by statistics. We've gone down this road so many times and learned nothing, and in fact this willing acceptance, even longing, for newer and better statistical models of mankind is itself a sign of the rejection of older classic understandings of man. Namely, the Greco-Roman political understanding of man and a Christian theology that incorporated that view of man in society into Christian theology since the time of Augustine. Since that has been discarded by many, the only attempts left as replacements are biological --really pseudo-biological-- and statistical understandings of man.

I won't be commenting any further on this. I've got a lot of books I need to read anyway.

This bit of political philosophy has real application inside families. What I had not seen so clearly before is the central role of autonomy in the liberal mindset. The discussion with our youngest (18 year old) son is along the long of preferences and whose preferences get satisfied, the father's or the son's. I do not want to be oppressive, yet the point of life is not about satisfying preferences; which seems to be a conservative point a view. I'd like for my son to see that he may be taking a more liberal stance than what he might want to hold later in life. Wish me well.

Well David, after hearing more about why you are interested in autonomy, I don't think Meilaender will help. You're right, it is more political than moral. I can't give you advice, only that parents can be very shortsighted in judging their kids. My own parents, God love them, were always attributing bad motives to me when they simply didn't understand me. I may be the minority but I think kids are frequently more wise than their parents. So forget Meilaender on this one. Probably better to seek out pastoral counsel from someone who has raised *oppositional* children successfully. I have read some good books on that but I can't recall the titles just now.

I'm not taking that ridiculous test.

Mark the Unfailingly Humorless. You obviously missed the "just for fun" part.

As for political programs, talk of outlawing fornication is pretty foolish.

Indeed. Fornication is not the main reason why marriage is in trouble. Rather, it is the fact that we have eliminated virtually all of the distinctions in rights between married couples and unmarried couples before the law, and made a wealthy little cottage industry out of divorces. When trying to defend traditional marriage, conservatives are forced (if they are intellectually honest) to concede that marriage confers not a single legal benefit that outweighs the legal and economic risks. For men, marriage is generally a ludicrous economic risk.

As study after study has shown, the average resident of Belmont is far more likely to have a longer time preference than those of Fishtown. Time preference among the lower class and even much of the middle class tends to be lower than those who are on the upper end of society. Therefore, I think it stands to reason that if you look at the incentives to not marry and the incentives to divorce our system presents, you'll see that those factors make for a nasty outcome when combined with lower time preferences.

Jeff, I want to know how you got a 57. :-) You secretly watching network TV or something? :-)

@Mike T

Why did you deleted all the posts off your website?

Jeff, I want to know how you got a 57. :-) You secretly watching network TV or something? :-)

Guess I never told you. Was raised in Branson, MO, where I worked my way up to Lt. Col. at a Pabst Blue Ribbon factory as a forklift repairman before winning 26th place in an American Idol duck-calling contest and retiring in Palo Alto.

Oh. They have duck-calling on American Idol? :-)

Wanted to suggest to my fellow David that the top-down stuff is helpful, but, as a former teen rebel who could stand to have missed the lost decade of his radically autonomous twenties, I think whatever you have to say will come across as a lecture by a not-getting-it adult unless you are somewhat conversant with the specific influences upon your son. (In addition to the pervasive if mostly subtle PC indoctrination offered in schools, sexting, teen lit, and whatever kids listen to these days instead of John Cage or Pink Floyd.)

I scored 60, btw. Love me some Doctor Phil.

I'm surprised no one on this blog has brought up this nugget from Chesterton's What's Wrong With The World, part 1 chapter 8:

"But in this primary matter of the ideal the difficulty is not the problem of poverty, but the problem of wealth. It is the special psychology of leisure and luxury that falsifies life. Some experience of modern movements of the sort called "advanced" has led me to the conviction that they generally repose upon some experience peculiar to the rich. It is so with that fallacy of free love of which I have already spoken; the idea of sexuality as a string of episodes. That implies a long holiday in which to get tired of one woman, and a motor car in which to wander looking for others; it also implies money for maintenances. An omnibus conductor has hardly time to love his own wife, let alone other people's. And the success with which nuptial estrangements are depicted in modern "problem plays" is due to the fact that there is only one thing that a drama cannot depict—that is a hard day's work. I could give many other instances of this plutocratic assumption behind progressive fads. ..."

And so on. The upper classes can afford to ignore the natural consequences of acting out their ideas because their money and position to a large extent shields them from them. When the poor begin to live by the same ideas they have no such defense, and so succumb.

Adam Smith said it even better than GKC.

