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So most drug crimes would still be crimes since they steal and rob to support their habit and the dealers kill people to protect their product and routes.
Or are you suggesting the Government pay for all addicts drugs?
Holy shit deflection and straw men as far as the eye can see. Does anyone actually want to challenge the OP WITHOUT resorting to name calling, deflections or outrageous straw men?
I dont know any victimless crimes off the top of my head. But regardless of that, how does the number of people in prisons suggest we need to eliminate crimes to get them out. They wouldnt be there if they didn't commit crimes. No one forced them to. Holding them accountable to the laws of our society isn't a bad thing merely because it makes them a criminal. That logic makes no sense.
How about instead of decriminalizing actions, we as a society step up and start obeying the law?
Holy shit deflection and straw men as far as the eye can see. Does anyone actually want to challenge the OP WITHOUT resorting to name calling, deflections or outrageous straw men?
Apparently not. I remain, however unlikely, optimistic that someone will debate the point with logic, reason and specificity. We'll see.
How about instead of decriminalizing actions, we as a society step up and start obeying the law?
I can generally sympathize with the idea that we have WAY too many people in prison to call ourselves a "free" country. I don't think pot should get people thrown into prison, but no sane person can argue that unregulated access to coke and meth will make society better.
I can generally sympathize with the idea that we have WAY too many people in prison to call ourselves a "free" country. I don't think pot should get people thrown into prison, but no sane person can argue that unregulated access to coke and meth will make society better.
We regulate your hamburger. Your hamburger is legal. Right now we have completely unregulated access to cocaine. I do not do drugs. I have not done drugs in almost 15 years and more than 2000 miles from here. I guarantee that I can find and acquire cocaine tonight if I so desired (at least I could if I were in country). 15 minutes with Google can set me up with an unregulated untested whore as well.
When you legalize it THEN regulation actually becomes possible. So, in reality, you are right, unfettered access to unregulated cocaine is harmful so maybe we should STOP that practice and legalize it.
...no sane person can argue that unregulated access to coke and meth will make society better.
Good luck getting the American people to legalize heroin, meth, and crack cocaine!
I can generally sympathize with the idea that we have WAY too many people in prison to call ourselves a "free" country. I don't think pot should get people thrown into prison, but no sane person can argue that unregulated access to coke and meth will make society better.
How about reckless driving?
How about driving drunk?
Those are victimless crimes...until the worst happens.
There is a reasonable application of law to PREVENT the need for a victim to charge a crime.
I can generally sympathize with the idea that we have WAY too many people in prison to call ourselves a "free" country. I don't think pot should get people thrown into prison, but no sane person can argue that unregulated access to coke and meth will make society better.
We regulate your hamburger. Your hamburger is legal. Right now we have completely unregulated access to cocaine. I do not do drugs. I have not done drugs in almost 15 years and more than 2000 miles from here. I guarantee that I can find and acquire cocaine tonight if I so desired (at least I could if I were in country). 15 minutes with Google can set me up with an unregulated untested whore as well.
When you legalize it THEN regulation actually becomes possible. So, in reality, you are right, unfettered access to unregulated cocaine is harmful so maybe we should STOP that practice and legalize it.
Ease of access is one of the worst arguments for legalization I have ever heard.
I can murder someone in less than 30 seconds. Right now we have completely unregulated access to murder. Should we legalize murder then?
How about reckless driving?
How about driving drunk?
Those are victimless crimes...until the worst happens.
There is a reasonable application of law to PREVENT the need for a victim to charge a crime.
Agreed. Someone drunk driving is like someone swinging a loaded gun around in a crowd.
The Libertarian concept of waiting for harm to occur instead of doing common sense prevention of harm is one of the key flaws of their philosophy.
How about reckless driving?
How about driving drunk?
Those are victimless crimes.
There is a reasonable application of law to PREVENT the need for a victim to charge a crime.
How about reckless driving?
How about driving drunk?
Those are victimless crimes...until the worst happens.
There is a reasonable application of law to PREVENT the need for a victim to charge a crime.
Agreed. Someone drunk driving is like someone swinging a loaded gun around in a crowd.
