Why do we need morals?

[Praetorian]

Legality and illegality are not directly interchangeable with morality and immorality, in our system.

Conflicting moralities are, historically, a focal point of conflict, but the confict itself in most of these cases generally arises from something other than morality. "These people are evil" seems to follow -after- we made the decision to go to war, as a justification, an excuse, but sometimes, granted, before or during the decision, as pretext.

Again, a goal based compromise would seem to offer some way to alleviate this. Of course, the goal sought after could be complete adherenece to one or the other sets of conflicting moralities, we find ourselves at an impasse.

Shoot em.

(these threads are always long winded, nothing wrong with that)

Law and morality are not directly interchangeable, but aren't a nation's and a community's laws based on the morals of it's residents? Even in a communist regime, the government still reflects on the beliefs of the majority. Otherwise you have riots and rebellion. Look at Star Wars .

The laws become open to interpretation as unexpected situations arise, which is why we have the system of legal precedent. Even then, laws can be changed.

I agree that large scale conflict can be resolved based on goals, but the basic culture to culture, in-group/out-group stuff is still very hard to resolve.

I will say that it's interesting that most western nations seem to be headed in the same direction after much thought is given. Abolishing the death penalty is a good example. One could logically make a case for objective values based on the concensus of thought process.