Moral authority

Commercial plastics polymerisation is akin to making pig s ears out of silk purses, albeit usually useful porcine ears from very worn out handbags. What were once valuable polymers are turned into generally less valuable monomers. The regenerated monomers and small chemicals from polymerisation of post-consumer plastics have no particular moral authority or intrinsic grace compared to chemicals derived from non-recycling sources. To be successful, commercial polymerisation must make economic sense in ways that are understood by those who invest dear money into capital assets. 

Those older men and women exercising structural and moral authority (Paterson, 1966), often called collectively the Establishment, have been alarmed by psychedelics for rather less than five years. Their attitude might be described in the terms Aneurin Bevan used for an old man approaching a young bride "... fascinated, sluggish, and apprehensive."... 

Davis, M. 1987. The Moral Authority of a Professional Code. In Pennock, J.R. and Chapman, J.W. (eds.), Authority Revisited, Nomos XXIX. New York and London New York University Press. 

This antipathy extends across a broad spectmm of Christendom, from evangelicals to Roman Catholics. No less a moral authority than the Vatiean condemned the film [Dr. No] as a dangerous mixtme of violenee. 

There is a long history of moral panics about the alleged harmful effects of exposure to popular media and cultural forms - comics and cartoons, popular theatre, cinema, rock music, video nasties, computer games, internet porn. For conservatives, the media glamorize crime, trivialize public insecurities and undermine moral authority for liberals the media exaggerate the risks of crime and whip up moral panics to vindicate an unjust and authoritarian crime control policy. In these media panics , the spirals of reaction to any new medium are utterly repetitive and... 

A spokesman for a firm specializing in shareholder proxy votes once observed that an organization is never going to get any sympathy for cutting off a nun at the annual meeting. And with their moral authority, the Sisters of St. Francis were thought to have the capacity to gamer wide public attention to issues. 

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