moral uplift, legally and culturally achieved?

[Wahoo Redux]

I might well get mad, as I confess I have done here when my religious views, and advocacy for them, makes me accused of mental illness.   

No.  It is your apparent obsession with public morality that makes me wonder.  We had another poster recently who was obsessed with political-morality.

Playing the victim only goes so far.

[kaysixteen]

Nothing I have said or even implied suggests I support or have ever had any truck with Jim Crow, or advocate a return to any form thereof.

I think I will just focus on the scourge of drugs now.   Exactly what would be gained by their legalization, even marijuana's, let alone anything harder, especially given what we know of how drugs ruin families, harm children, etc.?

[Wahoo Redux]

Nothing I have said or even implied suggests I support or have ever had any truck with Jim Crow, or advocate a return to any form thereof.

I think I will just focus on the scourge of drugs now.   Exactly what would be gained by their legalization, even marijuana's, let alone anything harder, especially given what we know of how drugs ruin families, harm children, etc.?

So you are talking drugs?  Okay.

Beer is the usual gateway drug and alcoholism is the biggest single substance abuse problem in our culture.  Has been since I was an active alcoholic and drug addict.

Your earlier posts sure make it sound like you were taking about cultural control.  Jim Crow is from another thread altogether, and I never thought you were an advocate for Jim Crow.

You okay?

[Kron3007]

Nothing I have said or even implied suggests I support or have ever had any truck with Jim Crow, or advocate a return to any form thereof.

I think I will just focus on the scourge of drugs now.   Exactly what would be gained by their legalization, even marijuana's, let alone anything harder, especially given what we know of how drugs ruin families, harm children, etc.?

We have gone down this path before, but many ways.  Most overdoses right now are from street drugs that are contaminated by more lethal compounds.  A legal and regulated supply would prevent most of these from happening.  That would save lives.

There are many other reasons, but that alone should be enough for a good Christian.

[Hegemony]

Again, the problem with achieving some kind of solution to the drug problem is that there is no general agreement on what the problem is. You, kaysixteen, seem to believe that drug-taking is a moral lapse, if I understand you correctly. Other people regard it as a social problem. Other people regard it as a psychological problem. Other people — and these are a substantial part of the American populace, judging from drug statistics — believe it is not a problem at all. Other people regard some drugs as a problem, others as not.

And drugs are a problem, what is the problem? Overdosing? Addiction? Retreating to "unreality"?

And if we define one or more of those as a problem, what does a solution look like? There are about a hundred different answers to that, many of them in conflict with each other.

But the bottom line is: before we work on anything, we have to agree to work on it. Our culture simply does not agree. I don't see any hope of it agreeing, on much of anything other than that you (probably) should not go naked to the library. Although I'm sure some would argue that you should be able to, on principle. Anything higher-stakes than that needs to achieve general agreement before the next step can be taken. I'm puzzled, kaysixteen, about why you don't see that "getting a majority to agree that this matters" is the necessary first step. And not happening.

[jerseyjay]

I am advocating for taking reasonable steps[...]to foster real moral uplift and basic standards of ethics and behavior in our increasingly disordered, chaotic, and culturally disintegrating culture.

As a historian, I am not really sure I can agree with this view of contemporary society. Even taking United States society by itself (i.e., not comparing it to the Roman Empire, the Mongol invasion, the Third Reich, the Spanish conquest of America, the Belgian Congo, etc.) it does not seem obvious that our times are more "disordered, chaotic, and culturally disintegrating" than the norm. Compared to the lead-up to the Civil War or Reconstruction? To the Gilded Age? To the 1920s or 1930s?  Even on the narrow issue of drugs, are things worse now than the 1970s, 1980s, or 1990s? I think it depends how you look. In the Second Great Awakening there was wide agreement that religion should play an important role in social life. But not on what role it should play: was God in favor of abolishing slavery or strengthening it? Both President Polk and John Brown believed they were doing God's work. And there were those who were outside this religious consensus, not to mention people like the American Indians or Mexicans who would probably take a very different view of U.S. society in the 1840s and 1850s.

Perhaps our society today seems more chaotic than it did in the post-WW2 period, but that again depends on a very particular vision of society. As has been pointed out, others (including many black people, women, gays, left-wing intellectuals) probably have a very different picture of the 1950s; the 1960s and 1970s might appear a low point in cultural order, but again, from different perspectives they might appear a high point.

As a historian, it seems to me important to understand that "morality" is a fluid and changing concept, and trying to depict one period (or society) as more moral than another is a not a historical perspective, but an ahistorical one.

[marshwiggle]

As a historian, it seems to me important to understand that "morality" is a fluid and changing concept, and trying to depict one period (or society) as more moral than another is a not a historical perspective, but an ahistorical one.

This is precisely why public institutions should be sparing in their "moral" endorsements, since many of them will be viewed in retrospect as highly immoral.

[Caracal]

Take drugs.   Drugs suck.   Really, they do, and anyone who actually has to live and work in a decrepit community full of junkies and whose growth industry seems to be legalized weed shops, could much more easily set aside liberal stuck in the 60s attitudes towards their use, and see the real destruction they cause, *especially towards children. 

If the argument is just that heroin and it's relatives have caused a lot of pain, suffering and social dysfunction, you aren't going to find many dissenters. (It's interesting how some drugs don't get any positive press even from the people who are actively heavy users. Lots of people who use Marijuana or LSD are interested in telling people that these are great things. I can't recall ever reading or hearing anybody who does a lot of heroin who seems to feel good about it.)

What's a "drug" exactly though? Only unprescribed substances? It was actually prescribed painkillers that jumpstarted the opioid crisis. Alcohol as someone mentioned can cause a lot of harm. What about caffeine, which is unquestionably a highly addictive substance. Or is it just that you want general social control over the drugs that used to be illegal and still are in many places? I'm not someone who has ever been particularly interested in weed personally, and I do drink alcohol very moderately, but I know a number of people whose lives and families would be in much better shape if they were heavy smokers instead of heavy drinkers.

[Hegemony]

As a historian, I am not really sure I can agree with this view of contemporary society. Even taking United States society by itself (i.e., not comparing it to the Roman Empire, the Mongol invasion, the Third Reich, the Spanish conquest of America, the Belgian Congo, etc.) it does not seem obvious that...

I'll just note that we can even disagree about exactly how much we disagree.