NationStates Jolt Archive

Here's an interesting question: Should freedom be limited by subjective morals (All morals are subjective.) or is freedom a moral?

I was reading an earlier thread that got me interested to see your opinions. So what do you think?

Edit: I meant: Do you beleive that morals should limit freedom (such as deeming certain kinds of freedoms (ie. gay marriage) to be immoral, or do you beleive that it is a moral to preserve the freedom of others.

I actually can't understand the OP!

break it down a bit more please

Absolutely, freedom should be limited by morality. Chiefly, the freedom of others should be protected.

Freedom is also a good in itself; it should not be restricted any more than is necessary to protect it.

Well, freedoms should be limited by Human rights. Which in turn is another moral construct.

Wait, freedom is moral or is a moral?

And since when or how is freedom a moral?

EDIT: Did you mean amoral?

I far prefer the civil entity known as liberty over the anarchic critter known as freedom. Liberty is organized and protected and certainteed. Freedom, on the other hand, is not.

yay! for elaboration in poll options

Absolutely, freedom should be limited by morality. Chiefly, the freedom of others should be protected.

Freedom is also a good in itself; it should not be restricted any more than is necessary to protect it.

I absolutely agree. (Admittedly, I've never exactly been impartial.) So go vote for that now on the poll.

Should freedom be limited by morals or is freedom a moral?

No and yes, respectively. I feel that freedom should extend until it infringes on someone else's freedom.

I far prefer the civil entity known as liberty over the anarchic critter known as freedom. Liberty is organized and protected and certainteed. Freedom, on the other hand, is not.
:confused: (http://img149.imageshack.us/img149/9784/freedompwnsas4.png)

Wait, freedom is moral or is a moral?

And since when or how is freedom a moral?

EDIT: Did you mean amoral?

Nope. I meant: Do you beleive that morals should limit freedom (such as deeming certain kinds of freedoms (ie. gay marriage) to be immoral, or do you beleive that it is a moral to preserve the freedom of others.

Here's an interesting question: Should freedom be limited by subjective morals (All morals are subjective.) or is freedom a moral?

I was reading an earlier thread that got me interested to see your opinions. So what do you think?

Note: As soon as I can figure out how to make it work (I've never done this before.), there will be a poll.

lets see if I understand it.

Freedom without restraint, without being guided by some form of moral code wether it be "to harm none" or the 10 commandments, or even "where's the harm" is anarchy.

and with Anarchy, you get the most basic form of Government... MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!

Nope. I meant: Do you beleive that morals should limit freedom (such as deeming certain kinds of freedoms (ie. gay marriage) to be immoral, or do you beleive that it is a moral to preserve the freedom of others.

Thank you.

And morals limiting freedom is imposing your views, so i vote the second one! :D

I have elaborated on the original question so it will make more sense. The new question is in Post #1.

No and yes, respectively. I feel that freedom should extend until it infringes on someone else's freedom.

*looks for anyone to say anything in disagreement*

w00t!

If you should should my freedom be limited by someone else's belief system or the other way around then no.

If you mean should my own beliefs limit my actions to those I consider moral or right then yes.

Of course you are probably going to be getting a large number of people asking you to define both morals and freedom but I remember my first few attempts at threads so I will answer to what I think is the spirit of your question.
Freedom cannot be unlimited but what limits it should be agreed to by all and in my country at least no particular religion is close to enjoying majority much less unanimity and atheists and agnostics would always be left out.

Therefore I do not agree with putting religious limits on freedom or attempting to legislate the rules of a particular religion into law.

No and yes, respectively. I feel that freedom should extend until it infringes on someone else's freedom.

That is what I meant. On the other hand, I am rather talking about the very similar notion of: Should the morals of others be allowed to restrict your freedom?

Freedom that infringes on someone else's freedom is no longer freedom. It becomes one of two things: some members of society being superior to others or, quite simply, anarchy. Perhaps that other post about liberty or freedom would be a better way of phrasing it.

lets see if I understand it.

Freedom without restraint, without being guided by some form of moral code wether it be "to harm none" or the 10 commandments, or even "where's the harm" is anarchy.

and with Anarchy, you get the most basic form of Government... MIGHT MAKES RIGHT!

No, I explained it in an earlier post.

If you should should my freedom be limited by someone else's belief system or the other way around then no.

If you mean should my own beliefs limit my actions to those I consider moral or right then yes.

I meant the freedoms granted by law. Your own morals are always free to govern you, but should they have to govern others as well?

Of course you are probably going to be getting a large number of people asking you to define both morals and freedom but I remember my first few attempts at threads so I will answer to what I think is the spirit of your question.
Freedom cannot be unlimited but what limits it should be agreed to by all and in my country at least no particular religion is close to enjoying majority much less unanimity and atheists and agnostics would always be left out.

Therefore I do not agree with putting religious limits on freedom or attempting to legislate the rules of a particular religion into law.



Thank you!!!

It, at the moment, appears that more than 91% of the people who have taken the poll are liberal. -That's okay, I'm from San Francisco.

For you who voted the first option, what is your reasoning?

the question is puzzling. whose morals and which ones? the most liberal of morality or the most conservative?

freedom has to be limited. no sense legalizing murder and rape eh? the question is how to decide what those limits should be. i dont think that morality is a good method of deciding due to the problems mentioned above.

That is what I meant. On the other hand, I am rather talking about the very similar notion of: Should the morals of others be allowed to restrict your freedom?

No, that goes against the notion of equality. That one person can impose his or her moral ideology on me by definition places that other person higher in the civil hierarchy. I'd say that if all persons are truly equal in the eyes of the law, then every person's moral code should be their own.

Here's an interesting question: Should freedom be limited by subjective morals (All morals are subjective.) or is freedom a moral?

I was reading an earlier thread that got me interested to see your opinions. So what do you think?

Edit: I meant: Do you beleive that morals should limit freedom (such as deeming certain kinds of freedoms (ie. gay marriage) to be immoral, or do you beleive that it is a moral to preserve the freedom of others.

A large amount of personal freedom is necessary to ensure one's happiness. However, in some extreme cases it can become counterproductive, as it decreases the individual's capacity to contribute to the society. In such cases some peer pressure from the community is in place to keep the person in check.

So I'd say that some amount of control is a good idea to some degree to protect people from themselves, as long as it doesn't go too far.

EDIT:For you who voted the first option, what is your reasoning?

There you have it. Is that a flame war looming in the horizon?

So I'd say that some amount of control is a good idea to some degree to protect people from themselves, as long as it doesn't go too far.

Which leads to the question of the ages: who decides what "some amount" is and who decides how far is "too far."

No, that goes against the notion of equality.

Agreed.

That one person can impose his or her moral ideology on me by definition places that other person higher in the civil hierarchy.

In that case, the "religious right" are near the top of the social heirarchy in America, because, through laws the Republicans have passed, they impose their morals on others.

I'd say that if all persons are truly equal in the eyes of the law, then every person's moral code should be their own.

I absolutely agree. The notion I am talking about is whether or not you should be subject to the moral codes of others [or if your morals state that the ability to be free form the morals of others is, in fact, a moral].

Which leads to the question of the ages: who decides what "some amount" is and who decides how far is "too far."

I'm well aware of this problem, and I have no solution that would satisfy everyone. However, even if this system went just a little bit too far (in the opinion of some private individuals), it would be better for the people than letting them do whatever the hell they wanted. For example, I think it's a very good idea that drugs are illegal, and that alcoholism is frowned upon.

I decided to vote for the second one for a practical world. However, it really defends how you define morals, if you want to go out farther.

Which leads to the questions of the ages: who decides what "some amount" is, and who decides how far is "too far?"
the question is puzzling. whose morals and which ones? the most liberal of morality or the most conservative?

freedom has to be limited. no sense legalizing murder and rape eh? the question is how to decide what those limits should be. i dont think that morality is a good method of deciding due to the problems mentioned above.

Ah, to both these, I have to say 1/3. I would have it lean to the free-er side, citing that you can govern yourself by your own morals however you choose, but you can't have the freedoms you beleive in if you are currently restricted by someone's morals. You can't say that a freedom would fall into play if half of the people (or voters, anyway) believed in it, because, for example, gay marrriage would still be illeagal due to most people's religious or simply homophobic morals. As such, I say 1/3. That way, even downtrodden minority groups have a voice (This way, you wouldn't end up with things like "Restricted Areas" (referring to places in the U.S. in the sixties and earlier that Jews and African-Americans were not allowed to enter), because those minorites would have enough combined voice to oppose them.), but it isn't a large enough number for the whackos of society to overpower the democratic system and, say, legalize drugs. As such, everyone gets a voice, and society's calming tone will always be there if any near-third begins to get out of hand.

There you have it. Is that a flame war looming in the horizon?

Why should there be? Just because I'm a San Franciscan doesn't mean I hate Republicans. I loathe and detest them.

Why should there be? Just because I'm a San Franciscan doesn't mean I hate Republicans. I loathe and detest them.

Heh, just kidding. I just tend to get a hostile reaction when I'm disagreeing with the majority. And just for the record, I'm not that fond of republicans either.

Heh, just kidding. I just tend to get a hostile reaction when I'm disagreeing with the majority. And just for the record, I'm not that fond of republicans either.

I read a great Pledge of Allegiance recently (about Republicans). Here it is:

I pledge allegiance
to the flag
of the United States in hysteria
and to the Republicans
whom I can't stand,
one nation
under smog,
quite divisible,
with liberty and justice for none.

What do you think? :rolleyes:

If you don't like Republicans, you'd love the Castro Disrict. :D

If by freedom you mean the right to do as you please and damn the consequences, then, yes it should be limited. If by freedom you mean the right to do as you please, but you will be responsible for what you do and the consequences thereof, then that responsibility is the only valid limit on freedom.

I meant the freedoms granted by law. Your own morals are always free to govern you, but should they have to govern others as well?


the question is puzzling. whose morals and which ones? the most liberal of morality or the most conservative?

freedom has to be limited. no sense legalizing murder and rape eh? the question is how to decide what those limits should be. i dont think that morality is a good method of deciding due to the problems mentioned above.

I agree that there must be limitations on freedom. One person's freedom to whatever he wants, ends where another person's freedom begins. A person is not free to take my property; I am not free to libel or slander. Students are not free to cheat on exams; instructors are not free to favor one student over another because of things such as religion or race.

Morals are very important in deciding on the limitations of freedom. Consider the morals of: Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not commit adultery, Do not bear false witness, Do not covet other's property, etc. Do you want people free to murder, steal property (or the spouses of others), lying in court, etc? You might say that these are excerpts from a religious text (the 10 Commandments), or you might say that these are basic moral laws that limit freedom.

When and where to draw the line on morals influencing freedom is the real issue, not an absolute definition.

Personally, I believe that people should be free to do whatever they want, as long as it doesn't negatively affect other people's freedoms. Example: your freedom to murder infringes on my freedom to live. What consenting adults do together does not infringe on anyone else.

Society has made great progress in the last few hundred years; there is more progress yet to be made.

If by freedom you mean the right to do as you please and damn the consequences, then, yes it should be limited. If by freedom you mean the right to do as you please, but you will be responsible for what you do and the consequences thereof, then that responsibility is the only valid limit on freedom.

Pretty much. What I meant was sort of... freedoms consented upon by 1/3 or more of the population. With 1/3, it's small enough that even downtrodden minorities (against whom there may be much prejudice) still have a voice, while it's large enough that the whackos of society will not be able to effect the whole nation (just those who are unfortunate enough to have to live next-door to them). Society will, of course, be responsable for its actions, and I think, rather quickly through bad choices on minor issues, society would quickly learn through trial and error. -But that's just my theory. The question itself does not take these into account; it's just a matter of your principals.

I read a great Pledge of Allegiance recently (about Republicans). Here it is:

I pledge allegiance
to the flag
of the United States in hysteria
and to the Republicans
whom I can't stand,
one nation
under smog,
quite divisible,
with liberty and justice for none.

What do you think? :rolleyes:

Pretty funny. :D I especially loved the part about smog. Actually I'm not American, so I don't think I can fully appreciate the humor.

If you don't like Republicans, you'd love the Castro Disrict.

*Quick check with Wikipedia*

Yikes. Thanks, but just because I don't like Republicans, it doesn't mean I'm not a homophobe. No offense.:)

I agree that there must be limitations on freedom. One person's freedom to whatever he wants, ends where another person's freedom begins.

Precisely.

A person is not free to take my property; I am not free to libel or slander. Students are not free to cheat on exams; instructors are not free to favor one student over another because of things such as religion or race.

Morals are very important in deciding on the limitations of freedom. Consider the morals of: Do not murder, Do not steal, Do not commit adultery, Do not bear false witness, Do not covet other's property, etc. Do you want people free to murder, steal property (or the spouses of others), lying in court, etc? You might say that these are excerpts from a religious text (the 10 Commandments), or you might say that these are basic moral laws that limit freedom.

They're not. They protect freedom. (see below)

When and where to draw the line on morals influencing freedom is the real issue, not an absolute definition.

You draw these lines where they begin to effect the freedoms of others. I don't know if it came across that way (Apparently, it didn't; I've had several people ask similar questions.), but I was talking about civil rights. One of the most basic aspects of civil rights is that they stop wherever someone else's begin. Otherwise you have anarchy. I'm not talking about a society in which people are free to do whatever the hell they like; I'm talking about a society where other people's personal beleifs do not infringe on your own. Take, for example, gay marriage. While it is illeagal, it's a victimless crime. Who gets hurt if someone else gets married? No one. Who gets hurt if I practice my own religion and not the religion of the majority? No one. Who gets hurt if I am dying of a long, slow, and terminal disease, and I decide, to preserve the memory of me to my family, that it's time for me to go? No one. In all these scenarios, if I make a bad choice, the only person who gets hurt is me. However, you cross the line if you, say, blare music out your window all night long. Suddenly, you're impacting someone else. Your neighbors can't sleep. They've lost their inalienable right to sleep. And, of course, you had no right to take their rights away. So you have violated the law. Your freedoms end where someone else's begin.

Pretty funny. :D I especially loved the part about smog. Actually I'm not American, so I don't think I can fully appreciate the humor.

*Quick check with Wikipedia*

Yikes. Thanks, but just because I don't like Republicans, it doesn't mean I'm not a homophobe. No offense.:)

Trust me about the smog; it's quite true. SF has clean air, but the South Bay is a nightmare, and Los Angeles proves every bit of Tom Lehrer's Pollution (a satirical song written in 1965 about "America today." It's very funny; I'm sure you'd like it.).

As for the Castro District, I only said that, because (Well, first of all, let it be known that I have no idea what it says on Wkipedia, but I do know what it's like in real life.) it is the most anti-Bush place in the entire world, right down to and including, Bhagdad (only, since it's San Francisco, most of its residents are pacifists as well). As far as places go, it's a greatly fun place to visit, because, well, it's like the whole place is one district-wide joke. It's probably the only place in the world with transvestite nuns (They call themselves 'the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgance."), shop windows with dominatrix maniquins, and stores with names like "Does Your Mother Know?" It's really just a laugh. It's not serious about anything. It's only doing it to piss off any visiting neoconservatives. Aside from the district's center on Castro Street, it's actually an incredibly tame, nice, family-friendly district full of beautiful, well-maintained Victorian architecture. Don't worry about it. Like I said, Castro Street is just a joke, and is only to be taken as such.

