I have a question, many a time in this site, I have been told that having the gov't enforcing morality is a bad thing. But I have also heard that socialists say it is immoral to have ecomonic inequity. Isn't this hypocrisy? Somebody please explain this to me.

CP

Boy have i been active in the past days here.

Yes, moral enforcement, what morals. The fact a nation can have 42 million people without healthcare is immoral to me. Haveing people eat out of a garbage can while someone drools over their collection of sports cars is insane. That gets you doctors for the money not the work. To punish someone for not attending sunday mass, i wonder. Morals change, not things like murder, but that is common sense for most people in a society, at least to me it is.

I dont decalre myself a socialist because i dont belong to a real socialist party and or nation, but if i did i would decalre it. I agree with it more so then any other system, democratic socialism that is, and my morals are the secular humanist type, so you can see my utopia

Examples, please.

What do you mean, what kind of examples, of people telling me morality + Gov't =bad. Sorry, I'm slow

CP

You implied members on this forum were making such comparisions. Perhaps I misunderstood you.

Either way, who are these hypocritical people? I find it helps to work off of concrete examples rather than hypotheticals.

The difference between socialists and other parties is that moral judgements are in a different arrangements. It is absolutely necessary to make moral judgements. Example:It is immoral to deprive a person of their right to raise a family and own property. Every government must make some base judgements, the key is where you draw the line. Preventing economic inequity is neither the right nor the responsibility of the government. As long as your financial situation is so greatly determined by your choices, as it is in our system, government forced equality punishes those who actually lift a finger for their station in life just to keep the poor from having to make better choices. This is not the place of government, to say the least. It is a contradiction for socialists to condemn moral judgement while forcing so called, "equality." A government that so naively advocates stripping itself of moral judgement stands for nothing, can have no principles, and in a sense, could only exist as anarchy.

Yes but money is a thing all of its own. Left to humans that work with thier own devices you get chaos, corruption, and an eventual regime of an upper class that maintains its positon. Also without education systems that work to combat such things, costing to much for the lower class thier abilities to escape said status becomes even less, pull out heatlhcare and you might just put them in a rocket to then sun. and said freedom and mobility leave reality. Not only that there is no way to keep from government corruption, monopolys and various other problems. just more or less you get a society of, its not my problem, give me more. Not a society that has to deal with things on a real level. The moral issue is subjuctive, in that it could be a moral tradition to wear dead cats on the second monday of every other month, punishment for such would be rather silly. Any society in light of today and history to survive requires a law system and its enforcerments, this is a simple reality unless you prefer to let the populace itself tackle the problem, and that then kills justice.

I'm not a socialist, but I'll take a stab at this one.
It depends on whether you distinguish between "morality" (as in religion) and basic fairness. Is it right or wrong to have equal wages for equal work? Is the ability to make a living wage against any religion or particularly for one, to the exclusion of another?
I think that basic fairness is not exclusive to any one religion, and as such it would be considered "moral" without being partial to Judaism, Islam, Christianity, Wicca, Taoism, Shintoism, Buddhism, Ba'hai, LDS, atheism, Rastaferianism, Native American Spirituality, Unitarian Universalism, etc. I do not see hypocrisy there.

(edited for continuity)

I dont think it is immoral to have economic inequity, not being religious but Jesus said 'there will always be poor and starving'. However we may have a moral responsability as one human to another.
The real factor is 'how many poor and starving'? How much do you want to look at, live with in your own country? I often wonder what the US would look like if the brutal capitalists had their way and cut out all the saftey nets people have that save them from falling through the cracks. Perhaps our cities would eventually look like Mexico City or New Delhi, India. Compounded by the fact that we all can get guns too easily, especially the poor and frustrated. Are the rest of us willing to see a scenario of this type, when that ideology is brought through to its conclusion?

