For most of my life I believed that if a person generally understood the difference between right and wrong, it meant that they were a moral person. Maybe they did not see the actions they were taking as being immoral for some reason, but the people themselves had good intentions at heart. The best example I can think of of this kind of person would have to be a supporter of say the war on drugs.
Drugs are completely destructive. In my opinion, people become addicted to them because fantasy is preferable to the reality of their lives. The drug replaces the pain of reality with the pleasure of fantasy. It erodes the need for the people to take actions which would make their lives better. Sometimes life changes that are necessary for a person's true happiness can be difficult and perhaps be seen as completely unobtainable; why not take x drug, by the way we are talking prescription or street-drugs, and do it that way?
So the drug warrior is looking at the situation saying "this is awful! we need to get drugs off the street and out of our society." Fine. This is a goal that I believe in as well, though I do not consider myself a supporter of the war on drugs. So "Hooray" for those cops fighting the good fight...
BUT
There is a problem with the drug war. It involves coercing people who have not initiated force against other people. Whenever force is used against someone that is not in the immediate defense of them-self or another person, that force is not justified. Everyone gets this. As a private citizen, I cannot "defend myself" against my neighbor when he is in his home smoking a joint. His actions are not causing me harm. The police, however, claim the moral obligation/right to knock down the door and drag that neighbor out of his house and throw him into a jail cell.
So here we have a violation of principle; using force against someone in a circumstance other than defense, or simply aggressive force. The use of aggressive force is being considered ok, only on the part of cops mind you, to get drugs off the streets.
"Sure", the drug warrior will say, "it is a violation of the non-aggression principle, but look at how harmful the drugs are!"
Yes, we all understand the point about the drugs. What the drug warrior is not doing is putting the aggressive force under the same microscope. He is accepting that which he considers evil (aggressive force) to eliminate that which he considers evil (drugs).
This situation challenges my former theory that a person is ethical so long as they know the difference between right and wrong, for an ethical person cannot by definition accept evil as an acceptable methodology to solve problems.
In hindsight, the person who knows right from wrong AND accepts an evil methodology is worse than the person who does not know. At least the person who does not know has the potential for morality; the person who knowingly accepts evil has sealed their coffin.
Sure, accepting evil methodologies in life can be revised and actions can change so as to reject evil methodologies, but as long as evil is accepted, I for one can no longer accept the proposition that knowledge is enough for morality.
Since we are saying knowledge is not enough and judging the drug warrior based on their actions, we must add a condition of action to what makes a person ethical. The knowledge must be applied.
Note: I am not going to discuss the need for knowledge to determine if a person is ethical. The need for knowledge is too obvious: accidentally doing the right thing is just that, an accident.
Knowledge includes moral principles. Most people get this principle in Kindergarten. Don't steal, don't hit, don't lie... Libertarian circles simply call it the Non Aggression Principle (NAP). The logic behind the NAP is very simple: Man is a limited being. Man does not have perfect knowledge, cannot be everywhere at once, and must choose what endeavors to pursue in his own life. Man deals with reality the best he can. Any person interfering with this reality in others blocks their ability to freely and openly live their lives. If you steal from someone, you rob them of the choice to do what they wish with their own things. If you lie to someone, you distort their perception of reality in order to trick them into doing something they wouldn't otherwise do. If you hit someone, you damage the vessel with which they live. <---Disclaimer: Sometimes people prefer being lied to, sometimes people prefer being stolen from, and sometimes people want to be hit. A boss at work may request that you leave out details of an event so they do not have to take a particular action. A person addicted from heroin may plea with a friend to "please go into my house while I'm at work tomorrow and get all my 'stuff' out, so that if I want to do it, I won't be able to." And a person who takes pleasure out of boxing may jump in the ring with another and spar. These situations are sometimes tricky and each one must be treated as an individual case, as specifics vary, but generally, when someone WANTS to be hit, jumping into the ring and sparring does not constitute a violation of the NAP since they WANT it.
The harder thing which knowledge includes sometimes is the perception that a certain action violates moral principles. Most of the confusion here rests with government. Government is the only entity in society which may tell people all over the country that they will "pay their taxes or get locked up in jail." Yet many people miss this obvious violation of the NAP. Indeed, any time the government passes a law, the message taken away is "Do x or you will be locked up in jail." When x does not = a restraint from initiating aggressive force against other people, the government IS initiating aggressive force!
Force can only be aggressive or defensive. These two categories are not hard to see at all... Sure, if you turn a corner of a building somewhere and see one person hitting another, it is true that you do not understand the context that warranted, or didn't warrant for that matter, the striking. However, when someone clearly says to people "you will drive how I want you to drive or you will receive tickets from my agents, and if you don't pay those tickets you will eventually be thrown in jail" then the aggressive party is known.
To summarize, what makes a person ethical is they must first have ethical standards. Second, they must consciously try to live up to their ethical standards, and finally, if their attention is brought to the fact that they are doing something that does NOT live up to their ethical standards, they must abandon that action.
