My apologies to anyone seeking an easy read. Unless you are steeped in 15th – 19th Century philosophy, this will be very difficult to wrestle with, yet it contains everything necessary to understand American political ethics and history. More precisely, it is the definition of right and wrong as seen from our earliest colonies through the Civil War, or from Shakespeare through Abraham Lincoln.
Ethics and morals are the science which deal with what is good, noble, appropriate, wise and right because they are good. Their origin includes the opposite of these, because the wrong and bad compose the origin of our notions of good and noble. The peculiar fallen nature of man allows us to imagine and differentiate these notions.
Man’s essential attributes, the duties arising from these attributes, and the relations necessarily founded upon our knowledge of good and evil, are the only justification for legitimate government. Ethics are our duties to other men and society, and morals are our duties to God and society. Together, these sciences reflect our moral character. Good is an idea within us. Goodness is the application of good to our appetites and impulses, dispositions, actions, and habits.
Good as an idea within us, and man’s corrupt moral nature, form the subject of metaphysical or strictly philosophical ethics. Practical ethics is the science of duty and virtue. Significantly, not knowing or understanding right from wrong is insanity, while not doing right or choosing to do wrong is evil, corrupt, wicked, dishonest.
The latter is man’s natural state. The Bible declares, “None is righteous. No, not one.” Hobbes, Calvin, Rutherford and Locke clearly saw this frailty. Even Rousseau, who sensed an inherent nobility in man, could give no higher praise than calling that natural man, “the noble savage,” who could bind himself contractually to a somewhat lasting peace. The rest conceded that, by God or by nature, “all men are created equal.” Rights impose responsibilities. Your rights may be withdrawn only if you abandon them. This brief introduction cannot explore the depth of responsibilities, but consider the Biblical notion that, “those who live by the sword shall die by the sword.” Not soldiers or defenders, but those who live by force and violence will be (or ought to be) ruled by force. Rights impose responsibilities. We protect our rights by exercising them judiciously and honoring them in others.
Is and Ought: this moral distinction elevates brutal reality above imaginable ideals. Current philosophy often dismisses the philosophical “ought” as fantasy, even abandoning ideals. The first law of ethics is that man has an inalienably moral character. He cannot by his own consent or the force of others become a non-moral being. What is includes forced labor and plunder as “practical tools,” yet these remain unethical and immoral. They are the foundation of a vast majority of political systems. The full treatment of this reality requires enormous thought and can only be introduced here as a vague notion. Consider that every external compulsion, oppression, or demand that violates moral will is a direct suppression of that moral will. Thus, America’s Founders determined to forcibly deny compulsion and oppression at the top of their control system, denying all force over individual liberty. Clearly, that is not how we consider government today. We set up alternating abusive ideals to impose singular and arbitrary standards of oppression against our (not quite equal) fellows. Too rich or too poor, too clever or too stupid, etc., the goal is to artificially elevate one by arbitrarily suppressing another.
The Uniparty system of government compulsion is a facade, a compulsive effort to replace “all men are created equal, endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable rights,” with, “all men are unequal, dependent on our ability to pillage and suppress some for the benefit of disadvantaged or inferior others.”
That is what has happened from the era of Shakespeare to Lincoln until now. We lost sight of what it means to be free. We traded moral individuality for more free stuff stolen by government for our personal benefit. What we are left with in this new system is who gets the advantage.
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