Applying Ethical Principles

Many in society believe that they can impose one morality on all citizens, but this is antithetical to the American values of freedom and personal responsibility. Personal responsibility is meaningless if some ethical system is imposed. Indeed, freedom of choice is itself a normative ethic in every area of American society, and yet it is an ethic that has come under increasing fire in terms of abortion by opponents of abortion who insist that freedom of choice and action does not extend to this particular concern. They would have government impose their moral position on the rest of society by outlawing abortion so that the choice would be criminalized. The pro-choice position is much more a libertarian position encouraging the individual to develop his or her own moral sense

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ization, the National Rifle Association, and as a rule the issues never change for that group or its members. The NRA has a long record of absolute opposition to any form of gun control, a record broken only recently and only in order to forestall even greater gun control than was being proposed. The future course of the NRA is seen by many as evolving toward greater internal conflict between those who see some compromise as necessary and hardliners who will not compromise at all on gun control. Some of the hardliners have formed a coalition within the NRA called the Firearm Coalition to fight for a stronger anti-control stand by the organization (Newton 100-102). My own view is that absolutist positions such as are taken by the NRA lead to problems over time. Guns control in some degree is essential in a society as awash in guns as ours, and the argument that we need guns for hunting has nothing to do with handguns. The absolutist gun position seems as dangerous as the absolutist anti-abortion position, which has led to violence in some cases because of zealots who believe that the ends justifies the means. In a democratic society, there are alternatives to violence that must be pursued. The problem with absolutists is t
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Approximate Word count = 1656
Approximate Pages = 7 (250 words per page)

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