Morals is the ultimate subjective term

Without morals, whoever has the most physical power can set the laws in their favor, and subjugate whomever they please.


Ah, the rub, I think, is that you are both right. True, laws could/can be nothing but a tool for the secret police to round up and torture people if the laws lack a foundation in "morals" or some sort of democratic/benevolent consideration of the common wealth.

But they *are* subjective, except (generally) insofar as groups of people adopt a divine sponsor for their morals and then they can become frighteningly absolute. The problem there being that you can and do have many differing sets of absolute morals floating around, some of which instruct the zealous to fly airplanes into buildings, shoot doctors, or unapologetically blow up federal buildings. I think we'd all agree that "that ain't moral!" but would have a hard time convincing folks who differ with our morals to a smaller or larger degree. Chop off somebody's head for the crime of sodomy? The Law and Morality at work hand in hand, wouldn't you say?

We sorry-ass moral relativists fall into the trap of wandering around, constantly mumbling vaguely about the "golden rule", "the greatest good for the greatest number", and something about individual well-being depending on societal well-being. For this we always get accused of being Democrats and (shudder) liberals.
_________________________
Jim


'Tis the exceptional fellow who lies awake at night thinking of his successes.