My third and final point: You're not American? Cool. What country are you from? :)

You draw these lines where they begin to effect the freedoms of others. I don't know if it came across that way (Apparently, it didn't; I've had several people ask similar questions.), but I was talking about civil rights. One of the most basic aspects of civil rights is that they stop wherever someone else's begin. Otherwise you have anarchy. I'm not talking about a society in which people are free to do whatever the hell they like; I'm talking about a society where other people's personal beleifs do not infringe on your own. Take, for example, gay marriage. While it is illeagal, it's a victimless crime. Who gets hurt is someone else gets married? No one. Who get hurt if I practice my own religion and not the religion of the majority? No one. Who gets hurt if I am dying in a long, slow, an definite disease, and I decide, to preserve the memory of me to my family, that it's time for me to go? No one. In all these scenarios, if I make a bad choice, the only person who gets hurt is me. However, you cross the line if you, say, blare music out your window all night long. Suddenly, you're impacting someone else. Your neighbors can't sleep. They've lost their inalienable right to sleep. And, of course, you had no right to take their rights away. So you have violated the law. Your freedoms end where someone else's begin.

Allow me to reply too. You say that you should be allowed to do stuff that potentially harms only you and nobody else, correct? Yes, that clears things a bit.

Still, I disagree. Most people here agree that the first and foremost duty of a government is to protect the citizens, but I think that should also include protecting the citizens from themselves. Now, I don't see how gay marriage or euthanasia would be worse than straight marriage or suicide, and banning religions tends to just fuel the fire, but we're talking hypothetically anyway.

The way I see it, the relationship between the country and the citizen is symbiotic; if one becomes more important than the other, the relationship becomes parasitic, and it will no longer function properly. That's why it's important for the government to protect the citizens from poor choices, so that they can continue to maintain the government and help it to help them.

But, like I said earlier, restricting freedom too much will have an adverse effect on the citizens' happiness, which is just as bad as leaving them completely alone.

I hope that made sense. It's almost 5 AM.

Trust me about the smog; it's quite true. SF has clean air, but the South Bay is a nightmare, and Los Angeles proves every bit of Tom Lehrer's Pollution (a satirical song written in 1965 about "America today." It's very funny; I'm sure you'd like it.).

I've never been there, but I've seen some disturbing pictures and video clips. You don't need to give me your word to convince me. And that song seems oddly familiar. I'm sure I had the lyrics in one of my elementary school English textbooks.

As for the Castro District, I only said that, because (Well, first of all, let it be known that I have no idea what it says on Wkipedia, but I do know what it's like in real life.) it is the most anti-Bush place in the entire world, right down to and including, Bhagdad (only, since it's San Francisco, most of its residents are pacifists as well). As far as places go, it's a greatly fun place to visit, because, well, it's like the whole place is one district-wide joke. It's probably the only place in the world with transvestite nuns (They call themselves 'the Sisters of Perpetual Indulgance."), shop windows with dominatrix maniquins, and stores with names like "Does Your Mother Know?" It's really just a laugh. It's not serious about anything. It's only doing it to piss off any visiting neoconservatives. Aside from the district's center on Castro Street, it's actually an incredibly tame, nice, family-friendly district full of beautiful, well-maintained Victorian architecture. Don't worry about it. Like I said, Castro Street is just a joke, and is only to be taken as such.

The article mostly talked about the place being the "gay meccah" of the World. I'm not quite sure it would be my kind of place anyway, since I'm not really a liberal either. Although I mostly lean to the Democrat side, I still share some ideals with the Republicans. For example, I harbor a bitter hatred of communism, and even though I opposed the Iraq war, I'm by no means a pacifist.

But I'd definitely want to see a transvestite nun. :eek:

My third and final point: You're not American? Cool. What country are you from? :)

Finland. The most American country outside of America.

Allow me to reply too. You say that you should be allowed to do stuff that potentially harms only you and nobody else, correct? Yes, that clears things a bit.

Still, I disagree. Most people here agree that the first and foremost duty of a government is to protect the citizens, but I think that should also include protecting the citizens from themselves. Now, I don't see how gay marriage or euthanasia would be worse than straight marriage or suicide, and banning religions tends to just fuel the fire, but we're talking hypothetically anyway.

The way I see it, the relationship between the country and the citizen is symbiotic; if one becomes more important than the other, the relationship becomes parasitic, and it will no longer function properly. That's why it's important for the government to protect the citizens from poor choices, so that they can continue to maintain the government and help it to help them.

But, like I said earlier, restricting freedom too much will have an adverse effect on the citizens' happiness, which is just as bad as leaving them completely alone.

I hope that made sense. It's almost 5 AM.

The government should do for the citizens only those things that the citizens can't do for themselves. It should not do for the citizens those things they won't do for themselves. If I want to do something, I certainly don't want the government taking me by the hand like some over-protective parent and saying "now dear, mustn't do that, you might get hurt." That's insulting and patronizing. I might need to be protected from some of my fellow human beings, but I DO NOT NEED TO BE PROTECTED FROM MYSELF, THANK YOU!

The government should do for the citizens only those things that the citizens can't do for themselves. It should not do for the citizens those things they won't do for themselves. If I want to do something, I certainly don't want the government taking me by the hand like some over-protective parent and saying "now dear, mustn't do that, you might get hurt." That's insulting and patronizing. I might need to be protected from some of my fellow human beings, but I DO NOT NEED TO BE PROTECTED FROM MYSELF, THANK YOU!

Good for you for being such a model citizen. So you don't think people should have the responsibility to contribute to the society by simply being in good health? Would you like stores to sell tobacco to children? Should drugs be legalized? What about abolishing speed limits? Any responsible government will do its best to keep its citizens from killing themselves out of stupidity.

Of course the controlling should be done in moderation; we wouldn't want the people to feel like they're prisoners in their own country. But abolishing all laws that are meant to protect people from themselves just because they might feel insulted, will lead to nothing good.

Good for you for being such a model citizen. So you don't think people should have the responsibility to contribute to the society by simply being in good health? Would you like stores to sell tobacco to children? Should drugs be legalized? What about abolishing speed limits? Any responsible government will do its best to keep its citizens from killing themselves out of stupidity.

Of course the controlling should be done in moderation; we wouldn't want the people to feel like they're prisoners in their own country. But abolishing all laws that are meant to protect people from themselves just because they might feel insulted, will lead to nothing good.

I think you are grouping several ideas together and I would like to separate them (as I see them of course, your views may and probably will differ)

1) There is a difference between an adult knowingly doing something he enjoys but which carries a fearsome risk and child who cannot understand the full consequences being invited to do the same. So selling tobacco to children has nothing to do with letting adults make decisions about their own actions and take the consequences thereof.

2) The poster you reply said nothing at all about abolishing ALL laws. Just the ones that seem to promote the idea that the knows what is better for you than you do. If you want to be a stuntman thats a dangerous job and carries plenty of risk regardless of how well you prepare beforehand. Should we make it illegal because they might hurt themselves?

3) You sounded like you think the government is responsible for preventing stupidity. I do not believe it can be done and thus attempting to prevent anyone from harming themselves through sheer idiocy is a waste of resources.
I also do not think it should be done in some cases. If you are an adult and not mentally incompetent should you not receive the fruits of your efforts whether good or as in this case bad? If you run naked through poison ivy should you not itch? To my way of thinking children are the only ones eligible to be spared the consequences of their actions and I do not see that the government should be in loco parentis to its citizens.
Am I not as adult as the politician(s) whose judgement you would use in place of mine?

I think you are grouping several ideas together and I would like to separate them (as I see them of course, your views may and probably will differ)

1) There is a difference between an adult knowingly doing something he enjoys but which carries a fearsome risk and child who cannot understand the full consequences being invited to do the same. So selling tobacco to children has nothing to do with letting adults make decisions about their own actions and take the consequences thereof.

2) The poster you reply said nothing at all about abolishing ALL laws. Just the ones that seem to promote the idea that the knows what is better for you than you do. If you want to be a stuntman thats a dangerous job and carries plenty of risk regardless of how well you prepare beforehand. Should we make it illegal because they might hurt themselves?

3) You sounded like you think the government is responsible for preventing stupidity. I do not believe it can be done and thus attempting to prevent anyone from harming themselves through sheer idiocy is a waste of resources.
I also do not think it should be done in some cases. If you are an adult and not mentally incompetent should you not receive the fruits of your efforts whether good or as in this case bad? If you run naked through poison ivy should you not itch? To my way of thinking children are the only ones eligible to be spared the consequences of their actions and I do not see that the government should be in loco parentis to its citizens.
Am I not as adult as the politician(s) whose judgement you would use in place of mine?

Thank you. You said it very well.

I'm well aware of this problem, and I have no solution that would satisfy everyone. However, even if this system went just a little bit too far (in the opinion of some private individuals), it would be better for the people than letting them do whatever the hell they wanted. For example, I think it's a very good idea that drugs are illegal, and that alcoholism is frowned upon.

You are talking about two very issues there. The concept of social pressure being applied in order to change individual behavior is not the same as using the coercive force of government to intimidate individuals into changing their behavior.

The problem with trying to influence consensual behavior through legislation is that you invariably end up making criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens and expending a huge amount of resources in the impossible job of enforcement. Look at the US. We began making drugs illegal in the 19-teens and tried the same thing with alcohol in the 20s. Eventually the government simply gave up on alcohol prohibition and we continue to spend billions of dollars each year in drug enforcement and incarceration. The prohibition against drugs in most western countries amounts to a subsidy for police and prisons. Worse, it forces undesirable behavior underground creating a violent black market and making otherwise low risk behavior more risky.

The end result of such a paternalistic attitude towards the government is a general infringement upon liberty for little or no gain other than the satisfaction of moralists.

You are talking about two very issues there. The concept of social pressure being applied in order to change individual behavior is not the same as using the coercive force of government to intimidate individuals into changing their behavior.

The problem with trying to influence consensual behavior through legislation is that you invariably end up making criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens and expending a huge amount of resources in the impossible job of enforcement. Look at the US. We began making drugs illegal in the 19-teens and tried the same thing with alcohol in the 20s. Eventually the government simply gave up on alcohol prohibition and we continue to spend billions of dollars each year in drug enforcement and incarceration. The prohibition against drugs in most western countries amounts to a subsidy for police and prisons. Worse, it forces undesirable behavior underground creating a violent black market and making otherwise low risk behavior more risky.

The end result of such a paternalistic attitude towards the government is a general infringement upon liberty for little or no gain other than the satisfaction of moralists.

Very well said. The prohibition fiasco is quite comparable to what happens now, except, like most of our modern industries, its been outsourced. The source of many of our more radical international agitators are well funded by our anti-drug laws.

The government could stand to gain from taxing these elements and at the same time enforcing safety standards from the companies that produce them.

Good for you for being such a model citizen. So you don't think people should have the responsibility to contribute to the society by simply being in good health? Would you like stores to sell tobacco to children? Should drugs be legalized? What about abolishing speed limits? Any responsible government will do its best to keep its citizens from killing themselves out of stupidity.

Of course the controlling should be done in moderation; we wouldn't want the people to feel like they're prisoners in their own country. But abolishing all laws that are meant to protect people from themselves just because they might feel insulted, will lead to nothing good.

No, I do not believe that the government should have the power to make people stay in good health. The level of control required for such enforcement is simply not something that is congruent with a free society. The fact of the matter is that governments are not good at moderation. Once you open the door, once you allow control, you will see the slow growth of involvement. Here in the US we began by making Marijuana prohibitively expensive by federal tax, now we put people in prison for lengthy sentances and then limit their ability to reintegrate into society once they get out. Every single step along that road has been the result of a politician pandering to a moralistic block of voters by seeming strong on the behaviors disapproved by the clucking little proles.

Further, you need to either reconsider your examples or back away from your strawmen. Selling tobacco to children or exceeding the speed limit is not the same as smoking pot. The former involves putting others at risk(by operating a vehicle at unsafe speeds) or violating consent(by giving something to a child without the approval of that child's guardian) the latter involves purely consentual, personal behavior. To put it another way: the first class of offenses involves the government protecting the rights of citizens from others, the second class involves the government preventing personal behavior simply because of a subjective moral stance.

Finally, I do not believe it is the role of the government to protect me from myself because I do not trust that the government will always have my best interests at heart. A man can know that a weak government cannot enslave him, under a strong government he can merely hope. This is more than an issue of insult, my friend.

The government could stand to gain from taxing these elements and at the same time enforcing safety standards from the companies that produce them.

Sadly, I do not believe such a situation is going to be seen within my lifetime. Too many people are so comfortable being surround by trees that the concept of being alone in the forest terrifies them.

You are talking about two very issues there. The concept of social pressure being applied in order to change individual behavior is not the same as using the coercive force of government to intimidate individuals into changing their behavior.

The problem with trying to influence consensual behavior through legislation is that you invariably end up making criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens and expending a huge amount of resources in the impossible job of enforcement. Look at the US. We began making drugs illegal in the 19-teens and tried the same thing with alcohol in the 20s. Eventually the government simply gave up on alcohol prohibition and we continue to spend billions of dollars each year in drug enforcement and incarceration. The prohibition against drugs in most western countries amounts to a subsidy for police and prisons. Worse, it forces undesirable behavior underground creating a violent black market and making otherwise low risk behavior more risky.

The end result of such a paternalistic attitude towards the government is a general infringement upon liberty for little or no gain other than the satisfaction of moralists.

Those are very good points, highlighting the law of unintended consequences. The moralists seek to prevent what they see as harm to people but only succeed in creating far more harm than existed before. A recent documentary I saw about drugs in the US reminded me that back when heroine and morphine were legal, addicts would be under a doctor's care and supervision. The doctors would prescribe so-called maintenance dosages which either slowly weaned the addict off the drug or else gave him safe levels of the drug which kept him functional so he could work and live a life. After the drugs were made illegal, addicts were left without any support system. Left to medicate themselves, addicts could not be trusted to control their dosages, getting more and more messed up, unable to work, unable to maintain relationships. Incidents of fatal overdoses sky-rocketed almost over night. Not to mention the exploitation of the illegal dealers who kept raising the prices because the addicts would pay anything to get their fix. The number of non-violent addicts being sentenced to prison also sky rocketed, and has only increased ever since.

The moralists wanted to force everyone into their version of the straight and narrow. They succeeded only in creating misery and death. The alcohol prohibitionists realized their mistake. I do not understand why the drug laws cannot be changed to a better system of control.

The moralists wanted to force everyone into their version of the straight and narrow. They succeeded only in creating misery and death. The alcohol prohibitionists realized their mistake. I do not understand why the drug laws cannot be changed to a better system of control.