The Libertarian concept of waiting for harm to occur instead of doing common sense prevention of harm is one of the key flaws of their philosophy.
I dont know any victimless crimes off the top of my head. But regardless of that, how does the number of people in prisons suggest we need to eliminate crimes to get them out. They wouldnt be there if they didn't commit crimes. No one forced them to. Holding them accountable to the laws of our society isn't a bad thing merely because it makes them a criminal. That logic makes no sense.
How about instead of decriminalizing actions, we as a society step up and start obeying the law?
SOME writers have so confounded society with government, as to leave little or no distinction between them; whereas they are not only different, but have different origins. Society is produced by our wants, and government by our wickedness; the former promotes our happiness POSITIVELY by uniting our affections, the latter NEGATIVELY by restraining our vices. The one encourages intercourse, the other creates distinctions. The first is a patron, the last a punisher.
Society in every state is a blessing, but Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil; in its worst state an intolerable one: for when we suffer, or are exposed to the same miseries BY A GOVERNMENT, which we might expect in a country WITHOUT GOVERNMENT, our calamity is heightened by reflecting that we furnish the means by which we suffer. Government, like dress, is the badge of lost innocence; the palaces of kings are built upon the ruins of the bowers of paradise. For were the impulses of conscience clear, uniform and irresistibly obeyed, man would need no other lawgiver; but that not being the case, he finds it necessary to surrender up a part of his property to furnish means for the protection of the rest; and this he is induced to do by the same prudence which in every other case advises him, out of two evils to choose the least. Wherefore, security being the true design and end of government, it unanswerably follows that whatever form thereof appears most likely to ensure it to us, with the least expense and greatest benefit, is preferable to all others.
In order to gain a clear and just idea of the design and end of government, let us suppose a small number of persons settled in some sequestered part of the earth, unconnected with the rest; they will then represent the first peopling of any country, or of the world. In this state of natural liberty, society will be their first thought. A thousand motives will excite them thereto; the strength of one man is so unequal to his wants, and his mind so unfitted for perpetual solitude, that he is soon obliged to seek assistance and relief of another, who in his turn requires the same. Four or five united would be able to raise a tolerable dwelling in the midst of a wilderness, but one man might labour out the common period of life without accomplishing any thing; when he had felled his timber he could not remove it, nor erect it after it was removed; hunger in the mean time would urge him to quit his work, and every different want would call him a different way. Disease, nay even misfortune, would be death; for, though neither might be mortal, yet either would disable him from living, and reduce him to a state in which he might rather be said to perish than to die.
Thus necessity, like a gravitating power, would soon form our newly arrived emigrants into society, the reciprocal blessings of which would supersede, and render the obligations of law and government unnecessary while they remained perfectly just to each other; but as nothing but Heaven is impregnable to vice, it will unavoidably happen that in proportion as they surmount the first difficulties of emigration, which bound them together in a common cause, they will begin to relax in their duty and attachment to each other: and this remissness will point out the necessity of establishing some form of government to supply the defect of moral virtue.
Some convenient tree will afford them a State House, under the branches of which the whole Colony may assemble to deliberate on public matters. It is more than probable that their first laws will have the title only of Regulations and be enforced by no other penalty than public disesteem. In this first parliament every man by natural right will have a seat.
But as the Colony encreases, the public concerns will encrease likewise, and the distance at which the members may be separated, will render it too inconvenient for all of them to meet on every occasion as at first, when their number was small, their habitations near, and the public concerns few and trifling. This will point out the convenience of their consenting to leave the legislative part to be managed by a select number chosen from the whole body, who are supposed to have the same concerns at stake which those have who appointed them, and who will act in the same manner as the whole body would act were they present. If the colony continue encreasing, it will become necessary to augment the number of representatives, and that the interest of every part of the colony may be attended to, it will be found best to divide the whole into convenient parts, each part sending its proper number: and that the ELECTED might never form to themselves an interest separate from the ELECTORS, prudence will point out the propriety of having elections often: because as the ELECTED might by that means return and mix again with the general body of the ELECTORS in a few months, their fidelity to the public will be secured by the prudent reflection of not making a rod for themselves. And as this frequent interchange will establish a common interest with every part of the community, they will mutually and naturally support each other, and on this, (not on the unmeaning name of king,) depends the STRENGTH OF GOVERNMENT, AND THE HAPPINESS OF THE GOVERNED.
