In the ‘Versus War on Drugs Debate’ Eliot Spitzer, ex New York State Attorney General, said, ‘As a community we define our moral code through our criminal statutes, that’s what a society is and this why as a society we have said certain things are fundamentally wrong, murder, selling crack to kids, producing crack, selling cocaine, those things are wrong, we make them illegal and we should.’ (2:01:44in the link below)
It’s good to really pay attention when someone who has held such high office says something like that, it reveals a great deal about why we are in the global mess we are in today and why so many people are feeling helpless.
Spitzer has put forward a very clever deception in his statement and in so doing has established through that deception the moral authority of the paternalism that bedevils us from those in authority, but he is himself (morally) guilty of putting the cart before the horse.
If we define our moral code through our criminal statutes, how could we have known the difference between wrong and right before we had any criminal statutes? Without a built in and fit for purpose moral sense, a way of knowing right from wrong, good from harm, we could never have even established criminal statutes? Spitzer would be unable say, ‘certain things are fundamentally wrong’ without a pre-existing moral sense. When a young child says, ‘That’s not fair!’ she is making a moral assessment and judgement of a situation which has nothing at all to do with statutes or law, she is asserting her innate sense of moral values.
What Spitzer has said in his statement is that the state establishes our moral values or code through law and in so doing he undermines the sovereign authority of individuals to protest and protect themselves in their everyday lives because according to him that moral authority belongs to the state. Therein lies the deceit of the paternalistic authority of the nanny state.
In my campaign of writing a letter a day to number 10, one of my purposes is to encourage ordinary people to take back their moral authority and to stand up for it as something vital and precious, not just for the sake of society but for our individual and personal well being. The fate of the world hangs on this issue.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=gSrN2zIRwN8#!
https://www.keithordinaryguy.org.uk/
