Mandates, morals and laws are three distinct categories, each with its own context, foundation, scope and effectiveness.
Mandates are much in the news because many officials and institutions issue mandates. Mandates are not laws and usually do not result in punishment for crimes by the government, even when issued by a mayor, governor or president. Ignoring mandates can result in penalties to the individual: expulsion from school, loss of job, exclusion from restaurants, shops or other public facilities, loss of funding or inability to bid for jobs. School boards, elected officials, owners of public or private institutions and others issue mandates. If one wants to work, study, eat or sleep somewhere, it is wise to follow the mandates.
Laws are enacted in a democracy by elected officials and administered by those with powers recognized and adjudicated legally. Police and courts determine when a crime has been committed and decide the appropriate punishment.
We currently experience more mandates enacted by presidential and executive decree because unbridgeable social divisions strain and weaken our legislative structures. National, state and even some local legislative bodies seem unable to pass laws. Hence, executives fill the gaps with mandates.
Two positive justifications for mandates are: 1.) Mandates, especially local mandates based on immediate contexts, are generally wiser and more likely to be effective. 2.) Mandates can be flexible and temporary. Passing new laws to correct unwise or unjust laws is cumbersome at best. It is easier and quicker to withdraw a mandate.
Both mandates and laws also teach citizens what is acceptable or unacceptable behavior and establish limits. For example, gradual legalization of drug use and sales sweeping the country in search of income teaches citizens that is acceptable to abuse drugs, even when laws punish them when drug use leads to fatal automobile accidents. Obedience to laws generally depends upon fear, patriotism, or a sense that a law is just in its intent and implementation. In current experience it seems everyone claims individual rights, but avoids responsibility.
Both Mahatma Gandhi and Martin Luther King Jr. affirmed that one must disobey an unjust law that is “not rooted in eternal and natural law.” They insisted, however, that disobedience be non-violent, and that the law breaker must be willing to take the consequences including jail terms. That is the argument in King’s Letter from the Birmingham Jail. That moral position is a strong affirmation of rule by law.
Morals are different from mandates and laws. Morality arises from fundamental worldviews of individuals and communities. In a society devoid of morals derived from a positive worldview and embedded values that lead citizens to live above the law, civic order disintegrates into unrestrained crime and civil unrest. In the absence of morality of a majority of citizens, it is impossible for police or military to enforce laws. The basic failing need not be bad laws or administration, but a breakdown of basic moral structures in society.
The fundamental and effective response, then, is not more laws, but more morality. That is best accomplished locally with support for families and other social organizations and institutions that instill a higher morality than any law could demand. A Biblical passage lists some basic moral actions: “love, joy, peace, forbearance, kindness, goodness, faithfulness, gentleness and self-control [especially self-control]. Against such things there is no law” (Galatians 5:22-23). Those lead citizens to live above the law.
Raymond B. Williams, Crawfordsville, LaFollette Distinguished Professor in the Humanities emeritus, contributed this guest column.
