Creeping neutralism:

...Moral neutralism, to say no worse, is patently incompatible with the Declaration of Independence and the Bill of Rights...

...CREEPING NEUTRALISM THE FEAR OF PASSING JUDGMENTS When I was a boy, Taft Republicans (Robert, not William Howard - it has been a long time since I was a boy, but not that long) used to talk about something called "creeping socialism," a beast that had apparently made great, creeping advances during the age of FDR and Truman...

...If government must be committed to the practice of ethical neutrality, then how can it proclaim and promote the belief that human beings possess "certain un-alienable rights'' ? For this is itself a moral belief...

...At first glance the doctrine of ethical neutrality seems to be the epitome of liberalism...

...For one thing, this neutralism undermines the character development necessary for the success of our government and society...

...Republican institutions are not operated by computer programs but by citizens who have developed a sufficiency of the virtues required to operate them - virtues such as honesty, courage, loyalty, self-discipline, public-spiritedness, etc...

...I am not at all certain that we can continue to flourish under a spinoff from religious neutrality which has been creeping up on us during the past twenty years or so-ethical or moral neutrality...

...not to mention that those of us who might have resisted at an earlier date have been three-quarters converted to the enemy cause by the eleventh hour...

...To be sure, proponents of this newer wall of separation are not terribly consistent-at least not at this early date, at this pre-Plains of Abraham date, so to speak, when the full significance of creeping moral neutrality is not yet manifest...

...Government, many feel, should no more impose its moral preferences on citizens than its religious preferences...

...is a morally heterogeneous nation, and if the state gets into the business of promoting the morality of one group and hindering that of another, this will be both unfair and an invitation to social conflict...

...On closer inspection, however, it is discovered to poison the very wells of a liberal society.liberal society...

...It is now widely held, not only among liberals and libertarian conservatives but also among non-ideological men and women in the street, that a wall of separation ought to exist between state and morals...

...By and large Americans have learned to live with the ideal of a religiously neutral state, and under this regime the republic has managed not only to survive but even to flourish...

...New Deal liberalism), but I have always thought that the "creeping" aspect of their concept was a useful idea...

...2) the U.S...

...Which is as much as to say, it is incompatible with the legitimacy of the United States...

...and (3) government is incapable of knowing the difference between religious truth and falsity...

...and (3) since there is no objective way of determining what is true and what is false in the realm of morality, any state preference for this morality over that must be purely arbitrary...

...Which brings me to a phenomenon that has been advancing in the American land for some time now, something that might be called "creeping neutralism...

...They remain moral neutralists, in other words, until it suits their purposes to engage in moralizing themselves, whereupon they succumb to the natural human tendency to pass moral judgments, all theoretical notions to the contrary notwithstanding...

...The creeping professionalization of college athletics is a case in point...

...After all, there are many social changes we would strenuously resist if they were to stand boldly at center stage and announce themselves under their true name...

...For another, moral neutralism undermines the very premise on which the American commonwealth was founded...

...Our original American neutrality had to do with religion, setting up a wall of separation between church and state...

...On the one hand, they insist, for reasons just outlined, that government ought to remain neutral on such matters, for instance, as abortion and homosexuality...

...Yet when they creep up on us slowly, quietly, and virtually unobserved, like the famous soldiers with the muffled oars who appeared one morning on the Plains of Abraham, by the time we notice them it is almost too late to resist...

...on the other, they wax very moralistic when they speak of environmental protection, nuclear disarmament, ethics in government, aid to the contras, etc...

...I never shared the apprehension of the Taftites about this particular creeper (a.k.a...

...Despite these inconsistencies, moral neutralism continues to creep forward...

...A republic can no more preserve itself by remaining indifferent to the character formation of its citizens than it can by remaining indifferent to the military defense of its frontiers...

...and the further it creeps, the more I am convinced, the American republic is placed in jeopardy...

...2) in a religiously pluralistic society it is impractical to insist on religious standardization...

...If the state is debarred from promoting these virtues, if it is required to be neutral among virtues and even neutral between virtue and vice, then it is debarred from assuring its own continued existence...

...And the reasons given for this ethical neutrality are essentially the same as those given for religious neutrality: (1) moral preferences are matters of personal conscience, the sanctity of which is violated when the state favors one moral value over its rival...

...There are three principal reasons given to justify this neutrality: (1) religion is a matter of individual conscience...