The really sad part is just how bad things have become. One need only look at the proliferation of a highly militarized police force, the number of wrong door SWAT raids(both well outlined in the book Overkill by Radley Balko), or the gut-wrenching cases of Cory Maye and Sal Culosi to see how far we have strayed in the name of making people moral. My grandfather used to say that you cant legislate morality, you can only teach it, live it, or beat it into someone.

The really sad part is just how bad things have become. One need only look at the proliferation of a highly militarized police force, the number of wrong door SWAT raids(both well outlined in the book Overkill by Radley Balko), or the gut-wrenching cases of Cory Maye and Sal Culosi to see how far we have strayed in the name of making people moral. My grandfather used to say that you cant legislate morality, you can only teach it, live it, or beat it into someone.

And don't forget the highly organized, super-rich, ultra-violent, international criminal networks that run the illegal drug trade that the moralists created, because, you know, god forbid somebody should get a little mellow now and then. How many cops, addicts, and innocent bystanders have they killed so far, I wonder?

I agree with your wise grandfather, except I'd say the beatings don't take too well.

And don't forget the highly organized, super-rich, ultra-violent, international criminal networks that run the illegal drug trade that the moralists created, because, you know, god forbid somebody should get a little mellow now and then. How many cops, addicts, and innocent bystanders have they killed so far, I wonder?

I agree with your wise grandfather, except I'd say the beatings don't take too well.

Well, to answer your question, there is a handy dandy raid map that shows deaths, wrong raids and the like which come up on a basic Lexis/Nexis search. You can find that here: http://www.cato.org/raidmap/

As for the beating, I think his point was that you can try to force people to behave. It even works relatively well, until it doesn't...

Freedom is a lack of external impediments to doing some action. For example freedom of speech means that there is nothing outside of your own mind which is stopping you from saying what you wish to say.

A moral is an internal impediment to doing some action. For example one of your morals might stop you from using your freedom of speech to start an untrue rumour even though you have the freedom of speech which allows you to tell any lie you want to.

Here's an interesting question: Should freedom be limited by subjective morals (All morals are subjective.) or is freedom a moral?
Freedom is essential for man to sustain his life, but total anarchist freedom, which does not force one to respect others' rights, is immoral.

I think you are grouping several ideas together and I would like to separate them (as I see them of course, your views may and probably will differ)

1) There is a difference between an adult knowingly doing something he enjoys but which carries a fearsome risk and child who cannot understand the full consequences being invited to do the same. So selling tobacco to children has nothing to do with letting adults make decisions about their own actions and take the consequences thereof.

Yeah, I know, the first example was bad. I was tired, and didn't bother coming up with a better one.

2) The poster you reply said nothing at all about abolishing ALL laws. Just the ones that seem to promote the idea that the knows what is better for you than you do. If you want to be a stuntman thats a dangerous job and carries plenty of risk regardless of how well you prepare beforehand. Should we make it illegal because they might hurt themselves?

I didn't say anything about abolishing ALL laws either. I said "all laws that are meant to protect people from themselves". Anyway, there is need for dangerous professions; if we banned them, we would no longer have police officers, firefighters, or soldiers either. I don't know anything about being a stuntman, but I bet it is, just like those jobs I mentioned, made as safe as possible by constant training and procedure regulations.

3) You sounded like you think the government is responsible for preventing stupidity. I do not believe it can be done and thus attempting to prevent anyone from harming themselves through sheer idiocy is a waste of resources.

No, I'd rather say that people are responsible for not seriously damaging themselves, because healthy, able-bodied people are more valuable to the government in the strict economic sense than disabled and dead people. The government won't function optimally in its task of protecting and providing for the people, if they don't give their work effort in return. Too much regulation will be expensive due to the resources wasted on control, but too little regulation will be expensive due to the poor shape of the citizens. The best level of regulation is the one where the expenses are minimized, whatever level that is. (This might be good time to tell that in my ideal society, government should provide good health care and welfare, because being poor/injured is not often one's own fault.)

I also do not think it should be done in some cases. If you are an adult and not mentally incompetent should you not receive the fruits of your efforts whether good or as in this case bad? If you run naked through poison ivy should you not itch? To my way of thinking children are the only ones eligible to be spared the consequences of their actions and I do not see that the government should be in loco parentis to its citizens.

If you run naked through poison ivy, afterwards you'll probably be thinking, "that wasn't such a great idea after all. If only someone had stopped me in time." That doesn't sound bad enough to require protection from the government, but imagine having spent ten years of your life smoking crack, or something. I agree that people should "receive the fruits of their efforts", but if everyone knows that running through poison ivy is only going to lead to suffering, you and everyone else will be happier if you won't even try.

Am I not as adult as the politician(s) whose judgement you would use in place of mine?

I'm sure you are. The difference is that you (most likely) will only think about what you want to do, whereas it's the politicians' job to think about what's good for you and the country as a whole. Granted, they don't always do the best possible job, but adult individuals don't always make the best choices either.

Here's an interesting question: Should freedom be limited by subjective morals (All morals are subjective.) or is freedom a moral?

I was reading an earlier thread that got me interested to see your opinions. So what do you think?

Edit: I meant: Do you beleive that morals should limit freedom (such as deeming certain kinds of freedoms (ie. gay marriage) to be immoral, or do you beleive that it is a moral to preserve the freedom of others.
Freedom should be limited based on one pragmatic principle: my freedom to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose. Beyond that, morals be buggered.

You are talking about two very issues there. The concept of social pressure being applied in order to change individual behavior is not the same as using the coercive force of government to intimidate individuals into changing their behavior.

I think that was before the original poster clarified that he was talking about legislation based on moral values. It doesn't matter anyway, because the first example is still valid.

The problem with trying to influence consensual behavior through legislation is that you invariably end up making criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens

That's a funny bit. Don't all laws do that? Nevermind, back to the point...

and expending a huge amount of resources in the impossible job of enforcement. Look at the US. We began making drugs illegal in the 19-teens and tried the same thing with alcohol in the 20s. Eventually the government simply gave up on alcohol prohibition and we continue to spend billions of dollars each year in drug enforcement and incarceration. The prohibition against drugs in most western countries amounts to a subsidy for police and prisons. Worse, it forces undesirable behavior underground creating a violent black market and making otherwise low risk behavior more risky.

Are you saying that anti-drug legislation isn't a bad idea, but it's just enforced in a stupid way? I might agree. Or are you saying that drugs should be legal, because they're not really that bad for you?

The end result of such a paternalistic attitude towards the government is a general infringement upon liberty for little or no gain other than the satisfaction of moralists.

I think there's more than that. For example, alcohol is the direct cause of so many deaths, injuries, chronic diseases, and families breaking up, that if the prohibition law was just to satisfy moralists, maybe they had a point.

Well, to answer your question, there is a handy dandy raid map that shows deaths, wrong raids and the like which come up on a basic Lexis/Nexis search. You can find that here: http://www.cato.org/raidmap/
Cool! Thanks.

As for the beating, I think his point was that you can try to force people to behave. It even works relatively well, until it doesn't...

Yeah, that's what I meant, too. My opinion is that you can never force people to think the way you want. You can only force them to act the way you want, and only if you hound them constantly, and even then, you'll fail part of the time all the time, and fail entirely eventually.

Freedom is a lack of external impediments to doing some action. For example freedom of speech means that there is nothing outside of your own mind which is stopping you from saying what you wish to say.

A moral is an internal impediment to doing some action. For example one of your morals might stop you from using your freedom of speech to start an untrue rumour even though you have the freedom of speech which allows you to tell any lie you want to.

Except, of course, that freedom of speech does not allow you to tell any lie you want to or start untrue rumors at will. If such lies and rumors qualify as slander/libel, then spreading them is against the law. This is a case of a moral against harming others limiting a freedom to do what you like.

Freedom is essential for man to sustain his life...

No. It isn't.

Originally Posted by JesusChristLooksLikeMe
The problem with trying to influence consensual behavior through legislation is that you invariably end up making criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens

That's a funny bit. Don't all laws do that? Nevermind, back to the point...
Do they? If laws against murder make criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens, does that mean that all human beings would choose to be murderers if they were not stopped by a rule that says not to? Do laws that ban the dumping of industrial waste into public water supplies make criminals of us all because, if not for that, we would be choosing to drink mercury cocktails for breakfast? I think the view that all laws stop us from doing what we want to do is simplistic.

<snip>
I think there's more than that. For example, alcohol is the direct cause of so many deaths, injuries, chronic diseases, and families breaking up, that if the prohibition law was just to satisfy moralists, maybe they had a point.

Except that the alcohol prohibitionists themselves admitted that, as it turned out, their point was off base after all. In light of the rise of crime and violence associated with illegal trafficking in liquor directly caused by Prohibition, it was the pro-Prohibition groups themselves who joined the movement to repeal the Prohibition Amendment. They could not deny that the deaths and suffering, as well as the moral damage to society, caused by Prohibition was worse than the damage done by alcohol itself. There were public statements by temperence groups and lobbyists in the news of time, making this argument, calling their own movement a mistake, and calling for the repeal of the amendment.

No, I do not believe that the government should have the power to make people stay in good health. The level of control required for such enforcement is simply not something that is congruent with a free society.

But now you're making the assumption that the society is and should always be free. The topic of the debate was whether it should be really free, or should morals restrict the freedom, and therefore you can't use the definition of a free society as an argument.

Further, you need to either reconsider your examples or back away from your strawmen. Selling tobacco to children or exceeding the speed limit is not the same as smoking pot. The former involves putting others at risk(by operating a vehicle at unsafe speeds) or violating consent(by giving something to a child without the approval of that child's guardian) the latter involves purely consentual, personal behavior. To put it another way: the first class of offenses involves the government protecting the rights of citizens from others, the second class involves the government preventing personal behavior simply because of a subjective moral stance.

I'd say that speeding in most cases is most dangerous to the driver himself. But yes, the examples could have been better. How about banning certain harmful additives from food products? As long as all ingredients are listed, consumers could make the choice of not eating them. What about the rule about having to wear helmets in construction sites? I don't know if that's actually a law, but as far as I know, it's pretty meticulously enforced at the sites. I hope you like those examples better. As I'm not American, I don't know enough of your legislation to easily come up with them.

You are wrong in one point, though. Although using drugs is in itself purely consentual and personal, it can very easily lead to consequences that are not. I'm referring mostly to crimes committed under the influence of drugs, such as the violent frenzies that PCB(sp?) is known to cause.

Finally, I do not believe it is the role of the government to protect me from myself because I do not trust that the government will always have my best interests at heart. A man can know that a weak government cannot enslave him, under a strong government he can merely hope. This is more than an issue of insult, my friend.

Ah, yes, you Americans love to hate the government. Move to Europe, and you'll learn to relax.

Do they? If laws against murder make criminals of otherwise law-abiding citizens, does that mean that all human beings would choose to be murderers if they were not stopped by a rule that says not to? Do laws that ban the dumping of industrial waste into public water supplies make criminals of us all because, if not for that, we would be choosing to drink mercury cocktails for breakfast? I think the view that all laws stop us from doing what we want to do is simplistic.

No, that's not at all what I meant. I meant that if there is no law against murder, then even if someone commits murder, he is still a law-abiding citizen. There is a difference between illegal and immoral; an act is illegal if and only if there is a law against it.

Except that the alcohol prohibitionists themselves admitted that, as it turned out, their point was off base after all. In light of the rise of crime and violence associated with illegal trafficking in liquor directly caused by Prohibition, it was the pro-Prohibition groups themselves who joined the movement to repeal the Prohibition Amendment. They could not deny that the deaths and suffering, as well as the moral damage to society, caused by Prohibition was worse than the damage done by alcohol itself. There were public statements by temperence groups and lobbyists in the news of time, making this argument, calling their own movement a mistake, and calling for the repeal of the amendment.

I know. The reason prohibition failed was that alcohol was so widely used and accepted, and people didn't want to give up their old ways of life. As much as I'd like to have alcohol banned, I know it's not possible, and the only thing I can do is to drown my sorrow in some hard liquor. My point was that they had reasons besides their desire to impose their values on others, when they made the law.

Besides, you don't really suggest that the war against drugs has such a widespread opposition as the prohibition had, do you?

No, I'd rather say that people are responsible for not seriously damaging themselves, because healthy, able-bodied people are more valuable to the government in the strict economic sense than disabled and dead people. The government won't function optimally in its task of protecting and providing for the people, if they don't give their work effort in return.

Mmmm, socialism. Mandating and regulating the social contract in order to ensure that all individuals contribute most efficiently to society requires a massive enforcement apparatus and is only valuable if you're too scared/lazy/stupid/useless to be expected to wipe your own ass. I'm sorry, my society isn't my family and my government isn't my mommy. More to the point, I am my own property. I am only a resource for social change if I choose to be, and a coercive government that decides to use me is one whose leaders need to be voted out of office(or turned into a lovely mobile).


If you run naked through poison ivy, afterwards you'll probably be thinking, "that wasn't such a great idea after all. If only someone had stopped me in time." That doesn't sound bad enough to require protection from the government, but imagine having spent ten years of your life smoking crack, or something. I agree that people should "receive the fruits of their efforts", but if everyone knows that running through poison ivy is only going to lead to suffering, you and everyone else will be happier if you won't even try.

Still missing the point. Who decides "what everyone knows," who makes the rules, and what is the strength of the enforcement? Do you believe that somethings are simply outside the scope of government regulation, or do you assume that all "generally good" ideas should have the force of law behind them?

Also, why on earth should I be expected to pay(through the use of tax resources) to prevent someone else from making bad choices. Governments have a limited amount of resources and every dime you spend trying to stop John from smoking crack is a dime that cannot be spent on maintaining roads, investigating murders, or funding schools. Suddenly legalizing consentual crimes like drug use, prostitution, and gambling would not only save billions of dollars per year, but also legitimize those buisnesses, thus allowing regulation aimed at harm reduction, standards, and taxation.

Legislation has not stopped or slowed down the use of drugs, all it has done is drive it underground. The same can be said of every single consentual crime on the books today. Why keep wasting time and resources on a failed regulatory system that ends up doing far more harm than good?



sure you are. The difference is that you (most likely) will only think about what you want to do, whereas it's the politicians' job to think about what's good for you and the country as a whole. Granted, they don't always do the best possible job, but adult individuals don't always make the best choices either.

Yes, but I would ALWAYS trust an individual to make a better choice than a politician.

I think that was before the original poster clarified that he was talking about legislation based on moral values. It doesn't matter anyway, because the first example is still valid.

No, it isn't. You are still mixing up the idea of social force(if I smoke crack Ted down the block will think less of me) and legislative force(if I smoke crack I'll be thrown in prison). You cannot make the same argument for both kinds of force, and this discussion applies only to th latter.



That's a funny bit. Don't all laws do that? Nevermind, back to the point...