Here then is the origin and rise of government; namely, a mode rendered necessary by the inability of moral virtue to govern the world; here too is the design and end of government, viz. Freedom and security. And however our eyes may be dazzled with show, or our ears deceived by sound; however prejudice may warp our wills, or interest darken our understanding, the simple voice of nature and reason will say, 'tis right.
One may well ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there are two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the first to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all."
Now, what is the difference between the two? How does one determine whether a law is just or unjust? A just law is a man made code that squares with the moral law or the law of God. An unjust law is a code that is out of harmony with the moral law. To put it in the terms of St. Thomas Aquinas: An unjust law is a human law that is not rooted in eternal law and natural law. Any law that uplifts human personality is just. Any law that degrades human personality is unjust. All segregation statutes are unjust because segregation distorts the soul and damages the personality. It gives the segregator a false sense of superiority and the segregated a false sense of inferiority. Segregation, to use the terminology of the Jewish philosopher Martin Buber, substitutes an "I it" relationship for an "I thou" relationship and ends up relegating persons to the status of things. Hence segregation is not only politically, economically and sociologically unsound, it is morally wrong and sinful. Paul Tillich has said that sin is separation. Is not segregation an existential expression of man's tragic separation, his awful estrangement, his terrible sinfulness? Thus it is that I can urge men to obey the 1954 decision of the Supreme Court, for it is morally right; and I can urge them to disobey segregation ordinances, for they are morally wrong.
Let us consider a more concrete example of just and unjust laws. An unjust law is a code that a numerical or power majority group compels a minority group to obey but does not make binding on itself. This is difference made legal. By the same token, a just law is a code that a majority compels a minority to follow and that it is willing to follow itself. This is sameness made legal. Let me give another explanation. A law is unjust if it is inflicted on a minority that, as a result of being denied the right to vote, had no part in enacting or devising the law. Who can say that the legislature of Alabama which set up that state's segregation laws was democratically elected? Throughout Alabama all sorts of devious methods are used to prevent Negroes from becoming registered voters, and there are some counties in which, even though Negroes constitute a majority of the population, not a single Negro is registered. Can any law enacted under such circumstances be considered democratically structured?
Sometimes a law is just on its face and unjust in its application. For instance, I have been arrested on a charge of parading without a permit. Now, there is nothing wrong in having an ordinance which requires a permit for a parade. But such an ordinance becomes unjust when it is used to maintain segregation and to deny citizens the First-Amendment privilege of peaceful assembly and protest.
I hope you are able to see the distinction I am trying to point out. In no sense do I advocate evading or defying the law, as would the rabid segregationist. That would lead to anarchy. One who breaks an unjust law must do so openly, lovingly, and with a willingness to accept the penalty. I submit that an individual who breaks a law that conscience tells him is unjust, and who willingly accepts the penalty of imprisonment in order to arouse the conscience of the community over its injustice, is in reality expressing the highest respect for law.
Of course, there is nothing new about this kind of civil disobedience. It was evidenced sublimely in the refusal of Shadrach, Meshach and Abednego to obey the laws of Nebuchadnezzar, on the ground that a higher moral law was at stake. It was practiced superbly by the early Christians, who were willing to face hungry lions and the excruciating pain of chopping blocks rather than submit to certain unjust laws of the Roman Empire. To a degree, academic freedom is a reality today because Socrates practiced civil disobedience. In our own nation, the Boston Tea Party represented a massive act of civil disobedience.
We should never forget that everything Adolf Hitler did in Germany was "legal" and everything the Hungarian freedom fighters did in Hungary was "illegal." It was "illegal" to aid and comfort a Jew in Hitler's Germany. Even so, I am sure that, had I lived in Germany at the time, I would have aided and comforted my Jewish brothers. If today I lived in a Communist country where certain principles dear to the Christian faith are suppressed, I would openly advocate disobeying that country's antireligious laws.
