• cucumber_sandwich@lemmy.world
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      10 months ago

      the state maintains that this is a moral and legitimate use of force: that it has the authority to do this.

      I don’t necessarily agree with “moral”. In western democracies laws and use of force doesn’t legitimize itself by a call to morality usually. Just using some kind of authority, doesn’t make a government authoritarian by any common definition of the word.

        • cucumber_sandwich@lemmy.world
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          10 months ago

          It absolutely does imo, it legitimises itself through an appeal to an underlying moral framework.

          Yes, but very indirectly. We don’t have a “moral police”, but one that enforces laws which are, as you say, legitimized by the people as a sovereign.

          So you don’t see police stopping people on “moral grounds” in some vague interpretation.