morality
: beliefs about what is right behavior and what is wrong behavior
: the degree to which something is right and good : the moral goodness or badness of something

Let's explore morality with the righteous grooves of The Iguanas.

Who Determines the Maxim: the moral Law ?

Who determines what the moral law requires?

The Pope? Nope.
The President? Congress? Nope.
Your parents? Nope.
The Bible? Nope.
The majority of those in your community or culture? Nope.

It is not a person, nor a group of persons who determine what the moral law requires of you. It is YOU. It is your reason.

And that is not because "nobody knows your life better than you." It is not because you think differently than others. It is not because you have different personal goals. It has nothing to do with the fact that you are different than other people. It has nothing to do with you as an individual.

For Kant, what determines what the law requires is exactly the same as that which makes you infinitely valuable -- your freedom, your ability to choose. And it is your reason that allows for that. Without reason, there is no freedom. Without reason, there is no capacity to choose. Therefore the life of morality requires that you/we all act in accord with reason -- because it is reason which is the source of our freedom, our autonomy, our dignity.

In short, you determine the right thing to do by appealing to your own universalizing and impartial rationality. It so happens that, since all human beings are rational in precisely the same way -- in virtue, that is, of being able to think abstractly and in terms of universal laws -- what you ought to do in situation A,B,C is exactly the same as what someone else ought to do in situation A,B,C.

Marijuana Use Is Still a Morality Issue for Smokers-Turned-Politicians

It’s old news that Jeb Bush smoked marijuana as a teenager, but his re-admission in a new profile in the Boston Globe that he drank alcohol and partook in pot has raised the question of whether presidential candidates who indulged in their youths and don't support lenient drug policy as adults are hypocrites.
Senator Rand Paul, for one, says so. “Hypocrisy is, ‘Hey, I did it and it’s OK for me because I was rich and at an elite school, but if you’re poor and black or brown and live in a poor section of one of our big cities, we’re going to put you in jail and throw away the key,’” Paul told the Hill on Friday. And voters don’t support hypocrites, the Bush rival said.
But even among lawmakers like Paul, who has said he was no “choir boy” in college and supports decriminalization, there’s a narrative that marijuana use is a youthful mistake, that the drug is harmful, and that it should be avoided. A majority of Americans support both the decriminalization and legalization of marijuana, yet no potential presidential candidate has gone so far as to endorse the latter. (Decriminalization, on the other hand, has the support of several likely contenders.) Instead the debate has been over whether people should be jailed for marijuana possession.

Poor People Need a Higher Wage, Not a Lesson in Morality

 “The idea that poverty is a problem of persons—that it results from personal moral, cultural, or biological inadequacies—has dominated discussions of poverty for well over two hundred years and given us the enduring idea of the undeserving poor.”

—Michael Katz, The Undeserving Poor

In a recent op-ed, New York Times columnist David Brooks called for a “moral revival,” one which requires “holding people responsible” so that we have “social repair.”

To illustrate the need for said revival—which he frames as a reassertion of social norms—Brooks offers what he describes as three “representative figures” of “high school-educated America”: a man whose mother was absent, Dad is in prison, attended seven elementary schools, and “ended up under house arrest”; a girl who was “one of five half-siblings from three relationships,” whose mom lost custody of the kids to an abuser, and whose dad left a woman because another guy had fathered their child; and, finally, a kid who “burned down a lady’s house when he was 13” and says, “I just love beating up somebody and making they nose bleed…and beating them to the ground.”

A question of morality in politics

Politics is not a profession that encourages moral reflection or insight. “The ends justify the means” is good enough for most practitioners. But every now and then, you see someone in politics who raises the questions that confront many of us at some point in our lives: Are we living a moral life? By “moral,” I mean are we living with empathy, love and forgiveness for others? Are we encouraging the voice within that asks us to help more than hurt? Are we ready, as Richard Ford’s narrator asks in “The Lay of the Land,” “to meet our maker”?

