Quote:
Originally Posted by flstf
This is what happens in a society such as ours that passes a lot of silly laws (rules) that a large percentage of the population ignore. Every law creates a large group of people who will become lawbreakers and begin to loose respect for the law in general. Laws (rules) should only be made if absolutely necessary and if there is any question should not be made at all.
Examples of the above:
- Seatbelt laws.
- Bicycle and motorcycle helmet laws.
- Sunday blue laws.
- Drinking age laws. (old enough to die in combat, too young to drink)
- Some drug prohibition laws especially marijuana. (like alchohol prohibition did, creates a huge group of lawbreakers)
- No alchohol in parks (my wife and I were busted in a Seattle waterfront park for having a wine, baquette and brie cheese lunch.
The list goes on and on. There seems to be no lack of human activity that someone (government entity or group) doesn't want to regulate.
And then there is the unfairness factor in how laws are enforced. Small time $10 robbers and drug users get 5 years hard time and celebrities and CEOs steal hundreds of thousands from our pension funds and get 6 months in a country club.
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In Plato's dialogue Crito, Socrates argues (pretty convincingly, I think) that it is better for him to obey a totally unjust law, even at the cost of his own life, than for him to escape, save his own life and violate the law. The justification is essentially that all manner of bad things would happen if a respected figure like Socrates decided that he could disregard any law that he decided didn't make sense. It certainly is something to think about... ![Hmm](/tfp/images/smilies/hmmm.gif)
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The peculiar evil of silencing the expression of an opinion is, that it is robbing the human race; posterity as well as the existing generation; those who dissent from the opinion, still more than those who hold it. If the opinion is right, they are deprived of the opportunity of exchanging error for truth: if wrong, they lose, what is almost as great a benefit, the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error. ~John Stuart Mill, On Liberty
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