Atheism and Ethics

[The Grand Nudger]

This debate is a lot like the recent nullification of the Chevron doctrine.  You disagree with how government has administered their mandate, not that they didn't have a mandate.

I question whether a government has a moral mandate...and whether a government requires one in any sense.  That short barrage of questions and examples wasn't meant to debate but to clarify what you mean when you say that governments are founded on the principal that they have the right to rule, make laws, and enforce them.  Whether that's meant to be taken as a descriptive claim, a normative claim, or an existential claim.  As in; all legal systems are or have been, all legal systems ought to be, or all legal systems must be?

It's a given that you and I disagree on moral topics.  I'm trying to explain how I..as a moral realist, can be of the opinion that legal claims need not be premised on moral claims, logically or existentially... and might not ought to be in the first place, normatively.   I think we're both in complete agreement as to whether or not they are or have been. Again as a moral realist, I think that the shoddy nature of those moral claims goes a long way to explaining poor legal outcomes.

IDK, this might help. When I say I have an unalienable right to something I'm not saying I get a thing because it would be bad of you to deprive me of it..or even that it would be impossible for you to deprive me of it. I'm suggesting that you would have to fucking kill me to take it. Can you identify the moral content in such a declaration? FWIW, I actually do assert that I have such a right to do bad shit, and generally fuck up. I don't think that governments should be morality police, or that they should punish failure in and of itself. My government obviously and self evidently disagrees and they'd win that argument in court every day, lol.