Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

When society’s morals start to go, nations have to rely less and less on doing the right thing and more and more on legalism. It’s sort of a “We know you’re not good and trustworthy people, but as long as you don’t do X, Y, and Z, we won’t crack down on you,” way of dealing with your population.

Put another way, things move from “Is it right?” to “Is it legal?”

This is not a healthy thing for a variety of reasons.

Just as a starter, we all know that not all things that are legal are just. We live in a country where it was once legal to sell slaves. There are cultures where children were publicly sacrificed to the Gods with the full support and cooperation of the government. It used to not be unusual for conquering armies to rape and slaughter populations down to the last man after they took a besieged city.

Another problem with ONLY focusing on what’s legal is that it leads to everyone looking for loopholes and not adhering to the spirit of the law.

Anyone smart will tell you that they’d m…