No, not really. Laws against non-consentual crimes make illegal the kinds of activities engaged in by people who are best described as criminals. A murderer should not go to jail because he violated a law, he should go to jail because he is the kind of person who is willing to end the life of another without just cause. Inherant in that kind of behavior is a general lack of respect for the rights of others. A man who smoke pot is not endangering the rights of others. Indeed, that man is only a criminal because he chose a recreational intoxicant which is frowned upo by society. The difference in not just the consequences, but the source of these behaviors is very different.



Are you saying that anti-drug legislation isn't a bad idea, but it's just enforced in a stupid way? I might agree. Or are you saying that drugs should be legal, because they're not really that bad for you?

Stop trying to reframe the debate and put words in my mouth. From a purely philosophical perspective, I believe that individuals should have the freedom to make their own choices(even if that choice is a slow suicide through heroin) as long as they do not limit the rights of other individuals in a substanitive way. It has nothing to do with drugs being bad for you. I'm pretty sure that a diet of hot dogs and black coffee would be bad for my health too, but that doesn't mean I'd be comfortable with the idea of the government ramming a feeding tube of tofu down my throat.

From a more pragmatic perspective, I think its pretty clear that enforcement doesn't work. You still have a drug trade in countries where the penalty for selling drugs is death. In light of that, I feel that the best option is to make recreational drugs legal and regulate them in the same way we regulate cigarettes and alcohol.



I think there's more than that. For example, alcohol is the direct cause of so many deaths, injuries, chronic diseases, and families breaking up, that if the prohibition law was just to satisfy moralists, maybe they had a point.

You cannot honestly be serious. You're telling me that making alcohol illegal , arresting drinkers, losing tax revenue, and creating a powerful and highly violent black market(all while failing to actually decrease comsumption) is a good idea?

But now you're making the assumption that the society is and should always be free. The topic of the debate was whether it should be really free, or should morals restrict the freedom, and therefore you can't use the definition of a free society as an argument.

Its actually quite simple. At the core I believe that society should always be free. All philosophies have an assumption of that sort at their root, because all philosophies are based upon subjective values. From there I have a myriad of reasoned arguments, great minds backing me up, real life examples of my opinion working, examples of opposing systems failing. The definition of a free society is part of the argument unless this discussion is meant to be nothing more than masturbatory academics. If we mean this to be a pragmatic discussion, we have to consider the fact that there are many people who are willing to fight and die(or kill) in order to maintain their freedom.



I'd say that speeding in most cases is most dangerous to the driver himself. But yes, the examples could have been better. How about banning certain harmful additives from food products? As long as all ingredients are listed, consumers could make the choice of not eating them. What about the rule about having to wear helmets in construction sites? I don't know if that's actually a law, but as far as I know, it's pretty meticulously enforced at the sites. I hope you like those examples better. As I'm not American, I don't know enough of your legislation to easily come up with them.

Lets take your examples one at a time, shall we?

Speeding- Who an activity is most dangerous for is not my concern. If an activity is 100% fatal to the individual doing it and 0% fatal to bystanders(say, suicide in one's own bed by drug overdose), then I'm fine with it. The problem with speeding is not that the driver might be injured, but that there is a real and significant chance that the driver will injure others in a meaningful way.

Harmful food additives- Again, you're confusing the issues. Requiring labeling is not the same as banning. One leaves individuals an ability to choose, the other takes that ability away and puts violators in prison. I'm all for robust labeling requirements, I wouldn't cross the street to save the life of a politician who tries to ban trans-fats.

Helmets- Helemet requirements on construction sites are something of a complicated issue. Between OSHA requirements, employer fears of litigation, and local building codes it really isn't an issue I know enough about to have a strong stand. A similar issue however would be the current push for(and resistance too) helmet laws for motorcycles. Personally, I'm against them. Sure, when I'm on a bike I always wear a helmet, but if some dumbass wants to end up a veggie, thats hardly my buisness. Just don't expect me to pay for his care.

You are wrong in one point, though. Although using drugs is in itself purely consentual and personal, it can very easily lead to consequences that are not. I'm referring mostly to crimes committed under the influence of drugs, such as the violent frenzies that PCB(sp?) is known to cause.

Ok, not to sound condescending or anything, but you need to do enough research to know what it is you're talking about before you're able to cite it's effects.

As for PCP, yeah, a small percentage of people do get violent as a result. I've known quite a few violent drunks too. Still, the damage that those people do would seem to be less than the thousands of murders each year that occur as a result of gangs fighting over drug territory, no?


Ah, yes, you Americans love to hate the government. Move to Europe, and you'll learn to relax.


Ahh yes, when all else fails lets resort to name calling and dismissal. Move to America, and you'll learn to judge an argument based on a speaker's content rather than bloodline.

While I agree with you overall, there is one point I'd would like to see addressed, namely that I would put forth that no activity is truely harmful only to the self and no other. Leaving aside for the moment grieving friends and family, alcohol and tabacco put an enourmous strain on health-care systems, and buying illegal drugs perpetuates the existance of organizations that hurt, rape, and kill people, as well as keep corrupt officals in power, fund militant groups, etc..

While I agree with you overall, there is one point I'd would like to see addressed, namely that I would put forth that no activity is truely harmful only to the self and no other. Leaving aside for the moment grieving friends and family, alcohol and tabacco put an enourmous strain on health-care systems, and buying illegal drugs perpetuates the existance of organizations that hurt, rape, and kill people, as well as keep corrupt officals in power, fund militant groups, etc..

You're putting the cart before the horse. The only reason those crimes occur is because drugs are illegal. A legal market would mean legitimate buisness involvement. As for a strain on health care systems, thats only a factor if you assume that providing health care is the responsibility of government.

In a bit of a hurry, but I'll try to answer.

No, it isn't. You are still mixing up the idea of social force(if I smoke crack Ted down the block will think less of me) and legislative force(if I smoke crack I'll be thrown in prison). You cannot make the same argument for both kinds of force, and this discussion applies only to th latter.

Eh, what? I thought the whole point of this thread was to debate whether social force should have an effect on the legislative force.

No, not really. Laws against non-consentual crimes make illegal the kinds of activities engaged in by people who are best described as criminals. A murderer should not go to jail because he violated a law, he should go to jail because he is the kind of person who is willing to end the life of another without just cause. Inherant in that kind of behavior is a general lack of respect for the rights of others. A man who smoke pot is not endangering the rights of others. Indeed, that man is only a criminal because he chose a recreational intoxicant which is frowned upo by society. The difference in not just the consequences, but the source of these behaviors is very different.

People go to jail for their actions, not for their thoughts. If we started convicting people of thought crimes, we'd have to lock up half of the world, even if we're not counting those, who are not actually capable of committing the crime they want to. If a person deliberately breaks the rules of society, whether they're moral or legal, it's only expected of the society to try and wean that person out of his bad behavior.

There are other ways of doing it besides jail sentences; community service might be a healthy experience.



Stop trying to reframe the debate and put words in my mouth.

Sorry if you got that impression. It was just an honest question, because I wasn't sure which you meant.

From a purely philosophical perspective, I believe that individuals should have the freedom to make their own choices(even if that choice is a slow suicide through heroin) as long as they do not limit the rights of other individuals in a substanitive way.

In a purely philosophical sense I have nothing against that either. But life isn't about all rights and no responsibilities. I still claim that by harming himself, a person harms his society, and therefore the society must discourage, or even forbid, such behavior to protect itself.

It has nothing to do with drugs being bad for you. I'm pretty sure that a diet of hot dogs and black coffee would be bad for my health too, but that doesn't mean I'd be comfortable with the idea of the government ramming a feeding tube of tofu down my throat.

Of course. How would you feel about a tax on unhealthy food?

From a more pragmatic perspective, I think its pretty clear that enforcement doesn't work. You still have a drug trade in countries where the penalty for selling drugs is death. In light of that, I feel that the best option is to make recreational drugs legal and regulate them in the same way we regulate cigarettes and alcohol.

Legalising drugs might decrease the amount of resources needed for controlling, but do you think it would decrease the amount of drug users? Putting everyone in jail doesn't seem to work, but I don't think "oh screw it, just do whatever you want" is a healthy attitude either.

How do you define recreational drugs? I'm sure it includes marijuana, but how about LSD? Heroin? If you just legalise some of them, you'll still need resources to fight the rest. Also there's the theory about gateway drugs.

You cannot honestly be serious. You're telling me that making alcohol illegal , arresting drinkers, losing tax revenue, and creating a powerful and highly violent black market(all while failing to actually decrease comsumption) is a good idea?

No. I was merely saying that alcohol is bad for you, and if someone believes it should be banned, it's not just a matter of bigotry, as someone suggested.

The definition of a free society is part of the argument unless this discussion is meant to be nothing more than masturbatory academics.

This is what I have believed to be the case, yes. In any case I wouldn't say that you have real-life examples of free society working, because any society that exists today, be it free or not, has just not had enough time to collapse. Even feudalism worked for a thousand years.

Besides, I don't think many people are actually going to take up arms for their right to smoke pot; for that to happen, the society would have to be a pretty hardcore fascist state, and I haven't been advocating anything like that.

Lets take your examples one at a time, shall we?

Speeding- Who an activity is most dangerous for is not my concern. If an activity is 100% fatal to the individual doing it and 0% fatal to bystanders(say, suicide in one's own bed by drug overdose), then I'm fine with it. The problem with speeding is not that the driver might be injured, but that there is a real and significant chance that the driver will injure others in a meaningful way.

OK. We went through that already.

Harmful food additives- Again, you're confusing the issues. Requiring labeling is not the same as banning. One leaves individuals an ability to choose, the other takes that ability away and puts violators in prison. I'm all for robust labeling requirements, I wouldn't cross the street to save the life of a politician who tries to ban trans-fats.

I was mainly talking about those added artificial sweeteners, preservatives and such, that have been proven to cause cancer and other long-term health problems, not about naturally occuring fats. Not that it makes much difference here. So you believe that companies should be allowed to put harmful ingredients into their products, as long as they warn about them, just so that the consumers would have the choice to select the unhealthy product? Alright, but you sure seem to fight for freedom in strange areas. Things would be a lot simpler for everyone, if harmful additives were banned. Yes, I believe that the consumer's ability to trust the product's harmlessness is more important than the company's freedom to use whatever they want.

Again, there's no reason to jail eveyone, who fails to comply with the law. A moderate fine should be sufficient in a case like this.

Helmets- Helemet requirements on construction sites are something of a complicated issue. Between OSHA requirements, employer fears of litigation, and local building codes it really isn't an issue I know enough about to have a strong stand. A similar issue however would be the current push for(and resistance too) helmet laws for motorcycles. Personally, I'm against them. Sure, when I'm on a bike I always wear a helmet, but if some dumbass wants to end up a veggie, thats hardly my buisness.

Yes, I think anyone with any common sense will wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle, and I support laws that will force that sense to those, who don't have it naturally.

Just don't expect me to pay for his care.

But I do. As I've said earlier, I believe it is the government's responsibility to provide adequate basic health care. That is a big reason why I like laws that keep people from hurting themselves.

Ok, not to sound condescending or anything, but you need to do enough research to know what it is you're talking about before you're able to cite it's effects.

As for PCP, yeah, a small percentage of people do get violent as a result. I've known quite a few violent drunks too. Still, the damage that those people do would seem to be less than the thousands of murders each year that occur as a result of gangs fighting over drug territory, no?

I didn't bother to check the spelling, because it was irrelevant to the debate. You knew what I was talking about, didn't you?

Do you believe the gang wars would end, even if they didn't need to fight over drug territory? I think the reasons for gang mentality and rivalry lie somewhere else. Furthermore, it seems to be mainly an American phenomenon; there are no "thousands of murders each year" in most countries that have anti-drug policies. (Not meaning to bash America here, just pointing out that drugs are not the cause of the gang problem.)



Ahh yes, when all else fails lets resort to name calling and dismissal. Move to America, and you'll learn to judge an argument based on a speaker's content rather than bloodline.

Heh, no offense intended. I just found it strange that somebody would want his government to be weak just out of fear of being enslaved.

(BTW, in my country bloodline matters a lot less than it does in America :p )

I refuse to vote.
Its my freedom to do so.
Why? Because Freedoms shouldnt have anything to do with morals.
Morals follow personal belief.
I dont think anything but common dam sense should determine freedom.

Eh, what? I thought the whole point of this thread was to debate whether social force should have an effect on the legislative force.

But that isn't what you are doing. You are using the two ideas interchangably. The problem here is that I am making argument against social force being used to define legislative force while you are simply jumbling social and legislative force as justifications for one another without recognizing the differences between the two.


People go to jail for their actions, not for their thoughts. If we started convicting people of thought crimes, we'd have to lock up half of the world, even if we're not counting those, who are not actually capable of committing the crime they want to. If a person deliberately breaks the rules of society, whether they're moral or legal, it's only expected of the society to try and wean that person out of his bad behavior.

There are other ways of doing it besides jail sentences; community service might be a healthy experience.

Ahh yes, because all people should be ground under the millstone until they have lost the will to resist Our Evil Overlords(TM). Seriously, you've missed my point entirely. The point I was making is that laws should not exist as general guidelines or good ideas imbued with the coercive force of government. Laws should be the formal application of coercive force with the intent of protecting the rights of the individual. Murder is not illegal because someone thought killing was bad, murder is illegal because it represents a violation of the rights of the victim. The problem with prohibitions aimed at promoting "social good" is that they are rooted in subjective standards of taste rather than objective standards of individual harm. Worse they always fail. People have been trying to outlaw drinking, prostitution, and gambling for thousands of years. Even beheadings and gulags failed.

On the issue of community service the only thing I have to say is "slavery by any other name..."


In a purely philosophical sense I have nothing against that either. But life isn't about all rights and no responsibilities. I still claim that by harming himself, a person harms his society, and therefore the society must discourage, or even forbid, such behavior to protect itself.

Thats all well and good as long as the party you trust is in power, but what happens when people you abhor begin to define social harm? Would you be comfortable with those standards being set by Thatcher or Reagan? What about Jerry Falwell or Muqtada as-Sadr? George Wallace? Chairman Mao?


Of course. How would you feel about a tax on unhealthy food?

Shooty.

Legalising drugs might decrease the amount of resources needed for controlling, but do you think it would decrease the amount of drug users? Putting everyone in jail doesn't seem to work, but I don't think "oh screw it, just do whatever you want" is a healthy attitude either.

Amsterdam seems to have managed to handle a fairly laissez faire attitude without too many problems.

How do you define recreational drugs? I'm sure it includes marijuana, but how about LSD? Heroin? If you just legalise some of them, you'll still need resources to fight the rest. Also there's the theory about gateway drugs.

What about them? I know plenty of people who have used LSD and are fine. I've used LSD in the past(not really my thing) and have used opiates(the precursors to heroin) on more than one occasion. To be perfectly honest, back in my high school and college days I tried just about anything I could get my hands on, which was quite a bit considering the number of chemistry majors I knew. I grew out of it. I'm currently both gainfully employed and working towards a doctorate in clinical psychology. The vast majority of my drug-using friends are in similar situations.


No. I was merely saying that alcohol is bad for you, and if someone believes it should be banned, it's not just a matter of bigotry, as someone suggested.

