Is that it?

While just about all that was presented last time found, I'm pretty sure, little opposition, things are going to get interesting now. I think most of us agree: if it's legal, it's right. But the question we need to pose, then, is: are their unjust laws? This may be a bit more difficult to decide.

What the banks did leading up to the financial crisis of 2009 was legal. Was it right? Was it good? Was it moral? What the banks are doing now: is it right? Is it good? Is it moral ... it's legal, but ... ? What about the laws denying African-Americans the right to vote and to be subjected to segregation? They were laws. It was legal, but was it right? Was it moral? Or, to go abroad: in 1938 the Nazis passed a law that Jews weren't human. It was legal, to be sure, but was it right? Was it moral? In other words, can there be such a thing as unjust laws?

I think we can agree that there is. We've encountered them repeatedly in our history ... not just American but the history of humanity. I chose today especially to raise the issue because the American Revolution that so many love so well ... the all-holy Constitution, the Declaration of Independence ... were all based on the premise that there are unjust laws. No taxation without representation. (But the Boston Tea Party was an act of terrorism against a global corporation, the East India Company, which was using the king for its own purposes ... how ironic is that in light of the recent Tea-Party rantings and the drivel being spewed about in the current presidential campaigns?)

And, now, if we think the thought a bit farther, could it be that laws can be made that are, as the Americans like to phrase it, "constitutional", but at the same time be immoral, that is, unjust? Most definitely, and it is happening repeatedly. Examples? Why, of course: the Patriot Acts, the National Defense Act (my personal favorites, which is why I mention them so often). This puts a lot of things on whole new footing, does it not? What we find is that justice, morality, and all that goes with it, depend on more than just feelings or laws. We are called upon to actually think about what we believe and what we hold to be good and true and right. What one person or just one group thinks to be that may not be what another group thinks, so we need to be able to discuss and debate and consensually determine what such moral standards are. And if we can't talk to each other anymore? What then?

If you ask me, things are not looking all that good for the home team.