American Misconceptions

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On a surface level, law and religion are the two governing aspects of a community. Those two sanctions decide how citizens spend their day; what tasks are most important. This is the common misconception though, because in reality, it is ethics that allows a community to define themselves. It is ethics that allow for entities like a set of laws, religious beliefs, or political affiliations to even come into existence. Leaders are a prime example, though not unlike writers, they know what they want to accomplish and they explain those actions to the public. That reasoning is the moral compass behind that thought. That reasoning is the background or the ethics. Countries have distinguished themselves throughout time by what they have accomplished and what they have left behind …show more content…
Observing how a culture treats their criminals does a lot to show how they treat human life. The Babylonians did not value life as much as the Franks did. The Franks centered their punishments around fines whereas the Babylonians used bodily harm. This could stem from population size. The Franks were a small Germanic group that settled in Rome. The Franks were able to survive because they were able to come together as a unified group under the rule of Childeric. Eventually, through the moral principles of both Childeric and their second king Clovis, they developed a codified set of laws, The Code of the Salian Franks, or Lex Salica. The Franks had to suffer hardships to succeed which led them to be a close knit community; fines became the most effective way to maintain order. The laws of the Franks were conventional, “If any one be summoned before the "Thing" by the king's law, and do not come, he shall be sentenced to

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