And I'm merely saying that you are wrong. It IS a matter of bigotry, it is an issue of an individual trying to use the government to force their morals and values on someone else. The truth of the matter is that most of the information regarding the dangers of alcohol is questionable. There is a considerable body of evidence showing that moderate alcohol consumption can be beneficial. Even beyond that there is the quality of life benefits that alcohol provides.

Prohibitionists can rationalize their behavior any way they choose, but at the end of the day they are simply little tyrants who fear that someone making a different choice somehow devalues their own choices.

Besides, I don't think many people are actually going to take up arms for their right to smoke pot; for that to happen, the society would have to be a pretty hardcore fascist state, and I haven't been advocating anything like that.

Smoking pot? Maybe not. Still, most people wouldn't have expected that the colonies would have taken up arms over taxes on tea. Totalitarian states do not have to happen overnight, they often are the result of an aggregation of government power and authority over several years. What you are advocating are the first steps down that road, the spread of government into personal life and choices.

Still, lets look at it from another direction. Are you as comfortable with prohibitions against sodomy or gay marriage as you are with prohibitions against drug use?

I was mainly talking about those added artificial sweeteners, preservatives and such, that have been proven to cause cancer and other long-term health problems, not about naturally occuring fats. Not that it makes much difference here. So you believe that companies should be allowed to put harmful ingredients into their products, as long as they warn about them, just so that the consumers would have the choice to select the unhealthy product? Alright, but you sure seem to fight for freedom in strange areas. Things would be a lot simpler for everyone, if harmful additives were banned. Yes, I believe that the consumer's ability to trust the product's harmlessness is more important than the company's freedom to use whatever they want.

Again, you're having trouble seeing the forest through the trees. Sure, things might be simpler if we banned some artifical sweeteners, but once we open that door someone will inevitably open it further sometime in the future. I'm simply not willing to sacrifice longterm security for short term simplicity. It isn't fighting in strange places, it is taking a stand. I'm pretty sure that what I have to say isn't going to face censorship anytime in the near future, but in order to maintain that security I might have to fight for the rights of someone to say something that makes me physically ill because I know how quickly things can change.



Yes, I think anyone with any common sense will wear a helmet while riding a motorcycle, and I support laws that will force that sense to those, who don't have it naturally.

Ahh yes, do whats good for you or else! It is comforting to know that the only real change in the transition from childhood to maturity is trading your mother for your local regulatory agency.



But I do. As I've said earlier, I believe it is the government's responsibility to provide adequate basic health care. That is a big reason why I like laws that keep people from hurting themselves.

Thats fine. Just understand that in giving up personal soverignty you are giving up the thing that makes you a citizen. Once you allow the government to have a say in the most personal of your choices all you can do is hope they do not abuse that power.



Do you believe the gang wars would end, even if they didn't need to fight over drug territory? I think the reasons for gang mentality and rivalry lie somewhere else. Furthermore, it seems to be mainly an American phenomenon; there are no "thousands of murders each year" in most countries that have anti-drug policies. (Not meaning to bash America here, just pointing out that drugs are not the cause of the gang problem.)

No "thousands of murders per year?" Tell that to people living in Columbia or Nicaragua. Anywhere in south of central America, really.

Yes, the violent gangs would lose a large amount of their incentive to fight. As someone who grew up in a neighborhood with street gangs I can tell you that they are all about drugs. These thugs don't really care about neighborhood pride or any of the other crap they like to prance out, they care about the thousands of dollar per day they can make by selling a black market product. They engage in criminal behavior because they are in an unregulated, extra-legal buisness. You cannot take someone to court over a drug deal, you cannot go after your competition's marketshare through a television ad campaign. That is the nature of the black market.



Heh, no offense intended. I just found it strange that somebody would want his government to be weak just out of fear of being enslaved.

(BTW, in my country bloodline matters a lot less than it does in America :p )

Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that. You don't make a snide, condescending comment aimed at my nationality -then go on to imply that I wouldn't be so foolish if I just lived where you did- without intending some offense. Spare the craven platitudes. You took your shot, you lowered the level of discourse, you decided to attack the person rather than the argument.

It doesn't matter which morals a person has, in a democracy, or in a constitutional republic etc., people should choose to vote for what they think is right, regardless of what that is.

Example given; IF a person thinks that eating horse meat is an obnoxious trait they don't want in their community, and the matter comes before a vote in their community (symbolically or actually vote, via elected officials choosing policy or an actual government act or law, etc.,) then the person should vote that they think it is right. IF they think it is okay to eat horse meat or they think horses should not be slaughtered for human consumption, that is the way they should vote so the actual opinion of the public is discovered via the vote/poll.

In the end, every vote is a moral one, regardless of which way the person votes. The person SHOULD vote in favor of their morals. IF they are outnumbered in the community they live in the society laws will allow the opposite of their personal choice. IF they are in the majority, then their side will win and they will be represented.

They should NOT decide to allow all permissiveness in all things simply because they are afraid of forcing their beliefs on others. IF society feels that way, society will allow it. IF society is honest and votes their morals, then the predominate feelings of the society will be represented in the community through the votes they cast and the society as a whole will be happier and likely healthier as they develop their own governance.

That is my opinion and that is why I voted in the minority here, that morals SHOULD restrict a societies laws if the average person agrees with what those morals are.... Eat horse meat or not is a perfect example.

I have to say, I tend to side with JC Looks Like Me on this thread. I don't think that banning drugs really solves anything. The only conceivable benefit is that is could mean that people who are addicted to drugs find help sooner.

A much better system is to legalize all drugs and make information about them widely available (without the kind of propaganda they throw in now).

But what about smoking? If I work in the same place as Sam, and Sam likes to smoke, and I am regularly exposed to his highly carcinogenic secondhand smoke, I think my right to not inhale cigarette smoke supersedes his right to do so. If Sam is not permitted to smoke in our workplace on the basis of my right to not breathe his smoke, then he can still smoke elsewhere (outside, his home, wherever else).

I really don't like the idea of pure majority rule, where the majority can make all the laws. I like our constitutional protections of freedom. Without them, there would be nothing between Bush and his quest to reduce America to a subservient state of groveling, terrified pieces of chickenshit that call themselves independent human beings. [/invective]

No, that's not at all what I meant. I meant that if there is no law against murder, then even if someone commits murder, he is still a law-abiding citizen. There is a difference between illegal and immoral; an act is illegal if and only if there is a law against it.
Sorry, I misunderstood your point.

I know. The reason prohibition failed was that alcohol was so widely used and accepted, and people didn't want to give up their old ways of life. As much as I'd like to have alcohol banned, I know it's not possible, and the only thing I can do is to drown my sorrow in some hard liquor. My point was that they had reasons besides their desire to impose their values on others, when they made the law.
I disagree. I do not think they had reasons beside wanting to impose their values. You cited the bad effects of alcoholism -- sickness, drunk driving, damage to families, etc -- but that was not what the Prohibitionists cited. They wanted alcohol banned precisely because they thought drunkeness was immoral. They complained about things they called "loose living" and "loose morals." They associated drinking with promiscuity, gambling, and inattention to religion and country. That was the great damage they wanted to stop. When their efforts ended up launching a full scale war in the streets of American cities, they were at least honest enough to realize their mistake and undo it. They saw and recognized the difference between what they thought of as damage to society and real, actual damage to society.

The anti-drug system has not recognized that same problem.

Besides, you don't really suggest that the war against drugs has such a widespread opposition as the prohibition had, do you?
Well, I don't know about that. The drugs that are illegal in the US were made illegal well before Prohibition, so none of us has ever lived in a US in which they were legal, to make a comparison. I have read that, in fact, there was tremendous opposition to the criminalization of drugs such as opium, heroin, morphine, cocaine and marijuana back in the 19th century, when it began. The thinking then was that adults had a right to do to themselves whatever they wanted, and the government had no say in it, as a matter of individual liberty. The government did not tell you how to live your life.

I don't know why drug prohibitions stuck when alcohol prohibition didn't. I do know that the drug companies, which used to manufacture and sell all those criminalized drugs and still uses them and their derivatives today, under special license, have long had a much bigger political lobbying presence than the alcohol industry. Perhaps it has been in the interest of the drug industry to limit the number of legal competitors by limiting access to the drug compounds, which was the first purpose of drug control laws (which imposed punitive taxes on drug makers and dealers for the right to carry on their businesses, thus pricing many small companies out of existence).

I also know that the violence and crime associated with illegal drug trafficking is way worse, by virtue lasting longer and being more widespread, than the violence that attended alcohol prohibition. The violence was what made the Prohibitionists change their minds. Apparently, the anti-drug crowd don't care how many people die, just so long as they don't enjoy themselves beforehand.

I have to say, I tend to side with JC Looks Like Me on this thread. I don't think that banning drugs really solves anything. The only conceivable benefit is that is could mean that people who are addicted to drugs find help sooner.
Except that it doesn't because, being moralists, the moralists don't just criminalize the drugs, they criminalize the addict, too. If the point of the laws was just to protect people from a harmful substance, then drugs would be banned just like asbestos is banned, but nobody would be sent to jail for being addicted to drugs, just as no one is blamed for getting cancer from exposure to asbestos. Addiction would be an illness, addicts would be victims of crime, and they would get help with no stigma attached.

But that's not what happens. Addicts are treated like the scum of the earth. Users are jailed as much as or more than dealers. In some notable cases, addicts have gotten worse punishments than dealers. Why is this? I suggest it is because of a moral disapproval of the behavior of drug addicts. Drug laws are designed to punish addicts for being addicted, not to help them

A much better system is to legalize all drugs and make information about them widely available (without the kind of propaganda they throw in now).
I think it may be too late for that. Illegal drug trafficking is so widespread and so powerful that it has corrupted even governments in places like South America and Afghanistan. If you were to legalize, say, cocaine right now, all you would be doing is giving legitimacy to the South American cartels. Considering their extreme violence and the way they corrupt, intimidate or outright rebel against the governments in their countries, do you really think they would suddenly turn into good neighbors and citizens if they had a legal market for their goods? Legalizing heroin would only put more power into the hands of Afghan warlords who have already shown themselves to be friendly towards terrorists. The illegal drug business these days is also connected to the illegal markets in weapons and slavery. I don't think we want to do business with such enterprises.

I would like to see pot legalized and regulated like alcohol and tobacco, with the same age and use restrictions. The best part about pot is that it has other uses and can be grown locally. There are some other drugs also that can be produced locally and legally. I see no reason why they should be banned.

But although I don't like the idea of the government legislating morality in any way, including about drugs (which I don't use, btw, fyi), I simply cannot support anything that would support the criminal enterprises that traffick in illegal drugs. They are just too damned violent.

<snip>
I really don't like the idea of pure majority rule, where the majority can make all the laws. I like our constitutional protections of freedom. Without them, there would be nothing between Bush and his quest to reduce America to a subservient state of groveling, terrified pieces of chickenshit that call themselves independent human beings. [/invective]

And on this, I totally agree.

Except that it doesn't because, being moralists, the moralists don't just criminalize the drugs, they criminalize the addict, too. If the point of the laws was just to protect people from a harmful substance, then drugs would be banned just like asbestos is banned, but nobody would be sent to jail for being addicted to drugs, just as no one is blamed for getting cancer from exposure to asbestos. Addiction would be an illness, addicts would be victims of crime, and they would get help with no stigma attached.

But that's not what happens. Addicts are treated like the scum of the earth. Users are jailed as much as or more than dealers. In some notable cases, addicts have gotten worse punishments than dealers. Why is this? I suggest it is because of a moral disapproval of the behavior of drug addicts. Drug laws are designed to punish addicts for being addicted, not to help them.
True; the justice system sees addiction as a problem to be punished instead of cured. But nevertheless, there are a lot of drug treatment and rehab programs in the prison system (though sending addicts to prison is stupid), and some of the more sensible judges send addicts to rehab centers.

I think it may be too late for that. Illegal drug trafficking is so widespread and so powerful that it has corrupted even governments in places like South America and Afghanistan. If you were to legalize, say, cocaine right now, all you would be doing is giving legitimacy to the South American cartels. Considering their extreme violence and the way they corrupt, intimidate or outright rebel against the governments in their countries, do you really think they would suddenly turn into good neighbors and citizens if they had a legal market for their goods? Legalizing heroin would only put more power into the hands of Afghan warlords who have already shown themselves to be friendly towards terrorists. The illegal drug business these days is also connected to the illegal markets in weapons and slavery. I don't think we want to do business with such enterprises.
I think someone made a point earlier about how a large portion of drug-dealer-related violence is because they have no legal recourse to resolve "business disputes". After Prohibition, even though the alcohol-dealing gangsters were well-entrenched in the business, things went back to legitimacy with surprising rapidity. Granted, there was an infrastructure already in place, which made the transition much easier.

I would like to see pot legalized and regulated like alcohol and tobacco, with the same age and use restrictions. The best part about pot is that it has other uses and can be grown locally. There are some other drugs also that can be produced locally and legally. I see no reason why they should be banned.

But although I don't like the idea of the government legislating morality in any way, including about drugs (which I don't use, btw, fyi), I simply cannot support anything that would support the criminal enterprises that traffick in illegal drugs. They are just too damned violent.
Illegalization of drugs supports the illegal enterprises. It gives them a monopoly on the market (though they occasionally have to compete with the CIA).

Here's an interesting question: Should freedom be limited by subjective morals (All morals are subjective.) or is freedom a moral?

I was reading an earlier thread that got me interested to see your opinions. So what do you think?

Edit: I meant: Do you beleive that morals should limit freedom (such as deeming certain kinds of freedoms (ie. gay marriage) to be immoral, or do you beleive that it is a moral to preserve the freedom of others.

By you're deffinition: No. HELL NO! Freedom should not even be limited by anything (Except the basic limitations regarding to murder, stealing, etc). There is nothing wrong with Gay Marriage, etc.

Except, of course, that freedom of speech does not allow you to tell any lie you want to or start untrue rumors at will. If such lies and rumors qualify as slander/libel, then spreading them is against the law. This is a case of a moral against harming others limiting a freedom to do what you like.

Nope. That is a case of laws limiting a freedom rather than morals limiting a freedom. The laws are external limits to the would-be speaker's freedom and morals are internal limits to his freedom.

Freedom of Speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you want. It means you have the right to criticize the Government without fear of reprisal.

But that isn't what you are doing. You are using the two ideas interchangably. The problem here is that I am making argument against social force being used to define legislative force while you are simply jumbling social and legislative force as justifications for one another without recognizing the differences between the two.

No... I'm making arguments for social force being a valid method of keeping order, and then I'm using that as an argument for validating its use in legislative force. And yes, I believe they justify each other to some small extent.

Ahh yes, because all people should be ground under the millstone until they have lost the will to resist Our Evil Overlords(TM). Seriously, you've missed my point entirely. The point I was making is that laws should not exist as general guidelines or good ideas imbued with the coercive force of government. Laws should be the formal application of coercive force with the intent of protecting the rights of the individual. Murder is not illegal because someone thought killing was bad, murder is illegal because it represents a violation of the rights of the victim. The problem with prohibitions aimed at promoting "social good" is that they are rooted in subjective standards of taste rather than objective standards of individual harm.

