I see this phrase a lot in the political forum, it is used a lot by politicians. They say things like " We have the moral high
ground" or " get off your moral high horse" or something along those lines. They (or we) say because they believe saying it makes it true.
I put this question here because we all have a sense of morality. We have absolutes, things we will or will not do under any circumstances, and lots of things which are not absolutes, things we prefer or try not to do, but we do them, especially if no one is watching. I believe we all have a bit of hypocrisy in us, we hold others, especially our leaders, to a higher standard. We do things that we expect others not to do. Our politicians lie, cheat, steal, bribe, engage in sexual misconduct, slander, etc. If you hold these things to be wrong, where do you get the moral authority to make such a claim? How do you reconcile your condemnation of a politician for doing something you also do? How do you ever expect an honest, morally upright person to get elected from the public pool of a morally bankrupt nation?
We are christian nation… our laws are not based on christian beliefs…
We are a nation of christians…
It always bothers me when people say their moral compass is based on their faith since if they stopped believing in their faith they would easily murder, rape and steal with no guilt…
Yet you don’t follow His rules on enslaving people. Odd that.
I don’t believe any sort of objective morality exists. Each person derives their own with likely huge overlaps. We all don’t live up to our own moral codes 100% of the time. That doesn’t mean I give others a pass when they similarly fail to live up to the same tenet I failed to live up to.
Then your last question in your OP is meaningless to those who don’t share this standard.
My standard is scientific realism…therefore I use what I’ll loosely define as a “cause and effect” standard to reject your suppositions that a) we are morally bankrupt and b) that’s what causes so many of our politicians to be corrupt.
Under my standard there is zero support for your suppositions.
It seems universal that people know, and in fact seem to expect that our politicians are going to lie, cheat and steal- do virtually anything to win, but we always seem to point to the other side as being worse.
Donald Trump was caught on tape saying some disgusting things about women so liberals claim he is morally unfit for office. Meanwhile, they selectively forget the sexual immorality of Bill Clinton and the Kennedys. I don’t want this to become another “what about” thread- just wanting to know what people use as their moral compass. What makes us selective when pointing fingers? Etc…
I have a lifetime of being raised in America and until the last handful of decades I would have said that we are a “Christian” nation. We have pushed God out of our society more and more for decades and the results are showing.
Many times in this forum, and in the old forum I have asserted that we are largely moral products of our society. Southerners in the civil war era saw nothing morally wrong with slavery, Nazis saw nothing wrong with murdering Jews, ancient Romans saw nothing wrong with fighting to the death in an arena. Because of my life experience, if I renounced God now I would still have the same moral beliefs.
What is the standard of morality? Where do you get yours? What makes it better than anyone else’s, past, present or future?
When people died so young, as they did in societies throughout history, marrying young was necessary. Moral hindsight is 20-20. How do you judge the past using today’s standards?
Ten year old girls if that time were also out doing hard work in the fields and in their homes. Today, our modern technological society AND child labor laws make such work unnecessary and illegal. Wad that “sick” to make children work so hard back then. Also, it wasn’t uncommon for 12-17 year old boys to go to war and fight and die along with the older men. Was that also wrong or sick? Doesn’t happen today…
