[Eli]

Mule I think that is a perfect example the shelves were picked bare but no riots.

I used to live in Kansas City and two blocks from where I used to live there was riots for some reason or another they had have cops come out in riot gear the whole bit. A place that has had riot prior to PO is going to be a terrible place post PO.

[Ayoob]

Everything will be OK as long as everybody has food, water, and shelter... and a clear sight to more of the same. Take a look at what happened after Katrina. It was pretty simple. House gone, clothes gone, cash gone, business wiped out, whatever. No food and water? Game on. That's pretty much it.

ETA: King of Page 2

[PrairieMule]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Eli', 'M')ule I think that is a perfect example the shelves were picked bare but no riots.

I used to live in Kansas City and two blocks from where I used to live there was riots for some reason or another they had have cops come out in riot gear the whole bit. A place that has had riot prior to PO is going to be a terrible place post PO.

[emersonbiggins]

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('PrairieMule', '
')Emersonbiggins- were you in Stillwater in 1995? Do you remember this?

[Tanada]

An interesting take on the concept of what is moral today.

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', 'I')t's important to engage with your opponent's strongest argument, but not always easy to articulate something you don't agree with. So I was glad that, at a panel on religious liberty issues at the Federalist Society's annual convention yesterday, there was someone on stage to defend the Obama administration's actions in that area.

Listening to remarks from Bill Marshall, a distinguished professor at the University of North Carolina School of Law, helped clarify for me what many on the American left believe when it comes to conflicts between civil liberties (like the right not to be discriminated against) and religious liberties (like the right not to be forced into a behavior that you believe is sinful). I'm going to try to lay out what I took his argument to be—and then explain why I'm still not convinced by it.

The concern is that, since only an individual can decide what her faith requires of her, "religious liberty" could be used as a justification for any behavior whatsoever. "The problem with accommodating religious belief is religious belief is completely elastic," Marshall said. "People can believe anything they want to." Thus, the government needs a way to determine whether or not to grant an exemption to an otherwise applicable law, and for him, the answer can't be that claims of religious liberty always win out.

He's right on that. Clearly, there are some instances when no one would support an exception, as with laws against rape and murder. (That your religion requires you to make a human sacrifice does not obligate the rest of us to stand by while you kidnap virgins and burn them at the stake.) In Marshall's words, "At some point the Court has got to figure out a way to draw a line around a claim" that a law violates someone's religious liberty.

The Obama administration and its supporters would prefer to draw that line close in. As Marshall put it, they think the rule should be that personal expressions of religion must be protected but not actions "out in the marketplace" that affect the "interests of third parties." He cited as an example of the former situation the case Holt v. Hobbs, in which the Supreme Court unanimously ruled that a prison in Arkansas may not prohibit a Muslim inmate from growing a half-inch beard in accordance with the dictates of his faith. Marshall pointed out that the Obama administration defended the inmate in that case—and rightly so, since the growing of a beard is part of one's individual identity.

What doesn't fall within the narrow confines of religious liberty in Marshall's view (and, apparently, Obama's) is the baker who declines to provide the cake for a same-sex wedding, or the nonprofit hospital that opts not to offer abortifacient coverage to its employees. The administration's position is that "there is something wrong with accommodating one group when it causes harm to another," he said.

I strongly disagree, but I concede that he is at least outlining a coherent standard for deciding when religious liberty should trump and when it shouldn't. Personal behavior affects only the actor; public behavior has some measurable consequence for someone else; only the first should warrant an exemption from an otherwise applicable law. I think that's the wrong standard to use, but you can see why someone might think to draw the line there.

So why don't I agree? Because there are an infinite number of ways a person can be affected, and even harmed, by an action without their rights having been violated. If someone asks me for a dollar and I turn him down, that action has consequences for someone other than me. Before we let the government infringe on your religious liberty, it needs a better reason than just that you would otherwise act in a way that someone else would like you not to.

But doesn't that leave unanswered the question of how to decide when to grant a religious exemption? Fortunately, there is another way out of the conundrum, and libertarianism lights us to it. The key is to differentiate between harm, which can be a nebulous concept, and aggression, which is much less so. In a world where the very specter of an offensive Halloween costume can push elite college students to emotional ruin, the reason for not allowing the law to turn on subjective perceptions should be obvious. But even more important is that harm to one side or the other is often impossible to avoid when humans come into conflict.

No doubt being turned away from your favorite bakery because of who you are is a painful experience. But it's surely just as true that forcing a cadre of Catholic nuns to violate their consciences by participating, even just a little, in the provision of contraception is also an act that would lead to mental anguish. In both cases, people are being harmed. But in only one are people having coercion used against them.

With respect to Professor Marshall, I submit that that should matter.

[onlooker]

I think the author makes a good point in differentiating intentional harm ie. aggression from coincidental or non-intentional harm. To me morality is not time based or even circumstance based. It is universal and always. Our guide is empathy. Or another way to see it is with the golden rule. It is not referred to as golden casually. It is "Do unto others as you would have them do unto you"

[Milret2]

Empathy is a very large part of morality I suspect. The ability to feel some part of another persons fear, pain, misery and react to that with care, courage, and cooperation in times of desperation is ( I think) a shining light of empathy.

People in apartments around that area in France who opened their doors to strangers, the person who helped a young woman hanging by her fingers above a twenty foot drop to concrete back into the theater while ( no doubt ) worried about their own situation, the people who dropped sheets from windows above the carnage to try to cover the dead all gave examples of empathy.

I have visited both France and Paris several times and, despite having virtually no command of the language, have found the populace I met to be kind, interested, and helpful to me.

[SeaGypsy]

Cog got me thinking about Calvinism- Lutheran Protestant revolution & it's relevance today. The fact is that the lesson has obviously not been learned. Very few nominal Christians have a thorough & personal understanding of the Bible, even those going to church regularly still fall into the same traps Calvin was martyred for describing. Relying on 3rd party interpretation, buying favour etc. Multiply this characteristic in PC views of Islam, everyone has an opinion, but an even tinier number have read & understood the Koran. I am not a Muslim, but I can discuss the Koran at length with Muslims & often know it better than they do, because I am a Calvinist- I know the Priest lies, so does the Mullah, & their books are not by any realistic view- perfect.

Attention spans seem to just keep falling. Developing a deep sense of morality & or ethics requires serious effort & fierce intellectual independence. Way too hard for most, who just go with the flow- the way Protestants carry over a bunch of old Pagan- Catholic rituals & perspectives which are not biblical, hundreds of years after Luther spent his life translating bibles & preaching Calvinism.

Most people will just tow the line of whatever set of morals they grew up with, unless they are forced to do otherwise. You can't force people to actually understand morality, they do or they don't, probably by the time they can speak.

[onlooker]

"You can't force people to actually understand morality, they do or they don't, probably by the time they can speak." I would add that also people from a young age in keeping with the type of upbringing they are receiving are either practicing some level of morality or are being habitually immoral.