This seems like the start of another one of those threads about whether human rights are absolute and inalienable, or if they're just something government lets you have.

Murder is indeed illegal because somebody thought killing was bad. Maybe he came to that conclusion from the idea that killing someone violates his rights, or maybe he simply thought killing people is bad for the community. Since the concept of murder is so old, I'm inclined to believe the latter. All standards are subjective matters of taste, even individual harm. This conclusion I draw from the assumption that all rights are just inventions by the society.

Sorry, I'm digressing. I believe your point is that the absolute freedom of an individual is the highest ideal the society should/can strive for. I agree with that only to the point where it starts to do serious harm to the society. I see the relationship between a citizen and the society to be something like a marriage; if one is made more important than the other, it won't be good to either in the long run.

Worse they always fail. People have been trying to outlaw drinking, prostitution, and gambling for thousands of years. Even beheadings and gulags failed.

Beheadings and gulags are not any different from jailing everyone, which we have already agreed to be a bad idea. If those are the methods that are always used, then it's not a surprise that there are no significant differences between the success rates of past systems.

I also wouldn't go as far as saying that they always fail. I won't believe for one second that the amount of drug users won't skyrocket the day drugs are made legal.

On the issue of community service the only thing I have to say is "slavery by any other name..."

Funny that you still support inprisonment, the whole point of which is to cause the prisoner inconvenience by severely limiting his freedom for maybe several years.

Thats all well and good as long as the party you trust is in power, but what happens when people you abhor begin to define social harm? Would you be comfortable with those standards being set by Thatcher or Reagan? What about Jerry Falwell or Muqtada as-Sadr? George Wallace? Chairman Mao?

Then it will suck to be me, obviously. The good thing about democracy, though, is that 1) politicians have been voted into office, and therefore have the support of the majority, and 2) if the majority starts to feel dissatisfied with the decisions of the politicians, it can (theoretically) change the government. It's not me, who defines social harm; it's the majority of people. There is a good chance that I disagree with it from time to time.

Amsterdam seems to have managed to handle a fairly laissez faire attitude without too many problems.

It does? Because I was under the impression that drugs are running rampant there. Of course if you don't see that as a problem, that's fine.

What about them? I know plenty of people who have used LSD and are fine. I've used LSD in the past(not really my thing) and have used opiates(the precursors to heroin) on more than one occasion. To be perfectly honest, back in my high school and college days I tried just about anything I could get my hands on, which was quite a bit considering the number of chemistry majors I knew. I grew out of it. I'm currently both gainfully employed and working towards a doctorate in clinical psychology. The vast majority of my drug-using friends are in similar situations.

Nothing, just getting some clarification about your opinions.

Good for you, and I'm sure there are plenty of people, who haven't been harmfully affected by drugs that much. How about people who have been less fortunate, do you know any of them?


And I'm merely saying that you are wrong. It IS a matter of bigotry, it is an issue of an individual trying to use the government to force their morals and values on someone else. The truth of the matter is that most of the information regarding the dangers of alcohol is questionable. There is a considerable body of evidence showing that moderate alcohol consumption can be beneficial. Even beyond that there is the quality of life benefits that alcohol provides.

Prohibitionists can rationalize their behavior any way they choose, but at the end of the day they are simply little tyrants who fear that someone making a different choice somehow devalues their own choices.

Yeah, the beneficial amount would be a glass of wine per week. And that part I highlighted is used as an argument in drug and alcohol debates all the time. Unfortunately the same argument is also used against evolution, the Holocaust, pollution affecting global warming, and even the theory about Earth revolving around the Sun. So it's not very convincing.

Are you seriously claiming that saying "It's a bad idea to drink that much, it's bad for your health and you might end up hurting others" is the same thing as saying "I hate alcohol, so nobody should drink it"?

Smoking pot? Maybe not. Still, most people wouldn't have expected that the colonies would have taken up arms over taxes on tea. Totalitarian states do not have to happen overnight, they often are the result of an aggregation of government power and authority over several years. What you are advocating are the first steps down that road, the spread of government into personal life and choices.

Perhaps, if you're living in nazi Germany. As I stated above, democracy is far less prone to such behavior. If not, then we have bigger problems than our right to get high.

Still, lets look at it from another direction. Are you as comfortable with prohibitions against sodomy or gay marriage as you are with prohibitions against drug use?

I think it's nobody else's business, if two men decide to stab each other's crap in the privacy of their homes, at least as long as they have the courtesy of keeping it in their homes. So there is no point in banning that.

I have mixed opinions of gay marriage. I don't like the idea, and it does offend be a bit, but it doesn't harm me, anyone else or the society, so I wouldn't ban it. To be perfectly honest, these issues don't concern me, and I wouldn't start raising my voice about these issues no matter which way the government rules.


Again, you're having trouble seeing the forest through the trees. Sure, things might be simpler if we banned some artifical sweeteners, but once we open that door someone will inevitably open it further sometime in the future. I'm simply not willing to sacrifice longterm security for short term simplicity. It isn't fighting in strange places, it is taking a stand. I'm pretty sure that what I have to say isn't going to face censorship anytime in the near future, but in order to maintain that security I might have to fight for the rights of someone to say something that makes me physically ill because I know how quickly things can change.

You're afraid that if we ban bad stuff now, later people will try to force you to eat only government-approved health food. I understand, but I just can't see that happening in the real world, because no politician would simply have the balls for it. Hitler was a vegetarian, and he wanted the entire Germany to become that way too, but he didn't even dream about actually trying to make it happen, because he would have lost all credibility in the eyes of the public. Whereas I understand the basic idea behind your concern, I think you're letting an irrational thought overcomplicate your life.

Thats fine. Just understand that in giving up personal soverignty you are giving up the thing that makes you a citizen. Once you allow the government to have a say in the most personal of your choices all you can do is hope they do not abuse that power.

The only thing that makes me a citizen is the fact that the government allows me to live under its rule. If, for example, you move to another country, you need to apply for citizenship in order to fully enjoy the rights and services the new government provides. But you are right in the sense that losing freedoms will make my citizenship less meaningful. Yes, I trust my government enough.



No "thousands of murders per year?" Tell that to people living in Columbia or Nicaragua. Anywhere in south of central America, really.

OK, so people die as a result of drug-related disputes elsewhere too. I was mostly referring to gang wars in Europe.

Yes, the violent gangs would lose a large amount of their incentive to fight. As someone who grew up in a neighborhood with street gangs I can tell you that they are all about drugs. These thugs don't really care about neighborhood pride or any of the other crap they like to prance out, they care about the thousands of dollar per day they can make by selling a black market product. They engage in criminal behavior because they are in an unregulated, extra-legal buisness. You cannot take someone to court over a drug deal, you cannot go after your competition's marketshare through a television ad campaign. That is the nature of the black market.

Were there no gangs before drug distribution became the job of the gangs?



Yeah, I'm just gonna go ahead and call bullshit on that. You don't make a snide, condescending comment aimed at my nationality -then go on to imply that I wouldn't be so foolish if I just lived where you did- without intending some offense. Spare the craven platitudes. You took your shot, you lowered the level of discourse, you decided to attack the person rather than the argument.

Actually I was making a joke to lighten the atmosphere. Although I did comment on your argument in my previous post, I'll do it again just for you.

Finally, I do not believe it is the role of the government to protect me from myself because I do not trust that the government will always have my best interests at heart. A man can know that a weak government cannot enslave him, under a strong government he can merely hope. This is more than an issue of insult, my friend.

What exactly do you mean by enslaving? Do you mean it in the classical sense of being forced to work for little or no pay, or do you simply mean being forced to conform to the morals of people more conservative than you? Never mind, it doesn't matter. Why do you have such a strong distrust of your government? Is it because of all those politicians who disagree with you, or is it something philosophical, so that you could never trust any government?

True; the justice system sees addiction as a problem to be punished instead of cured. But nevertheless, there are a lot of drug treatment and rehab programs in the prison system (though sending addicts to prison is stupid), and some of the more sensible judges send addicts to rehab centers.
True, but it's still the wrong approach. See my earlier post about how, before the drugs were criminalized, addicts were regularly under the care of doctors who controlled their dosages and helped them get clean. This is not to say there was a perfect societal system in place. Far from it. Addicts who were too poor even for a third rate GP self-medicated with often disastrous results. Uncontrolled drug addiction was part and parcel of the underground of crime and poverty in 19th century American cities, but addiction itself was not considered a crime, and the number of fatal -- especially accidentally fatal -- overdoses was much lower than it was immediately after criminalization.

I think someone made a point earlier about how a large portion of drug-dealer-related violence is because they have no legal recourse to resolve "business disputes". After Prohibition, even though the alcohol-dealing gangsters were well-entrenched in the business, things went back to legitimacy with surprising rapidity. Granted, there was an infrastructure already in place, which made the transition much easier.

Illegalization of drugs supports the illegal enterprises. It gives them a monopoly on the market (though they occasionally have to compete with the CIA).
Yes, but Prohibition didn't even last 20 years. The illegal drug trade has been in business for nearly 100 years. I do believe that, if the drugs were legalized, eventually the various cartels would die off, but in the meantime, it is not just a matter of businessmen trying to get their product to market and being forced to do it illegally. Over the last century, the trade has been taken over in countries outside the US and most of Europe by people who use it as a base of political power that is deliberately placed outside the laws of any government. People like the Afghan warlords or the leaders of South American cartels see themselves as a law unto themselves, almost rulers of their own little kingdoms complete with serfs to work the poppy or coca fields and heavily armed militias to do battle for them. They are violent and ruthless, and I do not believe that these particular people are secretly wishing for legalization of their drugs so they can go legit at last.

Nope. That is a case of laws limiting a freedom rather than morals limiting a freedom. The laws are external limits to the would-be speaker's freedom and morals are internal limits to his freedom.

Fine, I'll grant you that point. I'm kind of being a devil's advocate when arguing morals anyway. ;) I don't really believe they are all that influential or all that valuable. I was just thinking that laws against telling lies in order to harm others may be based on morals that say it is wrong to tell lies in order to harm others. I was thinking in particular of that 10 Commandments thing about not bearing false witness.

That is my opinion and that is why I voted in the minority here, that morals SHOULD restrict a societies laws if the average person agrees with what those morals are.... Eat horse meat or not is a perfect example.

But there is a potential flaw in your logic. How would you handle a society in which the majority holds moral beliefs that conflict with the basic concepts of freedom. If the majority of Bumblehurst, IA voted tomarrow to ban eating red meat, would you be comfortable with that? What if they moved to ban abortion? How about miscegination(interracial relationships)? Would you be comfortable with a community outlawing unmarried cohabitation? How about sodomy? It wasn't too long ago that black and white children couldn't attend the same schools, would you be willing tollerate such a situation if it was clear that the majority found it to be right? Where and how do you draw the line?

Supporting moral legislation implicitly supports the worst forms of moral relativism and discrimination that humanity has to offer.

For the most part, people should be able to do whatever they want so long as doing so doesn't prevent other people from doing what they want, or infringe on their rights to life and property.

However, I'm still not sure about how to approach blatantly self destructive things, like cokaine use. this is an especially tough issue because if, for instance, I say it's alright to step in to stop people from engaging in self destructive behaivior, certain people (you know who you are) will say things like "But according to our faith, being gay/atheist/promiscuous/whatever IS blatantly self destructive, as it will lead to a lifetime in hell." and I simply don't know how to argue against that without falling back to "but not everyone believes in your faith, and not everyone should follow it's rules" which is an argument that doesn't matter to them because they won't consider the possiblility that their faith is wrong.

I see the relationship between a citizen and the society to be something like a marriage; if one is made more important than the other, it won't be good to either in the long run.

If society is a marriage I might have to rethink my opinions on domestic violence.

Buh-dum-chick. Thanks folks, I'll be here all weekend.

Seriously though. There is aready an inherant imbalance between the individual and the society. The society is the only of the two with any measure of coercive force, the society is the only of the two who can make rules, and the society is the sole voice when it comes to issue of guilt or transgression. Putting serious and unyeilding limitations on the scope of government is the only effective way of preventing the relationship between and individual and society from becoming an abusive one. Once you decide that issues of subjective taste can be approached with the force of coercion you must accept that any freedoms are completely illusory. The individual becomes the property of his society, given privilages but devoid of rights. Its a gilded cage.



Beheadings and gulags are not any different from jailing everyone, which we have already agreed to be a bad idea. If those are the methods that are always used, then it's not a surprise that there are no significant differences between the success rates of past systems.

I also wouldn't go as far as saying that they always fail. I won't believe for one second that the amount of drug users won't skyrocket the day drugs are made legal.

What other option are available? Look at the history of drug prohibition in the US. It began as an issue of fines and taxation, moved to a matter of imprisionment, and now we have otherwise law abiding and productve members of society getting sentances stiffer than you get for rape. Still, people use drugs. What other methods of correction are left? Were down to the Ludivico treatment and lobatomies here...

When it comes to skyrocketing rates of drug use, I would say that the evidence simply doesn't support your fears. Quite a few jurisdictions have experimented with decriminalization or permissive attitudes, and there are more places than you might think in the US where posession of less than an ounce of marijuana is punishable by a token fine. I've yet to see a surge of reefer madness. I might even point you to the city of Amsterdam, one of the most permissive places in all of Europe, which has had few major troubles even though it's drugs and hookers are something of tourist attraction.

Funny that you still support inprisonment, the whole point of which is to cause the prisoner inconvenience by severely limiting his freedom for maybe several years.

What gave you the idea that I support imprisonment. I support a massive decriminalization and formal regulation of a large variety of consentual crimes from drug use to prostitution to gambling. Personally, I'm not a fan of gambling and you couldn't pay me enough to sleep with a hooker, but I don't feel that my personal choice has such gravity that it should be forced upon others.



Then it will suck to be me, obviously. The good thing about democracy, though, is that 1) politicians have been voted into office, and therefore have the support of the majority, and 2) if the majority starts to feel dissatisfied with the decisions of the politicians, it can (theoretically) change the government. It's not me, who defines social harm; it's the majority of people. There is a good chance that I disagree with it from time to time.

Just to be clear, you're saying that you're cool with being oppressed when you're in the opposition just so long as you get to be the oppressor when you have enough friends? Or is it that you have such respect for the great proletariat that you're willing to ceed any sense of self determination to their judgement?



It does? Because I was under the impression that drugs are running rampant there. Of course if you don't see that as a problem, that's fine.

And yet society still chugs along, people are still happy, the sun still rises and the economy continues to be robust and healthy...


Good for you, and I'm sure there are plenty of people, who haven't been harmfully affected by drugs that much. How about people who have been less fortunate, do you know any of them?

