Our Legal System
Do Republicans Legislate Morality?
By Daniel Muniz

Years ago when I still worked for my former employer, I stepped into a co-worker’s office for a friendly chat. We always enjoyed talking about current events and the subject of politics came up. My colleague thought of himself as an independent voter but he always liked the fiscal conservatism and the limited government principles that the GOP advocated. However, he explained that he would have voted Republican more often if it were not for the fact that the GOP legislates too much morality on the electorate.

I burst out in laughter.

I told him that both political parties legislate morality. It is just that the press hammers the GOP on certain positions while completely ignoring the “politically correct” dogma that Democrats want to impose on the country.

But the perception that it is “only” the Republican Party that legislates morality is a misconception that has to go.

I am not a lawyer but I have taken enough law classes in college (a couple of semesters of business law, tax law, and a criminal justice class which was taught by a former cop) to know that every single law that we have in this country is based on somebody’s morality whether it is a stop sign, speed limit, or murder.

Try to find a single law that isn’t based on some kind of ethical system.

It doesn’t exist.

And the reason it doesn’t exist is because we live in something called civilization. Our society is increasingly complex and more sophisticated which promulgates even more rules and laws that we have to follow. For example, in this country and more so in Western Europe, there is a tax on just about everything. Taxation is based on somebody’s morality that some of the money in my wallet belongs to the federal, state, and local government. And by law, I have to hand it over to the appropriate governmental entities or there will be serious repercussions.

Regardless of whether or not we agree on the laws that we must abide by, it is the price we pay to live in a society that has order and structure in it. And if we don’t like a law, we live in a country where we can change it as long as there are enough people who believe that such a change is necessary. If there are not enough people willing to make the change happen, then welcome to democracy.

But the biggest beef I have is the free pass that the media gives to the Left Wing for political correctness.

Political correctness is very much a religion in of itself. There are so many things that you cannot say or do in America because of how political correctness has slowly been altering the way we live. And the worst thing about it is that Democrats have spent decades imposing this dogma on the population, yet the media rarely ever criticizes this liberal morality or challenges the implications that it has on our personal freedoms.

However, when most disgruntled people talk about Republicans legislating morality, what they are really alluding to is a disagreement with our society instead with our legal system. In sociological lingo, it is the “clash of competing norms” in which one group is laying out their view of how our civilization ought to behave while one or more groups have a totally different view of what our world must be like. But it is more than just a viewpoint; it is the imposition of a set of values (and legislation) that incorporates this “norm” for all of society.

For example, most liberals and nearly all libertarians want to legalize all drugs, except cigarettes. They don’t mind if a teenager is smoking pot but an adult who smokes a cigarette is a vile person. That is a norm that they want to impose on society and a lot of it already exists in California. In fact, some states want to severely punish smokers (of cigarettes, not weed) and prevent them from adopting children, etc.

But how society has viewed smoking cigarettes has evolved over the generations. It was once the norm for a lot of people to smoke and they smoked anywhere and everywhere from your living room, to the workplace, to an airplane. In the two high schools I attended, students could obtain a smoking permit after watching a graphic film. Today, teenagers aren’t allowed to buy cigarettes and even now, adults have to go into a back alley to smoke and in some municipalities that would be illegal although smoking pot is now becoming very legal and acceptable.

This anti-smoking crusade is simply a norm that has prevailed over another norm.

And today there are just so many social issues that are constantly in the forefront of public debate because a segment of society wants to impose its view on the entire country. Even though there are plenty of laws that I vehemently disagree with, such as paying taxes, I obey them anyway (and my taxes get paid).

It is perfectly understandable why some people are upset because the entire country doesn’t accept their viewpoint of how society ought to behave and there is nothing wrong with that. What is totally wrong is blaming Republicans for legislating something they disagree with while entirely ignoring the morality that Democrats have imposed on me. If there is any one thing to blame, then it has to be democracy. And that is because it was democracy that put our social order in place and it created the society we currently live in.

So if someone doesn’t like the laws that Republicans were able to pass, then they ought to complain about the lack of tyranny and oppression because it took a democracy to put our statutes in place.

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