Reflections From a Murky Pond

The shortage of doctors in America and both the impact that this will have on ObamaCare and the impact that ObamaCare will have on this growing shortage can only be resolved in one fashion – assuming, of course, that ObamaCare continues. The government must force medical professionals to accept any and all patients that the government decides upon. Nothing short of enslaving doctors to the will of the State will work.

This is also the only way to make a dent in the costs of healthcare in America. Stripping doctors of the liberty to decide upon which and how many patients to take on will allow the government to decide upon how much they will pay doctors for the services and what specific services, tests, procedures, and medications they will provide those patients.

The only questions are whether providing doctors to anyone and everyone is worth stripping medical professionals of the Constitutionally enumerated rights and which will be the next profession that the government determines must be enslaved for “general welfare.”

OK; there’s one final question – Why in the name of the Gods hasn’t the American people risen up, dragged any and all of the politicians who advocate this – and any families they might have – into the public square, and burned them to death?

~*~

Keep your eyes open. Travel light but load heavy, and always put another round in the enemy after they’re down. 😉

“You can’t legislate morality” is one of the common refrains from Liberals and Progressives whenever they are faced with actual or proposed laws that would govern and place limits upon people’s behavior. Any time that Americans try to enforce and/or reinforce normative societal values the Leftists start screaming and raving about the separation of Church and State and that America’s de facto Christian ethos must not be enforced.

This demand of the Liberals and Progressives is beyond ridiculous and is patently false. Not only can you legislate morality but you must if you’re to have even a vestige of a hope for a functioning, civilized society. This means that whenever the Liberals and Progressives rant about legislating morality they’re actually admitting their own immorality since they cannot abide by these moral strictures.

Moral Law

Frankly, the vast majority of civil laws, and all the truly important ones, in America are based largely or solely on moral law and, as well, upon Jude-Christian religious law.

• Slavery – The prohibition against chattel slavery is solely based upon morality.  It has no component that isn’t a legislation of morality.
• Murder – The prohibition against killing another person is largely, though not wholly, based upon morality. It is also a core tenet of Christianity.
• Rape – Treating rape as a crime largely, though not wholly, based upon morality. Treating it as as serious of a crime as we do is solely based upon morality.
• Civil Rights Laws – The whole of civil rights legislation is almost entirely composed of the legislation of morality and has little or no basis for existence beyond that of what is Right and Wrong.

The list could go on, and on, and on ad infinitum et nauseam, with each consecutive point further illuminating rank stupidity of ever claiming that one can’t and shouldn’t legislate morality.

Consensus Morality

One of the arguments that the Leftist apologists will use when faced with incontrovertible fact that the majority of laws are either wholly moral law or, at the very least, carry an implicit moral component is that America must only legislate morality within the context of an irreligious consensus morality. By that, of course, they mean that only those moral laws that can be agreed to by non-Christians can ever be considered valid and that anything that coincides with- or abides by the Judeo-Christian morality is inherently suspect and must be subject to strict scrutiny.

Leaving aside the anti-Theist in general and anti-Christian in specific bigotry and bias in this viewpoint, it’s also factually as ridiculous and patently false as their base claim that you can’t legislate morality. There is, by and large, no consensus morality, especially if one includes the views of non-Theists.

• Slavery – This is as close as we come to a true consensus morality enacted into law. Still there are a significant, and I’ll hazard growing, number of people who do not find explicit chattel slavery to be morally repugnant. There’s an even larger number that have no problems whatsoever with “softer” and more implicit forms of slavery as the dependence upon illegal immigrant labor clearly shows.
• Murder – There’s no moral consensus whatsoever on what even constitutes murder as opposed to a justified killing or it being a killing that isn’t quite wrong enough to be called murder.
• Rape – In no way, shape, or form is there consensus morality concerning rape as a crime.  We can’t even decide what the borderline is between consensual and non-consensual sex. Nor can we reach consensus on who can rape and who can be raped. Lastly, we’re nowhere near reaching a consensus upon grievousness of the crime.
• Civil Rights Laws – There’s little or no consensus on the plethora of civil rights laws in the US and what consensus there was is rapidly falling apart as more and more Americans find the various laws to be both out-dated and morally repugnant.

The above are just a very small sample set of the significant laws in America that Liberals and Progressives falsely or wrongly claim that are supported by- and serve an objective, non-religious moral consensus.

Their Morality, Not Ours

Of course these same Liberals and Progressives have no qualms about legislating their own brand of morality. That’s all that there various calls for “fairness” and equality of personal results are after all – calls to legislate their morality.

This is why these Liberals and Progressives are immoral instead of amoral. They have a moral compass; it just points towards a completely different “North” than that of normative Americans.