Imagine that all the beautiful material things you have bought with the dollars you saved from social programs, and your life, are continually in danger from roving bands of poor and desperate. I have seen a homeless person take a crap right on a Market Street sidewalk in San Francisco during a street fair, he obviously had ceased to care about social norms. I dont want this in my country, I dont want my country looking like a sewar, of poor roaming the streets. Its bad enough now, supposedly the richest and most powerful country in the world. I will not exchange more goods for myself for more homeless, hungry, robberies and murders for a few cents on the dollar.

In the most crass sense, welfare protects us all by providing the poor with basic subsistance. Otherwise, life as we know it here could become unbearable. (Gangs of New York anyone?)
It is unlikely that cutting programs will make everyone get up and get a job and the whole nation will be hunky-dory. There will always be poor people no matter how much anyone wants to pretend. Many people who need a leg to stand on sometimes, get it and dont drown in despair, lose their homes, end up on the street. If we dont care for these people in times of need, we shall all suffer much more because of their suffering.

The amount of the Welfare pie that is abused is minimal compared to the alternative. We are one of the least taxed countires in the first world. We dont see much of our money going to any real good. Socialist countries are highly taxed, but children get good free education and the entire population recieves adequate health care and other safety nets. In my experience this builds happier, healthier, more stable nations.
I am not speaking of political Socialism such as the Soviet Union, but financial socialism such as most of Europe. Freedom from fear makes for less paranoid societies, and a more creative population. This will never happen in the US, we are greedy capitalists who pretend to care more about 'suffering Iraqis' than 'suffering Americans' in our twisted and propagandized logic. I suspect in reality we are lovers of war and conquest, generally we cannot see a better paradigm or solution to our problems.

Conservatives always tout 'our security' when it comes to Military spending, which far outweighs what we spend making sure Americans are taken care of in basic needs or on education. Our 'security', stability and the beauty of our nation is also very in question when it comes to turning our backs on the poor and struggling, to education. to youth in trouble, or we begin throwing lots of people in jails because poverty has made them hopeless. It speaks very badly of us , supposedly a generous people, a righteous people, but not when it comes to our own.

Right now we are just reacting to everything and everyone else, doing little to keep our nation healthy, emotionally or physically. This is twisted thinking and we have succombed to primal fears. No other country is doing this, although Britain and Spain have been attacked by terrorists for decades.

We must care for our own. We must not fall into illogical fears. We have to stay healthy as a nation, if not , we are no good , even if we proclaim greatness, someday someone is going to call, bullcrap! Look at the state of your people! and blow us off as hypocrites.

That is very different from having the christian-judaiic ideology rammed down our throats by the government in its policies or using tax dollars to fund religious charities that often expect conversion for food or care. There we do tread closely to political socialism, which is, if you believe what I do Ill help you, if not, fend for yourself. The US governments job is not to give care based upon the Executives religious beliefs. The US is a nation of all religions, and taxes come from people of religious diversity, so should care. Our funds going to Africa have much too much Christain morality attached to who gets the money. This IS wrong, maybe not immoral, but wrong nonetheless.

I feel as a socialist I should clear something up.

socialism doesn't try to eliminate economic inequity. socialism is a system where everyone has access to the basics of life: food, housing, medical care and a job if you need one. anything more that you wish to obtain(a bug TV for example) must be worked for. also, not everyone has an equal pay (flipping burgers pays less then something like nursing, due to difficulty and demand)

now, on enforcing morals: here is the tricky thing. not everyones ideas of morals are the same. where I might see it as moral for the gov't to take 10% of everyones earnings to feed house and give medical care to poor people some may not. where I may see polygamy as moral some might not. it is impossible to enforce your morals on others (especially those that don't want it) without brainwashing. I do not see helping those that need it (and encouraging others to do so) as enforcing morals, but as being decent.

are socialists hypocritical sometimes? sure, we're humans, not robots. who isn't.

Just a small point here: socialists don't want to regulate morality only when there is no victim, but have no problem with it when someoen gets hurt. I mean, pretty much socialists are for laws against murder, rape, assualt, ect. Besides, socialism doesn't even really need a government.