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I'm in the camp that doesn't believe a free society should be mandating individual morals. Edit: leaving ethics out of this.

• dragonwriter 8y ago
  All laws are inherently mandates of ethics/morals. Edit: to address the parent edit to remove “ethics” and distinguish “morals” for different treatment, the division of subjective preferences into “ethics” and “morals" (and “aesthetics”, for that matter) is fairly arbitrary and subjective in any case.
  • quotemstr 8y ago
    Good laws are conservative codifications of consensus morality. A just legal code forbids only what the vast majority would consider wrong regardless of the law. When the law forbids what people don't consider wrong, it becomes tyranny.
    • dragonwriter 8y ago
      > A just legal code forbids only what the vast majority would consider wrong regardless of the law. I don't think that's entirely true; legal codes often specify things on which there is a strong preference for uniformity (or benefits which can only be gained by uniformity) but where the details of the uniform rules are not themselves a near-universal consensus independent of the law. I don't think this makes them bad legal codes. (Prohibiting driving on the left-hand side of a public roadway in the direction of travel, for instance.)