Rule Of Law Is A Fallacy I
Updated: Mar 7, 2022
I was a sophomore, interested in psychology. I hoped to intern at a Christian camp. I was told I had to be Christian to avail the opportunity. Fine, I looked elsewhere. But every counseling institution turned out to be affiliated with a church. They got me. I had gone to college in the Bible Belt.
Post-graduation, I noticed that some non-profits had Christianity as a job requirement. You can’t even apply to be a clerk if you are not Christian. Although religious institutions, especially non-profits are exempt from discrimination laws, are they exempt from moral laws? What happens if there was no law? Would they just let non-Christians rot to death as they say they love them unconditionally or ask them to move to a non-Christian state?
Consider forms of discrimination practiced in corporates-- based on political views, weight, race, and age. Does it matter that there is a law against it? No. They don’t have to openly discriminate. They can say they never saw an application from the old man. It was just a technical glitch, not age discrimination. Even if there was a mechanism to enforce the law in these cases, the real problem remains unresolved, which is a lack of moral development. Even if corporates were forced to act uprightly, it doesn’t eliminate the motivation to discriminate. Children don’t discriminate. What causes people to lose their moral compass when they get old?
It is the intrinsic values of a society that is manifested in the behavior of its members, not its laws. By law, U.S. citizens have free speech, but they all know very well that they can be fired from their job for calling a fat girl fat. Human resources would come up with a vaguely presented corporate jibber-jabber to cover it up.
If a society is intrinsically moral, it needs no laws whatsoever to establish any rights. It does not need any government at all, for people would naturally support their neighbors in their speech, traditions, and religions. This is how freedom emerges from within. Love your neighbors as yourself. Ever heard that one? Freedom is an emergent phenomenon, not an imposed one. So long freedom is imposed from the outside, it implies that society is intrinsically not free. There is only one kind of freedom. And it comes from within. The one that comes from a master is not freedom but fear.