RE: Objective Standards

["Joan Opyr" <auntiestablishment@hotmail.com>]

Doug Jones writes:

>But this is like trying to make the telephone book into a biology text.
>The Constitution aims to set some minimal Federal constraints, but it
>wasn't intended to be an interpersonal ethical code. For example, the
>Constitution nowhere prohibits murder, rape, theft, or speeding. If it
>is "the only standard" then every community in the U.S. is in gross
>violation of it.

Not exactly.  We have laws, which must pass constitutional muster, that 
address murder, rape, theft, etc.  As for ethical codes, yours, mine, and 
the CEO of Enron's are not and will not be one and the same.  I'm afraid 
we'll have to determine our ethics individually within the boundaries 
constructed by an ever-changing body of law.  Not especially comforting (and 
far from certain), but there is no monolithic culture of ethics.

JO/AE

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