Statists are very concerned about whether orders are "legal". They are somewhat less concerned about whether orders are ethical (or "lawful" in the historic sense).
I don't care a whit whether orders are legal. I only care whether they are ethical.
Many great evils are legal.
If you follow legal orders, you're as likely to be committing wrong as right.
If you follow only ethical orders, you may be in legal trouble, but you're not the bad guy in the dispute.
Political criminals write legislation (which they'll call "laws"), making evil "legal", and then give orders to their minions based on those evil rules. That doesn't make the orders right, nor does it make following those orders ethical. It means if you follow those orders, you're committing evil alongside those who wrote the legislation and those who gave the orders. They are the bad guys and you are assiting them in doing wrong.
Don't do that, regardless of where your political loyalties lie. That's a doomed path.
Help me stack Sats.
Thank you for this post. This is a fundamentally important distinction, one that identifies a decent person from those who aren’t. Regrettably, doing what is right seems to be an aberrant behavior and the exception from the ‘norm’ for the herd of humanity and most especially the particularly depraved segment that rises to the top to rule.
ReplyDeleteYou're welcome and thanks for saying so.
DeleteThere needs to be something superior to a bar exam, like an ethics exam, for attorneys. Of course, if you passed an ethics exam, you'd never be writing or enforcing legislation.