Should morality be legislated?

[A Black Falcon]

But it is a tax that is completely voluntary. Lottery ticket sales aren't mandatory. It's probably the clearest-cut case of where morality should not be legislated.

True, but on the other hand, some people become addicted to gambling, and waste large amounts (or even small amounts, when they have even less) of money on gambling which they really can't afford... a ban isn't the answer, probably, but it is a real problem, and one which, while recognized, is probably a bit ignored...

Gambling isn't a tax on the poor, it's a tax on people who are bad at math. Idiots, in other words, rich and poor. I've got a hard time making it illegal (freedom to do as one will), but I'd certainly want to give better math education and a little skepticism so people don't throw away their livelihoods on the stupidity. I say make it die because no one is interested.

Yeah, I thought about calling it a tax on the stupid, which it also is (as you say)... it's both, really. :)

Immigrants namely from the Islamic world are not brought up in western values when they arrive,The other concern is for newcomers to not embrace nationally accepted beliefs, Like equality for women democracy secularism tolerance.

You have to have at least some basic understanding of American values in order to become a citizen... this goes too far. If they truly were that hardline in their beliefs, I'm not exactly convinced that they would want to come here on a long-term basis...

First, I have to say that this has almost nothing to do with the topic of this thread...

... that said, I'm writing a long post about it anyway... erm, yeah.

The case of Immigrant from the middle east is those who have lived in the west for the past 40's-30's and their children as well are better adjusted to our way of life then the New guard of recent, they come from places were there is morality police to enforce religious code, The is a general strong belief God Allah mandated laws to be followed and penalties for breaking them , Many outspoken individuals will say *democracy goes against sharia Islamic law* since it offers one the possibility of amending *Allah's laws*.

Most Sharia law doesn't actually come from the Koran itsself, you know, but from laws written later... some of the bases do ('modesty'), but then the laws greatly expand on that and push it a lot farther into the realm of "this is obviously wrong" than the Koran alone says. There's nothing in the Koran about women having to wear veils as far as I know, for instance... Of course, expanding well beyond the bounds of the basic text is something that happens in every religion; Christian practice and what is written in the New Testament are often virutally opposite in a lot of ways, for instance... the problem is the amount of radicalism in the religion; moderate Islam is (or can/could be) no better or worse than moderate Christianity... really though, that's not the issue. The issue is about political culture more than anything -- as much as some in some religions don't like it (see the Pope's regular comments about how European society needs to go back to being more religious), in the West we have a concept of political culture -- the idea that politics and religion are separate, and that that is a good thing. That idea doesn't really exist in most Islamic nations, or if it does it has almost no influence.

However, in North America at least, most Muslims are more moderate; "the Muslims here are all (or mostly) potential terrorists or supporters of Sharia law" is simply not a valid statement and leads to a huge amout of unjustified persecution.

This is why simply having an election in Iraq doesn't work. They vote, but they have no real concept of why voting should be a right or what the right to vote truly means and why they should want it, so they vote for people from their group, and politics polarize on the same Sunni/Shi'ite/Kurd lines as the general population.

It is true that the West and the Islamic world have a great divide between them, and politically and mentally the Islamic world is far behind the West in political development. The Islamic church is like Christianity would be if there had been no Reformation or Enlightenment, essentially. The Reformation and the Enlightenment were incredibly important events, and without any equivilant, Muslims do not see the need for a separation of church and state like we do, for the most part.

Of course, say anything that general and you will be proven wrong in a dozen ways -- "Turkey", or "Indonesia", etc. And those complaints would be correct; the issue is not the entire religion of Islam, but the lack of balance between church and state and the ignorance of the populations (the education level of most Islamic countries is well below Western education levels; large amounts of unemployment in some Middle Eastern countries also creates a problem as it creates a large class of people easy for radicals to convince; similarly for Arabs, American support for Israel is a, and perhaps the, central factor in raising the level of anger...) is the problem. Turkey shows that it is possible to balance Islam and democracy; the Bush administration was, among other things, thinking of making Iraq into another Turkey (more for the 'friend to the US' thing than the 'democracy' thing, though). Of course, Iraq is a nation with no sense of national unity beyond that of a strongman forcing people to conform, and they should have known that, but that's another issue...

... yeah, I'm not saying much of anything am I... erm... a point, I need to make an actual point...

-Treating Muslims badly (in the US) simply because of their religion is wrong; harass people too much and they WILL turn against you, even if they wouldn't have before. Of course security matters too, but we need to uphold our principles, and we are doing many things which break those principles. You can have security and equality; now we are sacrificing equality for an impossible "security" which we can never achieve, and it is wrong.

-The path towards democracy in the Middle East will be long and hard. We need to somehow build up the idea of political culture in those nations, but that is something that is pretty much impossible to impose from the outside. America did not become a nation because democracy was forced on it. It became a democracy because its people decided that nothing less than democracy (or a democratic republic, to be more precise) would do. Until this happens in the Middle East, it will not turn lastingly democratic in a meaningful way.

-We have to accept the consequences of having elections in nations like Palestine and Iraq. When the population is angry, they will elect angry leaders, hence the victories of the hardline Shi'ites and Hezbollah. This will not change as long as the people feel threatened or oppressed. The first key to this is somehow solving the Israel-Arab problem, something that after sixty years seems virtually impossible... it has caused an almost incalcuable amount of hatred and tension... but finding ways to deal with Arab poverty, unemployment, etc. are also crucial. It is not that no one in Gaza, the West Bank, or Iraq has any idea of what is the right thing to do; it is that the radicals have more support because of conditions.

-Iraq needs to be partitioned three ways. I don't see any other way of getting them to stop killing eachother. Baghdad will be a big problem for a long time though...

-We need to realize the consequences of our actions. We supported Gen. Musharraf in Pakistan; he destroyed or silenced all opponents to his rule that he could; the few moderates there were were destroyed. Result? All that was left were the hardy ones, the radical Islamists in fringe tribal lands the Pakistani army cannot control. Great. What do we do now? We continue to support a dictator, knowing that if he died or if an election was held radical extremists would win, and they would have nuclear weapons... but how do you deal with the situation? It seems almost too far gone to fix at this point... I don't know, but we need to realize that dictators are not exactly always the best solution -- in some senses, an elected antiamerican government is in the long run maybe less of a threat than a friendly dictator who tries to crush all opposition but only manages to grow the radicals within the nation...

-We need to stop looking like the enemy to the Islamic world! Even Indonesia is seeing a growth of radical Islam these days, and a large part of that is because America is seen as anti-Islamic; if we change that perception and act sincerely towards fostering an understanding between moderate Islamic states and the US, we can definitely help the situation. (This will never, ever happen with this administration in office, though, that's for sure...)

On the other hand, we do need to recognize the dangers -- the way Islamic states treat women is horrible, and the way that they get deluded (or convinced) into believing that something bad for them is good for them... I approved of France's move last year (or the year before?) to ban headscarves from public schools. That is one of the most obvious symbols even here of that oppression... perhaps it is seen by Muslims as only a sign of modesty, but it is more than that. It is a symbol of old ways of thinking that should change; that's part of why when Ataturk founded Turkey he banned headscarves and turbans, I think (to struggle against Islamic religious rule in government; the two are kept separate).

Oh yes, and as an aside, if you look at the actual opinions of the general populations, Iran is probably a lot more pro-American than any of the Arab nations... the governments are different, but governments and popu
lations often have different messages. Military action by us there would destroy this and unite them behind their leaders, as it would for almost any nation when under attack.

... erm... I think this was a failed attempt at a post... oh well, I'm not rewriting it now into something that actually makes sense.