by Carissa Mulder
As part of Ethika Politika‘s 2012 initiative on education and morality, I’ve been asked to write a few posts discussing whether or not government is able to speak as a moral authority. If it can, should society desire government to speak as a moral authority? And if society does not wish government to speak as a moral authority, what institutions or bodies should serve as moral authorities?
When the government speaks as a moral authority, it does so in at least two ways. First, some actions are always and utterly forbidden, for instance, willful murder and forcible rape. In speaking against such acts, the government confirms that they are always and everywhere wrong. Government’s claim to the universal evil of these actions can be seen in a myriad of ways, from states prosecuting murders to the Secretary of State condemning the latest instance of genocide.
Second, the government often speaks authoritatively by stating that one choice is better than another; for example, it is better not to smoke cigarettes, or better to eat a low-fat diet. These recommendations have a moral underpinning, and over time they sometimes begin to take on a moral tone, with dissidents from the new orthodoxy subject to government-sponsored social ostracization. Smoking is a prime example, with smoking forbidden not only in government buildings, but also in restaurants, bars, and other buildings, regardless of the property owners’ wishes. In some municipalities, smoking is even forbidden in many outdoor public places. The mere sight of a cigarette or faint odor of tobacco smoke is an affront to the anti-smoking crusaders. (For the record, I do not smoke, have never smoked, and have family members who I devoutly wish would stop smoking.) Although the government certainly does not portray smoking as an evil on par with murder, it does portray smoking as a serious moral failing.
Government does serve as a moral authority and speaks as a moral authority, whether members of society wish it to or not. Regardless of whether government should speak as a moral authority, there is almost no choice for it to but to do so, due to a moral authority vacuum.
By way of example, we might ask what other institutions traditionally have been considered to have the authority to make moral pronouncements? The obvious answer is “religious institutions.”
But what moral authority speaks to people who do not regularly attend religious services or schools? This is a significant subset of the population. The Barna Group reported in 2008 that roughly 25% of American adults “had no personal interaction with a regularly-convened faith community” during the previous year. These people may self-identify as a member of a religious group, but regular attendance is one of the common tenets of religious organizations. If the self-identified adherents don’t adhere enough to the faith to attend at least once a year, it’s questionable how strongly they adhere to the faith’s other teachings. Furthermore, “one-third of the segment was people who have never attended a church in their life.”
Additionally, based on American behavior patterns, it seems likely that many Americans, even those who may self-identify as members of a particular religious group, often live their lives more in accord with what is legal than what their religion teaches. For instance, Relevant Magazine reported in October 2011 that 80% of self-identified evangelical young adults had been sexually active, despite evangelical churches’ generally strong disapprobation of premarital sexual activity (p. 64). The same article reported that abortion statistics among Christians were very disturbing: 37% of women obtaining abortions self-identify as Protestant, and 28% as Catholic (p. 65). Therefore, far more than half of women obtaining abortions identify as Christians.
To return to a previous example, contrast these statistics with statistics regarding cigarette use. Admittedly, this is far from an exact comparison, but it is instructive. For as long as I can remember, government—federal, state, and local—has been trying to convince people not to smoke. Granted, many health benefits result from not smoking, but there are also many health benefits that result from avoiding premarital sex.
The government campaign against smoking has consisted of many elements, from advertising the health consequences of smoking to suing tobacco companies to restricting cigarette advertising and prohibiting smoking in public places. As a result, in many parts of the country, especially out West, cigarette smoking is viewed with extreme societal disapproval likely rivaled only by societal disdain for obesity. Additionally, it is difficult to smoke in public, as smoking is forbidden in most public places. What are the results? According to the CDC, 42% of American adults smoked in 1965. In 2010, just under 20% of adults smoked.
In short, it seems that when it comes to issues of morality, Americans are more disposed to listen to government than to churches.
Carissa Mulder is an attorney in the Washington, DC area, specializing in regulatory matters and public policy. She is a Blackstone Fellow, and a graduate of the University of Notre Dame Law School, where she was executive editor of the Notre Dame Journal of Law, Ethics and Public Policy from 2008–9.
Follow the Center for Morality in Public Life on Facebook and Twitter.
2 Responses to Is Government Able to Speak as a Moral Authority?
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Laws created by government, such a allowing abortion, smoking prohibitions, recycling, mandated food choices, are all based on economics, first and a desire for control second.
1. Abortion keeps a woman in the workplace and paying taxes. And here she thought that is was because government “understood” her right to her own body.
2. The hypocrisy of the government is outstanding on the debate on smoking.
a.) Government won’t ban it because of the taxes it brings in. This despite the fact that taxation more than anything else is the cause for smokers to quit. If the smokers quit, what will happen to all the departments and programs that the government has started to get people to quit? Nothing. Everyone knows that once a bureaucracy is started, it only grows. Obvious result? The government will allow marijuana sales in order to preach about how bad it is; raise taxes on it and keep the bureaucracy going.
3. Recycling: While no one wants our trash dumped in the ocean, the government again has created a bureaucracy wherein recycling and other methods of energy saving rules have been put in place. Energy saving light bulbs. (they now want to ban incandescent bulbs) Water saving toilets that don’t work. (See Rand Paul’s video before the Energy department on this one). The result of more and more mandates about what HAS to be recycled, is it any wonder that people feel more guilty about throwing out aluminum cans than real “sins”?
4. Mandated food choices. Obesity has become then next item to be banned by the government “for our own good”. Beware of tyrants who do what they think is good for you because their tyranny will never end. While our tax dollars have been ill spent by the government in school lunch programs, the government allows the continued and new use of genetically modified organisms to be sold for our consumption. This is being done without outside testing and the FDA guarantees a stamp of approval on virtually anything that the bio-tech industry wants to sell. The hypocrisy of all of this is that it is about money, not our health. No one in government has the right to decide what we choose to eat, based on that fact alone.
All of the above are examples of what the government has decided what is morally “right” for us to do. Which of these are sins? Abortion because it kills a human child, and smoking, in that we are not treating our body as a temple of the Holy Spirit.
Government is a lousy arbiter of morality, considering that what it does is solely based on how much money it can collect and how much power it can use.
A very important component of the government changing the mores of society is the public education system. Here is where parents have the most to be worried about. If the government is teaching that it is in fact the only “god” on which its’ citizens can rely on, then it has created a society of entitlement minded people.
As to how many people get their morals from churches; we can not mandate church attendance. The only thing that we can do is influence others within our circle to become like-minded. One by one is how the Church is supposed to influence society. We have no reason to expect government figures to do our will, but we can vote in honorable people who will do their best to see that our country doesn’t sink any further into the morass it is headed for now.
Uh, yeah…because obviously, if women thought about it smartly, they wouldn’t want to earn an independent income, and that the generations of men who have sought to do so, often in preference to their wives, must just be utterly stupid. Also, no woman would want to run for office or be part of a religious hierarchy; let the men do all that hard work, the dupes! I guess women like you know that you’re really better off being dependent, and leeching off the rest of us; thanks for sharing your moral values with the rest of us.