The biggest problem in our culture is the confusion about Should, Should not, Cannot and Must.
The problem is that when people feel there are things they should do, that everyone else must also do those things. In the story of the good Samaritan, a traveler saw a person who needed help and felt that he should help that person. The traveler then decided to help that person. The story shows that the traveler did a good thing, that he did the morally correct thing. Its reasonable to conclude from this story that everyone should help other people.
Where this goes wrong is when people turn a should to a must. If the government passes a law and threatens to punish anyone who fails to help someone, then all men are living under the tyranny of not being able to choose right and wrong. Anyone helping someone is no longer doing a morally good thing, they are only doing a required thing. The government not only took the helper’s money and time, but also took their ability to give of themselves to help someone else. The injured person also loses out because they are helped by a disinterested person doing the minimum required rather than someone who genuinely cares about them and in a manner that will help them the most.
Should and Should not is about morals and community standards. We should do what is right and good. We should not do what is wrong and bad. What is good or bad has been a matter of great debate over all of human history. Religion is often the framework that people use to determine what is right and what is wrong. We can also determine what we should or should not do by reason and observation.
No two people on the planet could ever agree on everything we should and should not do. Differing beliefs require differing should and should not ideals. Differing interpretations of facts also require differing ideals.
When we talk about cannot, we are referring to things that are prohibited by the law. For each law you are giving up some freedom. That is not all bad because some freedoms like killing other people and stealing things are not consistent with a free society. Moving should not ideas into cannot is dangerous, only universally accepted ideas qualify for this move.
Must is the most dangerous category, because forcing someone to do something they don’t want to do is automatically a violation of their rights to life, liberty, property, and choices. There are things that need to be forced. These are related to protecting the rights of others. For example, police and courts are needed to defend the life and property of people. Someone has to pay for this protection, and forcing people to pay taxes for those purposes is something we can agree on.
If you look closely, you can see how America was able to prosper with vast cultural differences. The reason is that everyone was entitled to their own ideas of what they Should and Should not do. Very few of those ideas turned into Cannot or Must, You can also see the how our system is breaking down. Groups that don’t understand how a free society works are attempting to turn should ideas into must ideas, should not ideas into cannot.
So next time someone is talking about something that we should or should not do, if it matches your beliefs agree! However, avoid advocating turning a should into a must, or a should not into a cannot. The purpose of government is to protect freedoms, not take them away.