[Foundation-l] Let's switch to CC-BY-SA

[Thomas Dalton]

On 12/09/2007, Ray Saintonge <saintonge at telus.net> wrote:
> Thomas Dalton wrote:
> >> Who is trolling here ? Slavery was legal and immoral. My question was about
> >> things that were illegal.
> >>
> > The distinction is irrelevant, you can reverse it pretty easily: Since
> > slavery was legal, rescuing someone else's slave and freeing them (a
> > moral act) was illegal (it's theft, basically).
> >
> Hmmm!  Just like taking someone's intellectual property and freeing it. ;-)

I'm not quite sure mainstream morals have shifted quite that far. ;)

> > Of course, morality is an entirely subjective concept. At the time,
> > slavery was generally considered moral, since the people being
> > enslaved were considered lesser beings. It was when those morals
> > changed that people started to call for abolition. The law generally
> > follows morals, but lags behind a little. During the gap between
> > morals changing and the law catching up you can have immoral laws.
> The law doesn't necessarily follow morality; it often reflects the
> self-interest of those in power.

Well, yes, I forgot to mention I was talking about in a Democracy.
Generally, laws in a Democracy do follow morals - sometimes it
requires waiting for the next election before the laws are updated,
but it does happen eventually (assuming it's sufficiently important to
people).