Today’s sermon is inspired by Lyndon B. Johnson, Lee Atwater and Karl Rove. LBJ was a man of such complexity and power that the great biographer Robert Caro has dedicated 45 years of his life to psychoanalyzing him and still hasn’t finished. But whatever Johnson’s sins, he could frame a basic question of life, one that is rarely contemplated in politics. At the height of the Civil Rights movement, with the blood of voting rights advocates flowing in his home state, Alabama Gov. George Wallace came to Johnson’s Oval Office to try to put the onus on the federal government for the violence. A famous transcript from a recording device reveals a remarkable conversation. Wallace complained about the violence. Johnson commiserated for a moment and then said Wallace could end the protests simply and swiftly by extending the right to vote. Wallace whined that he didn’t have the power. Johnson exploded, “Don’t you s— me, George Wallace. Who runs Alabama?” Then referring to Wallace’s interest in running for president himself in 1968, Johnson got to the heart of the question: “George, you and I shouldn’t be thinking about 1968. We should be thinking about 1988. We will both be dead and gone, by then. What do you want left behind? Do you want a great big marble monument that says, ‘George Wallace: he built?’ Or do you want little scrawny pine board laying there that says: ‘George Wallace: he hated?’ ”

Why Does Morality Focus So Much on Sex?

People often question why so much of morality is focused on sex. Journalist Richard Schiffman, for example, asks “is sexuality the big deal (morally speaking) that the religious hierarchy makes it out to be?” In support of his view that the answer is no, he quotes ethicist Margaret Farley: “In Western culture, at least since its Christian formation, there has been a perduring tendency to give too much importance to the morality of sex… ‘morality’ is almost reduced to ‘sexual morality’” [1]. This emphasis on sex probably seems especially odd if you believe, like sociologist Catherine Hakim, that in reality “sex is no more a moral issue than eating a good meal.”

Schiffman and Farley imply that Western morality is peculiar in its focus on sex, but it’s important to not exaggerate this claim. Rules about sexual behavior are very common cross-culturally; sex is something that human beings are strongly inclined to try and regulate (although there is considerable variation across cultures about what constitutes ‘appropriate’ sexual behavior). Further, compared to the rest of the world, most Western countries are not especially conservative sexually, and are generally much more permissive than, for example, most Islamic and Asian countries.

On the Morality of Immigration

My goal here is twofold: First, I wish to make a plea for the relevance of moral considerations in debates about immigration. Too often, immigration debates are conducted solely from the standpoint of "what is good for us," without regard for the justifiability of immigration policies to those excluded. Second, I wish to offer a standpoint that demonstrates why one should think of immigration as a moral problem that must be considered in the context of global justice. More specifically, I will argue that the earth belongs to humanity in common and that this matters for assessing immigration policy. The case I will be particularly interested in is immigration into the United States, where immigration policy continues to be a hotly debated topic. However, that discussion takes the form of a case study: the relevant considerations apply generally.

To give some initial grounding to the standpoint that the earth belongs to humanity in common, let us suppose for the sake of argument that the population of the United States shrinks to two, but that these two can control access into the country through sophisticated electronic border-surveillance mechanisms. Suppose, too, that nothing changes in the rest of the world. I would argue (and I think most would agree) that under such conditions these two citizens should allow for immigration based on the fact that they are grossly underusing the territory under their control. If this is so, then it follows that what we do with the space we control must matter for assessing immigration policy. It further follows in particular that, given that by global standards the population of the United States is too small relative to the amount of space to which it claims exclusive control, illegal immigrants should be naturalized and more widespread immigration should be permitted.

To Drink or Not to Drink: Is That a Moral Question?

In many societies whether to drink alcohol is straightforward: it is forbidden. But it isn't at all certain what to make of drinking here. For some it is a matter of free choice, while for others it is a social poison. Some view it as a social lubricant and for many teenagers it is a rite of passage.

The difficulty is deciding whether drinking should be condoned or condemned is, in part, because of the morally ambiguous environment in which we live.

Some turn to a single text for answers, a clear-cut, no-nonsense guide. But which book? After Socrates' death, two of his students took divergent paths. Plato and Aristotle disagreed about ethics, the former believing in eternal values and the latter in the need for judgment in particular situations. Jesus broke with the Jewish establishment of his time, placing the spirit of the law above a strict interpretation of it, emphasizing motive over consequence.

The 6 Most Insane Moral Panics in American History

What's wrong with kids these days? Not enough, apparently, since grown-ups seem to feel the need to just make shit up. Even the flimsiest evidence can convince parents and lazy journalists alike that there is some new, horrible threat to our moral character.

Often these turn out to be grossly exaggerated. Or, as in cases like the ones below, completely fucking retarded.

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