Random Access Memories

Yes, you read that right, the next four years really do not scare me. They are certain to annoy me, but i’m not terrified of some long-term change in the USA.

Why? Well, because as Martin Luther King once said, “Morality cannot be legislated, but behavior can be regulated. Judicial decrees may not change the heart, but they can restrain the heartless.”

Morality cannot be legislated. Laws can be passed, behavior controlled, but that won’t change morality. Yes, yes, the GOP hopes it will, but in the end it won’t. You only need to look at history for proof of that.

For example, during the Civil Rights struggle decades ago laws were passed to force civil rights on the population. They resisted, because the laws did not change what they saw as a correct morality. Instead it took decades of moral change to alter moral views. And what we have today is a world where racism is called out as shameful and only a minority still think it’s acceptable. I mean there would be a massive public outcry if a store dared to put up a “Whites only” sign in their window, regardless of how legal or illegal that action might be.

A more recent example was the Defense of Marriage Act. The conservatives attempted to pass a law to change the moral view of a subject, and failed miserably. Young people highly support gay marriage, and making a law against it has not changed their view of it.

So now we come to Trump and the GOP wildly trying to make laws and rules to change current morality on abortion, the environment, healthcare, etc. History has shown us that it takes time and a changing society to move those views, not just the law, so their efforts will be annoying, but they will hardly be permanent.