>
>Smoke 'em if you've got 'em folks.
>
>Justin how do you reconcile the contradictions between majoritarianism and
>the notion, which seems
>implicit, of some objective moral order? Either there is one or there
>isn't; would that too be up to
>majority vote? If the people decide there is no objective moral order then
>how can you sustain the
>claim that what they might choose to do is immoral?
>
Moral truth is irrelevant to legal obligation. Democracy means that the people have the right to make horrible moral mistakes. I'm a hard-boiled, copper-bottom, nickle-plated, iron-studded, no-apologies moral realist, as you know! But I don't think the fact that a moral view is true or false trumps the fact that it was democratically embodied in legislation by the people or their representatives. The key thing is democratic adoption, not truth.
This might be the fuyndamental insight of libearlsim coming out of the wars of religion. "Maybe you're right about the Trinity. I personally think you are going to hell. Now, let's put down that gun and work with me on this bill so we can get some nice fat bork into this barrel for the both of us, ay?"
Now, legal obligation isn't the whole story. If the moral disaster is big enough, civil disobedience or other resistance to the law might be indicated. But that would be based expressly on our moral commitments and would not involve an appeal to democratic procedures with the claim to therespect those can command simply because they are the correct procedures for making laws. And it would be illegal, we should expect to suffer the normal penalty for breaking the law.
jks
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