Fighting for the Wheel

Can a free culture, nation, or society survive if there is no fundamental agreement on morality or ethics? Whose individual rights are going to win out over another's when they come in conflict based on conflicting values? Who is gonna drive the bus?

If we all operate from mutually held values system, then individuals, groups, bodies, or entities are better able to self-govern without the need of external government controls. To some degree, we deny our personal agendas for the advancement of the shared moral/values system. We know when we should advance our personal cause, and when we should restrain it. That may sound socialistic to a careless reader, but note the emphasis, indeed, the necessity of what I've suggested, is placed on the individual. Government has no involvement here. Government, in a society with mutually held core values, only protects those values from people who would destroy them. Government, then, is freeing individuals to pursue their goals in the larger context of shared values, not insisting on conformity to government sanctioned values, which is a building block of Socialism.

So again, I say, the greatest issue facing the US, which is unarguably divided at this time, is whether we can agree on a mutually held morality. If we cannot do this, we will be forced away from a Republic/Democracy, and forced toward some expression of government dominance of the society—-the opposite of individual rights.

At this point in our history, that journey is demonstrated by the deep division played out in abortion rights, entitlements, the re-definition of marriage and similar morality-based issues. In time past, moral fissures were played out through slavery and other issues. Those issues played out in colossal collisions of values at election times, and even in a war between the states. The question remains, when one individual’s rights come in conflict with another’s, how do we decide who wins, since, in 2007, we no longer hold the same core values?
Here are some things to ponder:

* Can we survive over the long term if we don’t have commonly held beliefs?

* If we don’t have commonly held beliefs, how do we acquire them?

* Can government cause us to share a common values system, or will it take something more powerful than government?

* Can individuals’ values be transformed by edict or force of either a person or system (external), or is the exchange of one values system for another something that occurs internally?

* How did the US survive for over 200 years, and can we survive, as we are, for another 200?

* Can individual rights be held as absolute in a society that has no agreement on foundational ethics or morality?

* What are the minimal core values necessary for a free society to survive?

* Can government provide answers to any or all of these questions, and if it can, how?

* What is the core internal issue in every person that causes us to insist on our own way, and how can conflict with others be resolved in light of that core internal challenge?