وبلاگ خانه تبدیل شباهنگ مرکز تخصصی تبدیل صدا و تصویر
Bad governments provide other examples. In Nazi Germany, there were all kinds of laws made to deprive the Jewish people of their basic human rights. Helping a Jewish citizen or even treating him medically if one were a non-Jewish doctor was prohibited by law. But, of course, we would not consider such actions to be immoral; quite the contrary. Here it would be morally reprehensible to follow the law. I recently discussed a clinical case with medical students and physicians who were trying to reconcile unclear ethical issues with relevant laws. One participant leaned back and said, “Well, if we know the laws, that`s the end of the story!” It`s not hard to think of something. For example, let`s say they stand as pedestrians at a red light. Across the street, through the cars that cross in front of you, you will see a small child playing. And suddenly, the child looks like he is running down the busy street! How many times have you heard someone say, “Well, it`s not illegal!” Hornberger offers a hypothetical possibility that Congress will enact a mandatory church attendance law, according to which children must attend church services every Sunday. Parents are punished if their children do not comply. Would such a congressional mandate have moral or constitutional legitimacy? The law would be a clear violation of natural or God-given rights to life and liberty. As to whether it would be constitutional, we need to see whether the obligation to go to church is one of the enumerated powers of Congress found in Section 1, Section 8 of our Constitution.
We would not find such authority. Our anti-federalist Founding Fathers did not entrust religious freedom to Congress, so they tried to protect it with the First Amendment to explicitly deny Congress the power to order religious behavior. Suppose there is broad popular support for an ecclesiastical mandate and the U.S. Supreme Court finds it constitutional; Do Americans have a moral obligation to obey the law? There are many actions that are immoral, but it should not be illegal. For example, it may be immoral to chat about your friend`s privacy, but most would agree that this type of gossip should not be banned. The fundamental distinction between legal and moral seems quite simple. The fundamental distinction between legal and moral is quite easy to identify. Most people agree that what is legal is not necessarily moral and that what is immoral should not necessarily be illegal. Sometimes laws seem to protect the rich and the rich at the expense of the poor and disadvantaged. Sometimes the laws seem unfair.
So, is it true that sometimes a good person has to break the law to get the right thing? Can it be morally right to break the law? Or is ethics the same as the law? We want to catch the bad guys and promote justice. But how can this happen if we don`t raise our voices and denounce immoral behavior, even if it`s legal? Perhaps our willingness to give people a pass when they do bad things, even if they are legal, undermines the likelihood that people will follow the rules, let alone the spirit of the rule. Ultimately, we are all called as individuals to decide what we think is morally right and wrong. It`s part of what makes us human that we can`t let go of that decision and let others decide for us. Each of us must decide for himself which actions we want to consider morally good or bad, even if it violates the laws of the state. We certainly expect people to act morally and ethically, even if there is no law or enforcement to draw conclusions. In particular, we hope that politicians will go beyond legal norms and make ethical decisions, as they are elected leaders destined to promote the best interests of all citizens. One way to see that laws and ethics are not the same thing is to find examples of cases where an act is legal but immoral; or illegal, but morally just. If we could find such cases, we would of course know that the two categories cannot mean the same thing; we would also know that one cannot be completely contained in the other, like concentric circles. Instead, we would know that the law of morality is like two overlapping circles. Then there would be an area where they overlap, and that would be actions that are both legally and morally right. They would also have a range of actions that are legal but immoral; and finally, an area that includes actions that are illegal but morally just.
Erroneous (left) and right relationship between laws and moral rules. This is dangerous because morality has this absolute claim to direct its own actions. Ethics gives us rules to follow unconditionally without ever questioning them: you shouldn`t steal, you should be honest, you should be loyal, and so on. But unconditionally obeying state laws is rarely a good idea. Laws are made by a parliament, and it is not a body inspired by God or any higher wisdom. The people who make our laws are fallible, they can make mistakes; quite often they are greedy, perhaps corrupt, they can be bribed and pressured, or they serve certain interest groups. So that in the end, the laws made by these people are not necessarily worth following unconditionally. For example, one must obey a law that says, “Do not kill,” because murder is above all evil; Making it law does not make it morally reprehensible. Honest people should not obey immoral laws. What is moral and immoral may be a contentious issue, but there are general guidelines for deciding which laws and government actions are immoral. Lysander S.
Spooner, one of the great American thinkers of the 19th century. Our own history offers the best and saddest example. Before the Civil War, slavery was legal in the United States, but certainly not moral. Legal but immoral acts are also common. For example, it`s legal to look for tax loopholes and try to play around with the system to cut your own taxes. This can go as far as companies moving their international headquarters to unlikely locations such as some Caribbean islands or Ireland, just to avoid paying regular taxes in their home (and business) countries. While such behavior is legal, it is clearly immoral. A company that earns billions of dollars from consumers in a particular country is morally obligated to pay taxes in that country and in this way to the social security systems, public infrastructure, health care, schools, etc. of that country. Evading this responsibility, even if it is legal, is not morally right.
You might say, “Williams, although there are gray areas in the Constitution, the U.S. Supreme Court would never shamelessly rule against clear constitutional prohibitions!” This is nonsense. The first clause of Article 1, Section 10, states that “no State […] Pass any file. the law that affects the obligation to contract. During the Great Depression, the U.S. Supreme Court upheld a Minnesota law that limited banks` ability to close overdue mortgages, affecting contracts between the lender and borrower. To avoid this type of contractual interference, which is regularly carried out under the statutes of the Confederation, the drafters added the clause. Others fundamentally disagree. You say that you did nothing morally wrong by crossing the street, since you have no general moral obligation to obey the law – this law or any other law. After all, where should this moral obligation come from? Have you ever promised to obey all the laws? Do you owe the government obedience to the law? For example, some things are immoral, but completely legal. You can probably find many of your own meaningful examples, but we`ll only offer a few. First of all, if you don`t tip in a restaurant, it`s not illegal; but it seems to be a crime, especially if the service is good. Another example: wealthy individuals and companies are often heavily criticized for using loopholes, offshore accounts and other systems to avoid taxes.
Yet businesses rely more on state-funded resources than individuals to generate wealth, including routes for shipping goods and services, energy and communication infrastructure, law enforcement, national defense, and bureaucracies that support state, domestic, and international trade. Most of us may agree that certain acts should always be criminal – para. B example, murder by execution, violent rape or theft. .
