> Why? I can't think of a single example of where this is true. I've even read web pages which sited information which pointed to the opposite. I know of one example off the top of my head, and that would be the repeal of Prohibition, which lead to less alchohol consumption and violence in general. What example are you pulling from? Just curious.

I hear the Prohibition example a lot. Under this school of thought, the cure to a lot of crime problems would be to make those crimes legal. We're talking about drug use, child porn, public nudity, and basically anything else that doesn't physically harm anyone except maybe the person performing it. Never mind phychological harm, because that's immeasurable. It doesn't count. So all this stuff should become legal.

That's *ONE* definition of morality. But not everyone thinks that hurting or not hurting other people is a reasonable model for morality. Who decided it was, anyway? I'm not superintelligent, but I can see holes in that. Like, what about the mother who needs to punish her child with a spanking (tough love)? If the kid's never punished in this way, he'll grow up into a spineless, selfish brat with little respect for anyone or anything. Don't laugh, I've seen this happen numerous times before and it's not funny. Or what about little Johnny, whose female next-door neighbor likes to garden in the nude? The neighbor may not be physically hurting anyone, but it doesn't take a huge amount of logic to reason that Johnny will grow up with a much different image of women after seeing this than if he didn't. Whether his change of thinking is a good thing may be debatable, but there's no denying the effects of sight and sound in shaping young minds. Physical pain is not the only influence in the way a person will turn out, and anyone who thinks that is being rather shortsighted.

So, if hurting others is a weak basis for morality, what's a better alternative? People will argue (and have argued) this for centuries. Personally, I believe the Bible is a more solid foundation for morals than anything inspired and written by men. But that's another thread altogether. The point is that people have different beliefs about morals.

I think our current democratic system works well enough. I'm speaking of the USA in particular, because it's the only government with which I'm really familiar. At any rate, nothing is legislated without extensive voting. The voters reflect the philosophical and ethical beliefs of the people, to a decent extent. Personally, I feel threatened by the uprise of liberals legislating liberal ideas in this country, but again, that's another thread. The thing about democracy is that sometimes people get what they want (yay, we win) and sometimes they don't (aww, we lose). Hopefully it all evens out in the end. And as long as the key force in power reflects the ideals of the majority of the people, I suppose the government's doing a good job. Even if that does place me in a political minority. If anyone can come up with a better method of government (something new, please) I'd be very interested to see it.

As a side note, does anyone else find it odd how societies seem to begin conservative and slowly get more liberal? I mean, look at America. It began with the puritans and slowly drifted away from that. Equal rights, womens rights, it sounds good. Then gay rights. Now it's starting to bug me. Sometimes it seems like people want to rebel from traditional morals just because it's different (and maybe fun). I read on other message forums on the web about how great it is that culture is constantly pushing the envelope. People say "Hooray, we're getting more sex and nudity in video games! What an accomplishment for humanity!" and "Yeah! Did you see the naked butt on broadcast TV? Isn't that a groundbreaking achievement!?!" Sure, it's as if there's some kind of goal we're striving toward. What would that goal be, then? Total absence of any moral code? And the point would be...? Maybe people should consider what they really want before they push for it. What so many people consider victories, I call failures. It's sad to see a culture that rejoices when it becomes more corrupt and perverted. Oh well, that's entropy for you.

And that's my rant.

-useless"People who think that bad is good are twisted, and bug me"ness