In every civilised society, in every society where the distinction of ranks has once been completely established, there have been always two different schemes or systems of morality current at the same time; of which the one may be called the strict or austere; the other the liberal, or, if you will, the loose system. The former is generally admired and revered by the common people: the latter is commonly more esteemed and adopted by what are called people of fashion. The degree of disapprobation with which we ought to mark the vices of levity, the vices which are apt to arise from great prosperity, and from the excess of gaiety and good humour, seems to constitute the principal distinction between those two opposite schemes or systems. In the liberal or loose system, luxury, wanton and even disorderly mirth, the pursuit of pleasure to some degree of intemperance, the breach of chastity, at least in one of the two sexes, etc., provided they are not accompanied with gross indecency, and do not lead to falsehood or injustice, are generally treated with a good deal of indulgence, and are easily either excused or pardoned altogether. In the austere system, on the contrary, those excesses are regarded with the utmost abhorrence and detestation. The vices of levity are always ruinous to the common people, and a single week’s thoughtlessness and dissipation is often sufficient to undo a poor workman for ever, and to drive him through despair upon committing the most enormous crimes. The wiser and better sort of the common people, therefore, have always the utmost abhorrence and detestation of such excesses, which their experience tells them are so immediately fatal to people of their condition. The disorder and extravagance of several years, on the contrary, will not always ruin a man of fashion, and people of that rank are very apt to consider the power of indulging in some degree of excess as one of the advantages of their fortune, and the liberty of doing so without censure or reproach as one of the privileges which belong to their station. In people of their own station, therefore, they regard such excesses with but a small degree of disapprobation, and censure them either very slightly or not at all.

http://marginalrevolution.com/marginalrevolution/2012/03/adam-smith-on-charles-murray.html

This is why I think a "parasitic cycle" is at work. The morality of the luxurious drains the capital of the poor, though its worst effects are masked by our society's wealth and technological advances.

Mark the Unfailingly Humorless. You obviously missed the "just for fun" part.

Actually, not even I could fail to miss that, and didn't. Nor likely did you miss that I took opportunity to make a critique of the main reason of your post, which I'm sure you noticed wasn't about the test but Murray's views, or lack therof, and the harm and misery that such thinking has caused. It is highly doubtful that I could ever think of any question more fundamental from my perspective as two sentences I gave above (though I didn't use the word Christendom) given the nature of the material and comments frequently seen here and the mission statement.

Mark the Unfailingly Humorless. You obviously missed the "just for fun" part.

Actually, not even I could fail to miss that, and didn't. Nor likely did you miss that I took opportunity to make a critique of the main reason of your post, which I'm sure you noticed wasn't about the test but Murray's views, or lack therof, and the harm and misery that such thinking has caused in the last few centuries. It is highly doubtful that I could ever think of any question more fundamental from my perspective as the single sentence I gave above given the nature of the material and comments frequently seen here and the mission statement.

Oops sorry for the double post.

As for Michael's point about Chesterton, I think he would have questioned the presentation of a statistical data made in such a way as to represent . Now if you want to assume that the results of social science "research" is whatever the current assumptions are you're free to do so, but you needn't any research to do that. In Chesterton's book about eugenics he was unsparing about the methods the experts were using who were pushing eugenics. I don't think it was only the effect that concerned him.

"They can offer us nothing but the same stuffy science, the same bullying bureaucracy and the same terrorism by tenth-rate professors that have led the German Empire to its recent conspicuous triumph. . . ."

". . . What is this flying and evanescent authority that vanishes wherever we seek to fix it? Who is the man who is the lost subject that governs the Eugenist's verb? In a large number of cases I think we can simply say that the individual Eugenist means himself, and nobody else."

". . . In the last chapter of the first half of the book I give what is, I believe, the real secret of this confusion, the secret of what the Eugenists really want. They want to be allowed to find out what they want. Not content with the endowment of research, they desire the establishment of research; that is the making of it a thing official and compulsory, like education or state insurance; but still it is only research and not discovery."

Maybe I'm dreaming but I can't see Chesterton listening to Murray and nodding his head vigorously as many here would.

Why did you deleted all the posts off your website?

I'd been blogging for 9 years. I finally decided to give it up and try to disappear for a while to cool off and see if the blogging fatigue would recede.

Now go out and shoot up some beer cans or something.

That should have been one of the questions:

26. Have you ever in your life gone "plinking".

a. Yes
b. No
c. I don't know what that is

Now go out and shoot up some beer cans or something.

P.S. Scored a 55

Tony:

Overly simplistic. Jeff isn't saying "outlaw fornication immediately", jeepers.

Hmm, his exact words were: "If she can do jail time for that, fornicators ought to do a little more, don't you think?". Sounds like he's "warming to the idea" of outlawing fornication to me.

If you have a culture that is mostly observing a customary rule against fornication, a law against it can indeed increase observance of the rule.

But we don't have such a culture. My question was - how best to attain it?

Do the 10 Commandments somehow make it less possible to be moral? Of course not.

If you follow the Protestant interpretation of the New Testament, then yes, the 10 commandments were actually put in place to show us we are immoral (and need a savior.) Paul talks a lot about The Law. Does he ever say that The Law makes us moral?

true virtue rests not only in doing the right outward action, but in doing it for the right reason, wanting to do it, and indeed delighting in it as the rightful action.