Yeah, I've known a few. They're in the minority and those who I have known over the course of their lives have tended to be people who chose to be fuck-ups. In the absence of their drug of choice they would have turned to alcohol, paint thinner, or glue. We aren't talking about great people of strong will and unlimited potential. As someone who has used drugs in the past, and who has managed to best an abuse problem, I can tell you that addiction isn't an evil drug taking hold of a good person, but a weak person refusing to moderate their own behavior. You'll forgive me if the continued success of natural selection fails to make me weep.


Yeah, the beneficial amount would be a glass of wine per week. And that part I highlighted is used as an argument in drug and alcohol debates all the time. Unfortunately the same argument is also used against evolution, the Holocaust, pollution affecting global warming, and even the theory about Earth revolving around the Sun. So it's not very convincing.

Can ya taste the Godwinny goodness?

I have evidence to back up my claims, both apocryphal and scientific. The evidence shows that moderate alcohol consumption returns the greatest health benefits, and moderate is generally defined as between 2 and 4 drinks per week.

Heres a study from the AMA: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/157/1/79?view=abstract

Here is an insurance company study that showed light drinkers(up to 2 drinks per week) had the lowest mortality rates, that non-drinkers and drinkers of 3-5 drinks per week had similar mortality rates, and that those who comsumed more than six drinks per week had the higest rates:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7258861&dopt=Citation

Heres a study suggesting a "J" shaped curve in the effects of alcohol on mortality: http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/158/6/585

Are you seriously claiming that saying "It's a bad idea to drink that much, it's bad for your health and you might end up hurting others" is the same thing as saying "I hate alcohol, so nobody should drink it"?

When the first statement is used to justify the prohibition of alcohol? Yes, yes it is.



Perhaps, if you're living in nazi Germany. As I stated above, democracy is far less prone to such behavior. If not, then we have bigger problems than our right to get high.

Two Godwins in one post! Gonna suggest I have a little mustache next?

We do have bigger problems, you're right. If you want a good, real life example of the slow creep that power likes to make, just take a look at the Bush administration's movements against the Geneva Convention. All it takes is one bad politician, just one.

Don't like that one? Why don't you look at prohibitions against smoking. First airplanes, then workplaces, then restaurants, then bars, here in my home town you cannot smoke outside within 15 feet of a building enterance. There are jurisdictions now considering banning smoking in cars with your children or in your home if you have children. Scotland recently decided that you cannot smoke in your own home if a government worker is coming within(I believe, I could be wrong on the time frame) 48 hours.


I think it's nobody else's business, if two men decide to stab each other's crap in the privacy of their homes, at least as long as they have the courtesy of keeping it in their homes. So there is no point in banning that.

But whats the difference? There are those who believe that society has a vested interest in preventing men from having sex with one another. There are strong epidemialogical studies which suggest that gay men have a higher likelyhood of drug use and are more likely to become vectors for STDs(which could pose a public health threat). Even worse, homosexuals are unlikely to have children(which means no future tax generators) and have a shorter life expectancy than heterosexuals. Finally there exists a statistically significant increase in the likelyhood of mental illness for homosexuals. Why should their consentual behavior with potential negative effects on society not be banned while the consumption of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco are fair game? What is the internal logic that separates these two behaviors? I'm looking for the internal consistancy in your argument.

You're afraid that if we ban bad stuff now, later people will try to force you to eat only government-approved health food. I understand, but I just can't see that happening in the real world, because no politician would simply have the balls for it. Hitler was a vegetarian, and he wanted the entire Germany to become that way too, but he didn't even dream about actually trying to make it happen, because he would have lost all credibility in the eyes of the public. Whereas I understand the basic idea behind your concern, I think you're letting an irrational thought overcomplicate your life.

Three Godwins! Whatta trifecta! Hes going for a record, folks!

Yes, because certainly no country would attempt to control the food consumption of a large potion of it's population. Taken a look at the argument in Britain over school lunches lately? What about the child registry that includes the number of healthy fruits and vegitables a child eats in a day?


The only thing that makes me a citizen is the fact that the government allows me to live under its rule. If, for example, you move to another country, you need to apply for citizenship in order to fully enjoy the rights and services the new government provides. But you are right in the sense that losing freedoms will make my citizenship less meaningful. Yes, I trust my government enough.

What makes me a citizen is the right to form a mob and overthrow my government with violent force. I doubt that'll be necessary in my lifetime, but its nice to know I have the option.

I don't trust my government, and I can't really think of a country whose government I would trust. We all have skeletons in our closets, human rights abuses and hideous crimes we spend most of our time not thinking about.


Were there no gangs before drug distribution became the job of the gangs?

Not in the numbers there are today. The power of organized criminals is directly proportional to the demand for crime. Gangs have traditionally been in charge to supplying black market demands. They sell drugs or bathtub hootch, they run numbers, open brothels, start protection rackets, host gambling dens, and sell contraband. Thats what they do. Without the stream of illicit income to be made, they have little reason to form a gang. This isn't the Sharks and the Jets knife-fighting over who gets to strut where, gangs like that simply don't exist for long. There is no incentive to put your life on the line and pleanty of police power to break it up.


What exactly do you mean by enslaving? Do you mean it in the classical sense of being forced to work for little or no pay, or do you simply mean being forced to conform to the morals of people more conservative than you? Never mind, it doesn't matter. Why do you have such a strong distrust of your government? Is it because of all those politicians who disagree with you, or is it something philosophical, so that you could never trust any government?

Perhaps I should have been more clear. While I definately feel that it is possible for governments to enslave their people in a classical sense(Communism is a fine example), I am generally refering to the privation of personal sovereignty and self determination. Once the power to choose for an individual is claimed by a government than the power to enslave and individual is also claimed, it is the same power. If I owned you, I could choose to pay you for your work, make your own choices, live where you wanted, and generally do what you wanted, but that wouldn't make you free. At the end of the day you would still be my slave, even if I didn't choose to exert the authority I had over you. Every single freedom you have would be at my pleasure, to be modified or removed on my whim. It does not matter how benevolent the despot may be, he is still a despot and deserves to be hung as a warning to all those who would aspire to his position.

Fine, I'll grant you that point. I'm kind of being a devil's advocate when arguing morals anyway. ;) I don't really believe they are all that influential or all that valuable. I was just thinking that laws against telling lies in order to harm others may be based on morals that say it is wrong to tell lies in order to harm others. I was thinking in particular of that 10 Commandments thing about not bearing false witness.

Most criminal law is an attempt to externally force people to act as if they shared morals with the legislators. I dont have a problem with this. A moral which is imposed upon others might be a very good idea. Even though some people have no moral stopping them from killing and consider it their right and even obligation I am still OK with laws against murder. In the same vein the fact that "Thou shalt not kill " is one of the Ten Commandments does not mean that it is a not a suitable moral for Atheists or Scientologists. The source of a moral does not soil it or polish it or lend any virtue or vice. The source merely defines a moral and advocates people to adopt it into their behaviors. It's easy enough to see if the behavior works for them. I mostly have a problem with laws (no matter which moral they are based upon) which are so unfair or fiercely legislated that we end up with criminals with no victims. This applies to the traditional hookers booze porn and drug victimless crime as well as to pre-crime laws like felonious drunk driving prior to the drunk crashing. (Drunk crashing should be dealt with severely)

Yes, but Prohibition didn't even last 20 years. The illegal drug trade has been in business for nearly 100 years. I do believe that, if the drugs were legalized, eventually the various cartels would die off, but in the meantime, it is not just a matter of businessmen trying to get their product to market and being forced to do it illegally. Over the last century, the trade has been taken over in countries outside the US and most of Europe by people who use it as a base of political power that is deliberately placed outside the laws of any government. People like the Afghan warlords or the leaders of South American cartels see themselves as a law unto themselves, almost rulers of their own little kingdoms complete with serfs to work the poppy or coca fields and heavily armed militias to do battle for them. They are violent and ruthless, and I do not believe that these particular people are secretly wishing for legalization of their drugs so they can go legit at last.

So put it to competition. I have trouble believing that Pablo Escobar could manage to stand up to the sheer force of Archer Daniels Midland. Give it six months and ADM will have a genetically engineered coca that yields twice the product with half the growing time in Indiana and with full power industrial processing. In the meantime you'll have Walmart driving the price of poppies down through wholesale force and bringing the Afghan Warlords to the beggar's table with hats(or turbans) in hand. While all thats going on RJR will quietly start converting tobacco fields in Virginia to Marijuana fields. On top of that you'll have all these strong US companies in control of production and distribution, and all the old tools of the drug trade will fail. Threaten a US executive with friends on the hill and you'll see a cruise missile before breakfast. Smuggle your product in and find out that theres no one willing to buy it at a price which will turn you a profit.

Lets face it, the cartels just aren't equipped to deal with the big boys. If drugs became legal they would become big buisness overnight. Cartel heads would either have to adapt to the new way of doing things or retire.

Freedom is essential for man to sustain his life, but total anarchist freedom, which does not force one to respect others' rights, is immoral.

I am not talking about anarchist freedom. There are lines that have to be drawn. You draw these lines where personal freedoms begin to infinge on the freedoms of others. I don't know if it came across that way (Apparently, it didn't; I've had several people ask similar questions.), but I was talking about civil rights. One of the most basic aspects of civil rights is that they stop wherever someone else's begin. Otherwise you have anarchy. I'm not talking about a society in which people are free to do whatever the hell they like; I'm talking about a society where other people's personal beleifs do not infringe on your own. Take, for example, gay marriage. While it is illeagal, it's a victimless crime. Who gets hurt is someone else gets married? No one. Who get hurt if I practice my own religion and not the religion of the majority? No one. Who gets hurt if I am dying in a long, slow, an definite disease, and I decide, to preserve the memory of me to my family, that it's time for me to go? No one. In all these scenarios, if I make a bad choice, the only person who gets hurt is me. However, you cross the line if you, say, blare music out your window all night long. Suddenly, you're impacting someone else. Your neighbors can't sleep. They've lost their inalienable right to sleep. And, of course, you had no right to take their rights away. So you have violated the law. Your freedoms end where someone else's begin.

Note: Admittedly, I coppied and pasted most of this answer from one of my earlier posts, but I still think that it answers your question.

Freedom should be limited based on one pragmatic principle: my freedom to swing my fist ends at the tip of your nose. Beyond that, morals be buggered.

Agreed. -But I adressed that in my last post.

Freedom of Speech doesn't mean you can say whatever you want. It means you have the right to criticize the Government without fear of reprisal.

Freedom of speach means you have the freedom to say whatever you want provided that it does not endanger the well-being of bystanders.

I've never been there, but I've seen some disturbing pictures and video clips. You don't need to give me your word to convince me.

Oh, but I will anyway. There's an old saying in Los Angeles (And, yes, this is real.) of, "Don't trust air you can't see."

Additionally, Rodney Dangerfield once said, "I love Los Angeles in the fall... watching the birds change color and fall from the trees..."

And that song seems oddly familiar. I'm sure I had the lyrics in one of my elementary school English textbooks.

Really? They put Tom Lehrer in your English textbooks? That's it; I'm moving to Finland.

The article mostly talked about the place being the "gay meccah" of the World.

That's, because it is.

But I'd definitely want to see a transvestite nun. :eek:

Who wouldn't? :p

Finland. The most American country outside of America.

Really? Are you sure? I've never been to Finland, but I have been to Canada (British Columbia- multiple places; multiple times), and, I have to say, the only differences between Canada and the United Sates are that, in Canada, people are more trusting, criminals are less violent, the government provides more social services, the policemen wear red (so that it's easier for armed psychopaths to see them when firing weapons), their government isn' t so demented, prescription drugs are cheaper, and their policemen wear Smokey-the-Bear hats. Other than that, they're basically Americans (only people don't hate them abroad).


By the way, I'm determined now. I'm going to send you the lyrics to Tom Lehrer's Pollution.

Note: This was written and performed by the great Harvard mathematics lecturer turned satirist, Tom Lehrer, at (and for) a 1965 concert in San Francisco. The following is all a direct quote:


"Time was when an American about to go abroad would be warned by his friends or the guidebooks not to drink the water. But times have changed and now a foreigner coming to this country might be offered the following advice.

If you visit American city,
You will find it very pretty.
Just two things of which you must beware:
Don't drink the water and don't breathe the air.

Pollution, pollution,
They got smog and sewage and mud.
Turn on your tap and get hot and cold running crud.

See the halibuts and the sturgeons
Being wiped out by detergents.
Fish gotta swim and birds gotta fly,
But they don't last long if they try.

Pollution, pollution,
You can use the latest toothpaste,
And then rinse your mouth with industrial waste.

Just go out for a breath of air,
And you'll be ready for Medicare.
The city streets are really quite a thrill.
If the hoods don't get you, the monoxide will.

Pollution, pollution,
Wear a gas mask and a veil.
Then you can breathe, long as you don't inhale.

Lots of things there that you can drink,
But stay away from the kitchen sink.
The breakfast garbage that you throw in to the Bay,
They drink at lunch in San Jose.

So go to the city, see the crazy people there.
Like lambs to the slaughter,
They're drinking the water
And breathing <cough> the air.

Yes!!!
I am determined to shout the doomsday prophecy of the day at the top of my lungs on any street corner I want goddamit!
(and smell like a week-dead chipmunk bolied in a urine while doing it)

For those who are new to the thread, what do you think of the issue?

Please feel absolutely free to take part in the poll. As the early twentieth century dictator (sorry, *mayor*) of Chicago, Richard J. Daley, used to say, "Vote early. Vote often."

Yes!!!
I am determined to shout the doomsday prophecy of the day at the top of my lungs on any street corner I want goddamit!
(and smell like a week-dead chipmunk bolied in a urine while doing it)

I suppose you're free to do so. And I suppose I'm free to run to the other side of the street while you do.

Once you decide that issues of subjective taste can be approached with the force of coercion you must accept that any freedoms are completely illusory. The individual becomes the property of his society, given privilages but devoid of rights. Its a gilded cage.

Yes, that's pretty much what I mean. I believe there are no so-called "natural rights", and any right we have, we have because the government lets us to. This, however, doesn't mean in practice that the government will modify or remove them on its whim, to use your words. Any reasonable government should understand that its success ultimately depends on the happiness of the citizens; downtrodden people won't be effective in the long run, and they might even revolt.

What other option are available? Look at the history of drug prohibition in the US. It began as an issue of fines and taxation, moved to a matter of imprisionment, and now we have otherwise law abiding and productve members of society getting sentances stiffer than you get for rape. Still, people use drugs. What other methods of correction are left? Were down to the Ludivico treatment and lobatomies here...

Ludivico sounds like fun. But seriously, how about education campaigns that don't associate drugs with danger and excitement? "If you do drugs, you're nothing but a damn hippie." Community work, either through volunteering or public funding, to keep kids off the streets? If we really want to get experimental, we could try how the dealers like to be hooked on their own stuff. Medieval-style punishments through public dishonoring? Exile? Mainly for dealers; they're the ones who make drug abuse possible in the first place. For drug users, I still think a little sentence of community service would do some good.

