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Originally Posted by onetwo_threefour
With respect to IFF's comments about individual ethics, I think it's easy to take that too far. The government has to take some role in morality or people with different ethical value systems will end up at each other's throats if there is no official arbiter of whose ethics trump. A good example is sharia law. While it's easy to say that those that wish to invoke that type of thing in their own lives should be able to do so, there will always be problems in practice with that when people believe that there is some moral repugnancy to that system. I think that the government does need to impose a certain moral code, and that that code should be democratically determined, with the understanding that the judiciary is the check on excesses that go beyond the constitutional mandate of government.
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I think you make a very fair point. One danger in a radical individualism is the possibility of relativism, and I guess I take it as a matter of faith that though we may differ on private issues that there really is such a thing as a gold standard against which ethical standards may be compared. But obviously I also realize that there's no reason to believe that other than starry-eyed optimism and a faith in the basic goodness of humanity.
However, I'd actually say that sharia law is the perfect example of individuals failing to exercise their own moral judgement, and instead allowing that judgement to be performed instead by an institution.