One of the tell-tale signs that a society is drifting toward an inhumane, authoritarian regime is that citizens begin to idolise the law of the land. People begin to treat the laws that come out of a human assembly or lawmaking body as the ultimate guide to what is right and wrong, as the overriding Code of Conduct, whose validity does not depend on any independent standard, whether common sense, natural law, or ethics.
Unfortunately, we in the West are already quite far down the path of blind and infantile submission to the law. Many citizens have embraced shamefully inhumane practices just because they believed the law required them to do so. For example, the surgical, elective termination of the lives of our offspring has been accepted by many as normal, just because it has the blessing of the law.
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Irreversible hormonal treatments for children confused about their sexual identity have been accepted in numerous jurisdictions as part of a parent’s prerogative, largely because legislators have approved them. Euthanasia, or “mercy killing” of the sick and elderly, is being legalised in many Western countries and the response of many citizens and politicians appears to be, “if it’s legal, it must be ok.”
The idolatry of positive law came to a head during the pandemic: people were happy to go along with laws that made life hell for their unvaccinated neighbours, just because they were unvaccinated; citizens looked on approvingly while police suppressed public protests in the name of “public health”; and people reported their neighbours for the “offense” of having social gatherings in their homes.
We seem to lack the philosophical resources to subject our laws to serious moral scrutiny. “The law is the law,” is about as far as we get. But this sentiment is lethal to a free and responsible society. Legal systems that are meant to set us free, by providing a framework of order and civility within which we can get on with our lives, become the instrument of our domination and infantilisation.
Human laws, being the product of human choices, can go badly wrong. Human beings can pass laws requiring people to report their own family to the State for uttering criticism of State policy; or prohibiting citizens from publicly protesting against their government; or protecting a doctor’s right to experiment on human beings or terminate their lives at will; or requiring people to treat a certain class of their fellow citizens as “dirty” or as potential “disease vectors” to be shunned like the plague.
These sorts of laws are egregiously unethical and unjust. As such, they do not bind citizens in the way that reasonable laws do. But this is only intelligible to those who understand that the law provides a conditional standard of action, that can be overridden by independent ethical values, such as freedom from domination, the right to protest, freedom of association, the right to life, freedom of religion, and the right to informed consent.
Only if citizens believe passionately in a moral code superior to the say-so of legislators and politicians, can they find a firm foothold for resisting egregiously unjust and tyrannical laws. But belief in a morality that transcends the law is difficult in a culture saturated with moral relativism. We need to recover our confidence in a higher moral law, if we are to reverse the current drift toward legal and political authoritarianism.
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Excellent. Thank you.
Agree!! Well written! Well understood!! Thank you!