Agreed.

But achieving this requires habituation to the good, to the right actions, and this habituation requires support all over the social spectrum, including from law.

Are you sure it "requires" support from law for someone to want to do good?

Sometimes it is sufficient for law to support it without definite prohibitions against it. But for those actions which have stronger passions attached, stronger measures can be needed. In some cases, laws prohibiting immorality as a _last_stand_ against immoral behavior, backing up a system of other cultural customs that inhibit, can improve the habituation that leads toward true virtue: the truly reprobate refrain from the action when they might be caught, the less reprobate refrain always, because they might be caught at any time, the typical not-yet-committed to virtue refrain because even those less interested in virtue refrain, and so on up the chain. Those who refrain always become habituated in _not_ doing the action, and some of them find that this become easy, and indeed preferable, so that eventually the obedience to the moral choice comes from inside instead of from outside.

Isn't the gospel (i.e. a changed heart due to a passion for Christ) a better alternative than a law that, by your own admission, doesn't produce real "wanting to do it for the right reasons" morality in most adherents?

This latter change doesn't happen where the person, while not doing the act, longs for it and habituates himself toward wanting it. This interior fault, however, is the province of the churches - they should be teaching against this. Working together, then, Religion, social custom, and laws can indeed assist in making the compliant more virtuous.

So the Church is almost an afterthought in your moral system. Interesting.

Tony's last point made me think about something...

I really think the main reason the Church is ineffective (largely) in influencing morality in this country is because we have become just like the rest of society (at least outwardly) in most matters. Christians are obsessed (in my experience anyway) with trying to make the gospel "accessible" to the masses and with not wanting to be "different". We don't want to be a counterculture - we want to get Jesus accepted into the mainstream culture. But to do that we can't appear "weird" or "conspicuous" - so we act just like everybody else.

Case in point: Muslims pray 5 times a day toward Mecca. They are not afraid to stop everything, drop on their knees and pray - even when people are watching. Most Christians I know will sheepishly look around to see who's in the room before even bowing their heads for silent prayer - lest someone think there's something wrong with them.

I really think that if the Church offered a clear alternative to the norm, more people would be attracted to it. It would be something real - something substantive - not just people who go to a building on Sunday, then act like everyone else all week.

Chucky, I see that you are intent on trying to misunderstand me. You've done fine job of it.

If you follow the Protestant interpretation of the New Testament, then yes, the 10 commandments were actually put in place to show us we are immoral (and need a savior.) Paul talks a lot about The Law. Does he ever say that The Law makes us moral?

I never said the law "makes" us moral. Only that it contributes to a social environment in which being moral is easier, more supported. Yes, the 10 Commandments, without the grace won by the sacrifice of the New Covenant, convicts us of sin. But God's gift of grace through Jesus Christ doesn't eradicate the Law, indeed, not a single iota of the Law is dispensable until all is accomplished. What happens is that as we grow in holiness, we internalize the Law so that it becomes an inside-out rule. But for 99.9 % of us, that process is gradual, and thus we need it imposed from the outside during the growth process. In the interim, we need the law as a guide and pointer.

So the Church is almost an afterthought in your moral system. Interesting.

No, the Church being mentioned last does not mean that the Church "comes last" as an afterthought. That would be kind of like describing a pilgrim's travels, ending with the pilgrim reaching Mount Calvary, and then complaining "so, Calvary comes last in your book, huh, it's just an afterthought?" If the topic I was treating was "how does law support morality", then the Church's role in supporting morality is, partially, off topic. You can't talk about all truths at once. I happen to agree with you that the Church has the most critical role in the quest. It's just that this role doesn't preclude the law ALSO having a role. Society isn't supposed to be a totally fragmented incoherent set of groups, but an integration of many distinct social entities. That means that laws work with other "rules" like custom, and moral framework, to contribute to a wholesome place.

Case in point: Muslims pray 5 times a day toward Mecca. They are not afraid to stop everything, drop on their knees and pray - even when people are watching. Most Christians I know will sheepishly look around to see who's in the room before even bowing their heads for silent prayer - lest someone think there's something wrong with them.

That wouldn't be at all because most Christians, at this point, have been sent through 13 years of school and umpteen years of work-place where the authorities have been brainwashed into accepting that "dropping on your knees and praying" is against the law, now would it?

You might check on percentage of Muslims in this country that stop and pray 5 times a day even when they are not within sight of another Muslim, and are instead surrounded by Christians. I will guarantee you it is a lot less than the % in Mecca. Part of the reason they do it in Arabia and Iran (just like humans everywhere) is that laws and customs that surround them support the practice.

Well David, after hearing more about why you are interested in autonomy, I don't think Meilaender will help.

The philosophical interest preceded the discussion with my son. Just an interesting coincidence and points to the practical nature of philosophy, which is another discussion to have with my youngest.

Meilaender is still on my list. Thanks.