The Slippery Slope is generally considered to be a fallacy. It is an argument in which a person asserts that some event must inevitably follow from another, prior event without any providing any argument for the inevitability of the event in question. In most cases, there are a series of steps or gradations between the eventual event and the one being argued against but no reason is given as to why the intervening steps or gradations will simply be bypassed or enacted in their turn.

In general I agree. The Slippery Slope is a fallacy and, much more often than not, sloppy thinking. But what if we’re greasing the slope as it were?

Many laws, especially those dealing with sexual partnering, sexual acts, and sexual relationships are wholly or primarily based upon societal mores and cultural “prejudices.” Many of those laws that once had valid scientific rationales at one time have lost those rationals due to medical advances. Others had and still have outcome-based basis in the effects such things have upon the titular children of such unions, yet those negative consequences have been ignored in favor of a new ideology.

As you chip away at those laws that are based upon societal mores and cultural “prejudices” or apply new societal mores and cultural “prejudices” to existing situations you can make it so that each increase in permissiveness makes the next incremental increase that much more likely through normalizing or “main streaming” what was once unthought-of, abhorrent, and/or outre.

Western, especially American, jurisprudence also has to be taken into account because it’s inherently based upon Common Law and under the US interpretation of such court cases are decided based upon prior argument, precedents, and judicial pronouncements rather than solely on legislative enactments. in other words, arguments and verdicts in prior, similar court cases can be compelling or even binding precedents in current and future cases.

The Slope As It Was, Is, and Will Probably Be

Progress Is Opinion. Progression Is Mathematics

The battle to overturn the laws against miscegenation was long and hard-fought but it was victorious. But many of the same arguments that were successfully used Loving v. Virginia to end those “Jim Crow” statutes were later used in Lawrence v. Texas to abolish or make largely enforceable the various laws against: Sodomy, Fornication, Adultery, and violent sexual fetishism (BDSM). In turn, arguments from both Loving and Lawrence have been used to legalize Gay Marriage in various states and to overturn DOMA at the federal level.

Each set of court cases added their levels of grease to the slope, making it increasingly slippery. Hence, there is no logical reason not to predict that this progression will continue and that these increasingly entrenched arguments and precedents will be used to legalizing polygamy, incest, and some forms and/or levels of pedophilia.

Cultural Relativism is a term coined by philosopher and social theorist Alain Locke. It became popular – indeed, axiomatic among certain Liberal intelligentsia – due to the extended works of anthropologist-cum-activist Franz Boas and the large number of students who followed the doctrine of Boasian anthropology and its call for them to use their studies in the cause of social activism rather than maintaining the detachment, objectivity, abstraction, and quantifiability in their work that is the touchstone of true scientific endeavor.

Cultural Relativism

Function: noun

Date: 1924

Definition(s):

1. the belief that the importance of a particular cultural idea varies from one society or societal subgroup to another, the view that ethical and moral standards are relative to what a particular society or culture believes to be good/bad, right/wrong

On the plus side, Boaz was correct in maintaining that groups’ behaviors are based upon their culture as opposed the their race. This, however, is more than counterbalanced by his postulate that Right and Wrong only exist within respective cultures and societies and that it is wrong to judge individuals’ actions by any higher and/or more universal standard.

Cultural Relativism – Keeping One’s Head Buried In The Sand

Of course, cultural relativism requires that individuals and societies keep their heads firmly buried in the sand to avoid noticing any of the behaviors of others that might find objectionable or horrific.

Cultural relativists cling to the belief and, following the tenets of Boasian activism, try to force others to accept that all cultures are worthy in their own right and are of equal value and that diversity of cultures, even those with inherently conflicting moral beliefs, is not to be considered in terms of right and wrong or good and bad.

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A simple comparison between men who’s lives have become embroiled in the public’s consciousness – George Zimmerman and Barack Obama…

Zimmerman v. Obama

One, George Zimmerman, has a history of putting himself in harms way and putting his community before himself. The other, Barack Obama, has a history of protecting himself and rarely considering the needs of his community much less putting those needs above his own desires.

One, George Zimmerman, was acquitted of murdering one angry, young Black male who attacked him. The other, Barack Obama, has ordered the murder of hundreds, if not thousands, of individuals and will likely never see the inside of courtroom, much less a prison or death chamber.

A simple comparison between to people, one who would be hero if he were not too White and another who be a villain if he were not too Black.

Yes, I know that there are some, the Liberals and the minority tenants, who will rave that it’s racist to compare George Zimmerman and Barack Obama because holding a Black to the same as standards as a White Hispanic is grossly unfair and can never lead to equal results. Oh well. They can just call me a racist and move on.