When it comes to skyrocketing rates of drug use, I would say that the evidence simply doesn't support your fears. Quite a few jurisdictions have experimented with decriminalization or permissive attitudes, and there are more places than you might think in the US where posession of less than an ounce of marijuana is punishable by a token fine. I've yet to see a surge of reefer madness. I might even point you to the city of Amsterdam, one of the most permissive places in all of Europe, which has had few major troubles even though it's drugs and hookers are something of tourist attraction.

Just out of curiosity, how much is that token fine? Anyway, I think they had a similar experiment in Sweden once; they quickly re-banned marijuana because of all of the problems it brought with it, including a rapid increase in drug usage.

What gave you the idea that I support imprisonment. I support a massive decriminalization and formal regulation of a large variety of consentual crimes from drug use to prostitution to gambling. Personally, I'm not a fan of gambling and you couldn't pay me enough to sleep with a hooker, but I don't feel that my personal choice has such gravity that it should be forced upon others.

You did imply earlier that in your opinion a murderer should go to jail. I didn't mean that you support inprisonment in drug-related cases, but in general. Correct me if I'm wrong.

Just to be clear, you're saying that you're cool with being oppressed when you're in the opposition just so long as you get to be the oppressor when you have enough friends? Or is it that you have such respect for the great proletariat that you're willing to ceed any sense of self determination to their judgement?

Neither. I'm saying that in a democratic society, the level of "oppression" is very unlikely to reach an unbearable level, even if I didn't support the laws 100%. If oppression somehow did become too much for me to handle, I could just move to another country. I'm just not the kind of person who gets upset when someone is theoretically in danger of losing a right, which I am not about to use anyway, and which might even be harmful if used.

Yeah, I've known a few. They're in the minority and those who I have known over the course of their lives have tended to be people who chose to be fuck-ups. In the absence of their drug of choice they would have turned to alcohol, paint thinner, or glue. We aren't talking about great people of strong will and unlimited potential. As someone who has used drugs in the past, and who has managed to best an abuse problem, I can tell you that addiction isn't an evil drug taking hold of a good person, but a weak person refusing to moderate their own behavior. You'll forgive me if the continued success of natural selection fails to make me weep.

So you're saying that the tendency of becoming a failure because of drugs is purely genetic?

I have evidence to back up my claims, both apocryphal and scientific. The evidence shows that moderate alcohol consumption returns the greatest health benefits, and moderate is generally defined as between 2 and 4 drinks per week.

Heres a study from the AMA: http://archinte.ama-assn.org/cgi/content/abstract/157/1/79?view=abstract

Here is an insurance company study that showed light drinkers(up to 2 drinks per week) had the lowest mortality rates, that non-drinkers and drinkers of 3-5 drinks per week had similar mortality rates, and that those who comsumed more than six drinks per week had the higest rates:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/entrez/query.fcgi?cmd=Retrieve&db=PubMed&list_uids=7258861&dopt=Citation

Heres a study suggesting a "J" shaped curve in the effects of alcohol on mortality: http://aje.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/158/6/585

So I was wrong about what the beneficial amount is. These studies still prove that if alcohol consumption exceeds 5-6 drinks a week, it will become harmful.

Two Godwins in one post! Gonna suggest I have a little mustache next?

I like to make nazi references. That's because Hitler and the nazis were in fact good examples of many things. No need to take it personally.

We do have bigger problems, you're right. If you want a good, real life example of the slow creep that power likes to make, just take a look at the Bush administration's movements against the Geneva Convention. All it takes is one bad politician, just one.

One bad politician, who won't be in office for more than 2.32 years anymore. No, I have no actual proof that things will get better once the president is changed, but I have no reason to believe otherwise either. Besides, Bush's movements against the Geneva Conventions don't restrict the freedoms of American citizens as far as I know. Patriot Act is much more frightening.


Don't like that one? Why don't you look at prohibitions against smoking. First airplanes, then workplaces, then restaurants, then bars, here in my home town you cannot smoke outside within 15 feet of a building enterance. There are jurisdictions now considering banning smoking in cars with your children or in your home if you have children. Scotland recently decided that you cannot smoke in your own home if a government worker is coming within(I believe, I could be wrong on the time frame) 48 hours.

As a non-smoker, I have no sympathy for smokers, whose habit has been made slightly more difficult to obey. Whereas I do agree that some of those laws you listed are bit overprotective, the last one is the only one that doesn't actually make sense. Are you saying that your right to smoke at your home supersedes your child's right to not be exposed to second-hand smoking? Just using your own rhetoric here.

But whats the difference? There are those who believe that society has a vested interest in preventing men from having sex with one another. There are strong epidemialogical studies which suggest that gay men have a higher likelyhood of drug use and are more likely to become vectors for STDs(which could pose a public health threat). Even worse, homosexuals are unlikely to have children(which means no future tax generators) and have a shorter life expectancy than heterosexuals. Finally there exists a statistically significant increase in the likelyhood of mental illness for homosexuals. Why should their consentual behavior with potential negative effects on society not be banned while the consumption of drugs, alcohol, and tobacco are fair game? What is the internal logic that separates these two behaviors? I'm looking for the internal consistancy in your argument.

Let's see...Gay men are more prone to drug use? If there really is any correlation, I'd say it's because gays are significantly more liberally oriented than average people, and liberals have more positive opinion on drugs than average people. But so what if gays use more drugs? We're talking about banning gay sex, not homosexuality itself. They are not the same thing, are they?

Gays have more STDs? Although HIV is contracted a lot more easily in anal than in vaginal intercourse, the real problem is the amount of partners in unprotected sex. So are gays just more promiscuous and careless than straights? Could it be because all gay men are, well, men? Now you're not talking about banning sodomy, but banning all sex from males.

Homosexuals are unlikely to have kids? That's the only argument in your list that I consider valid. However, I don't believe that banning sodomy will make them think "Oh well, I'll go screw a woman instead". So unless you also make a law that requires people to breed, this argument is void.

Shorter life expectancy? Direct result from points number 1 and 2.

Mental illnesses? Again, not likely a result of gay sex.

Conclusion: as good as it would be to get rid of those nasty side-effects of homosexuality, that would require outlawing homosexuality, not just the act of gay sex. You can't do that, because most people don't choose their own sexuality. This doesn't apply to drugs, alcohol, or tobacco, because people are not forced to use them. Is that enough internal consistency? If not, go ahead and ban sodomy.

Yes, because certainly no country would attempt to control the food consumption of a large potion of it's population. Taken a look at the argument in Britain over school lunches lately? What about the child registry that includes the number of healthy fruits and vegitables a child eats in a day?

That's different. During the time the child spends at school, the school is responsible for the well-being of the child. You could say that the school has temporary custody over the child. In that case it is the school's responsibility, like outside of school it's the parents' responsibility, to educate the child in healthy ways of living, instead of just providing whatever the child wants.

Besides, didn't you criticize me earlier for making an example with a kid buying cigarettes, by saying that children are not legally capable of making their own choices, or something to that effect?


What makes me a citizen is the right to form a mob and overthrow my government with violent force. I doubt that'll be necessary in my lifetime, but its nice to know I have the option.

So are you saying that the people living countries where overthrowing or even questioning the government is strictly forbidden, are not citizens of that country? Or are you saying that even if I choose to submit myself to the will of the government for the time being, I will always have the possibility to break that bond by overthrowing the government, in which case citizenship by your definition can never be removed from anybody?

Not in the numbers there are today. The power of organized criminals is directly proportional to the demand for crime. Gangs have traditionally been in charge to supplying black market demands. They sell drugs or bathtub hootch, they run numbers, open brothels, start protection rackets, host gambling dens, and sell contraband. Thats what they do. Without the stream of illicit income to be made, they have little reason to form a gang. This isn't the Sharks and the Jets knife-fighting over who gets to strut where, gangs like that simply don't exist for long. There is no incentive to put your life on the line and pleanty of police power to break it up.

OK, I'll take your word for it. I'd still like an explanation, why wars between drug gangs are not that big a problem in Europe? Or are they just too cleverly hidden from the public?

Perhaps I should have been more clear. While I definately feel that it is possible for governments to enslave their people in a classical sense(Communism is a fine example), I am generally refering to the privation of personal sovereignty and self determination. Once the power to choose for an individual is claimed by a government than the power to enslave and individual is also claimed, it is the same power. If I owned you, I could choose to pay you for your work, make your own choices, live where you wanted, and generally do what you wanted, but that wouldn't make you free. At the end of the day you would still be my slave, even if I didn't choose to exert the authority I had over you. Every single freedom you have would be at my pleasure, to be modified or removed on my whim. It does not matter how benevolent the despot may be, he is still a despot and deserves to be hung as a warning to all those who would aspire to his position.

Alright, thanks. I, on the other hand, believe that all governments are despots of some sort, but I already went through that at the beginning of this post.

Oh, but I will anyway. There's an old saying in Los Angeles (And, yes, this is real.) of, "Don't trust air you can't see."

Additionally, Rodney Dangerfield once said, "I love Los Angeles in the fall... watching the birds change color and fall from the trees..."

I think I heard that first bit in a movie once, but I didn't know it was real. I do, however, remember reading somewhere that a newborn baby living in Los Angeles will intake in two weeks the amount of carcinogens, that would be the limit of a safe amount for a year.

Really? They put Tom Lehrer in your English textbooks? That's it; I'm moving to Finland.

You're always welcome.

Yes, I read the lyrics, and I'm definitely sure I had it in my textbook, when I was probably somewhere between 3rd and 6th grades. We listened to the song on the teacher's ghettoblaster (or whatever its name officially is) a few times, and might have even sung it.

Really? Are you sure? I've never been to Finland, but I have been to Canada (British Columbia- multiple places; multiple times), and, I have to say, the only differences between Canada and the United Sates are that, in Canada, people are more trusting, criminals are less violent, the government provides more social services, the policemen wear red (so that it's easier for armed psychopaths to see them when firing weapons), their government isn' t so demented, prescription drugs are cheaper, and their policemen wear Smokey-the-Bear hats. Other than that, they're basically Americans (only people don't hate them abroad).

But I think we're fatter than canadians; last time I checked, we lost only to USA in that respect. We barely re-elected an incompetent president recently. I also wouldn't be surprised if our TV channels showed more American shows than the Canadian TV does. (Besides, Canada is technically in America, just not in USA :p)

Uhh... I have to wake up for school in less than three hours. I think I'll go to bed now.

Yes, that's pretty much what I mean. I believe there are no so-called "natural rights", and any right we have, we have because the government lets us to. This, however, doesn't mean in practice that the government will modify or remove them on its whim, to use your words. Any reasonable government should understand that its success ultimately depends on the happiness of the citizens; downtrodden people won't be effective in the long run, and they might even revolt.



Ludivico sounds like fun. But seriously, how about education campaigns that don't associate drugs with danger and excitement? "If you do drugs, you're nothing but a damn hippie." Community work, either through volunteering or public funding, to keep kids off the streets? If we really want to get experimental, we could try how the dealers like to be hooked on their own stuff. Medieval-style punishments through public dishonoring? Exile? Mainly for dealers; they're the ones who make drug abuse possible in the first place. For drug users, I still think a little sentence of community service would do some good.

Well, theres the meat of the issue. We have a fundamental disagreement that cannot be dealt with through rational discussion. I believe that there are simply certain things which government cannot be allowed to do, certain actions which make governments illegitimate, crimes which deeply violate everything I feel makes life worth living that their commission gives the citizens right to murder the trangressors. You, however, do not. To even flippantly suggest that punishments from the darkest time in western history should be used to enforce morality, to suggest that forced addiction could be tollerated by justice, it sickens me. That is the same kind of reasoning that justifies the horrors we see around the world, it is the kind of logic which allows interrogators to sleep at night after waterboarding someone.



Just out of curiosity, how much is that token fine? Anyway, I think they had a similar experiment in Sweden once; they quickly re-banned marijuana because of all of the problems it brought with it, including a rapid increase in drug usage.

Less than $100, in some cases less than $50.

Oh, and please check your logic a bit better. An increase in drug use cannot be used as both evidence and state. Just because you get wet when you're outside in the rain doesn't mean you're always outside in the rain when you're wet.


You did imply earlier that in your opinion a murderer should go to jail. I didn't mean that you support inprisonment in drug-related cases, but in general. Correct me if I'm wrong.

As a matter of pragmatism, I believe that most murderers should be executed. There are exceptions and extenuating circumstances, the average murder 1 convict needs to be excised.

In actuality, I'm not a big fan of prisons the way they exist today. They are warehouses which hold criminals without really doing much to prevent them from repeating previous patterns of behavior and ending up in the same place. They happen to be the best of a bad set of solutions, but I hardly think that means we should stop looking.


So you're saying that the tendency of becoming a failure because of drugs is purely genetic?

No pattern of behavior is purely genetic. I'm saying that the tendancy to be a failure is a combination of factors, some genetic but most social. People have choices, and at every step of the descent they have the choice to keep sliding or start climbing. Most addicts I have known do not differ significantly form other failures in the game of life in any factor other than the length of time it takes before they die. It is a lack of will and ambition, a general laziness that leads people down that path.


So I was wrong about what the beneficial amount is. These studies still prove that if alcohol consumption exceeds 5-6 drinks a week, it will become harmful.

Statistically likely to become harmful. Big difference.



I like to make nazi references. That's because Hitler and the nazis were in fact good examples of many things. No need to take it personally.

Intellectual sloth and a crude attempt to emotionalize your argument.



One bad politician, who won't be in office for more than 2.32 years anymore. No, I have no actual proof that things will get better once the president is changed, but I have no reason to believe otherwise either. Besides, Bush's movements against the Geneva Conventions don't restrict the freedoms of American citizens as far as I know. Patriot Act is much more frightening.

Again, the fact that you consistantly lack the ability to see the big picture astounds me. The PATRIOT Act was built on smaller incursions against civil liberty from previous presidents going back to FDR. More importantly, if you take a close look at how the PATRIOT act has been used and you'll see it is invoked far more often in drug cases than terrorism cases. Theres those unintended consequences coming back. You get a law to deal with those filth A-rab terrists, it ends up being used to get those filty drug dealers, and thats hardly the first time a law has been twisted around to be used in other cases. You have the RICO act, originally intended to go after mobsters and other oganized criminals, being used against cigarette companies. You have the Anti-trust act, originally intended to prevent coal and railroad companies from starting a standoff that stopped the country, being used to bully corporations that produce luxury goods.

Wanna know why I care about the geneva conventions? Aside from the very real threat of such violations going domestic it displays an appaling disrespect for the rule of law. The President has decided that he is above the law, that he doesn't have to follow the rules, and that he can change the rules at any time. Worse, there are simply some things which good people cannot abide. Torture is one of them.


As a non-smoker, I have no sympathy for smokers, whose habit has been made slightly more difficult to obey. Whereas I do agree that some of those laws you listed are bit overprotective, the last one is the only one that doesn't actually make sense. Are you saying that your right to smoke at your home supersedes your child's right to not be exposed to second-hand smoking? Just using your own rhetoric here.

I'm saying that regulation has a tendancy to spread and a government with limited time and resources surely has better things to do than look into weather or not I'm smoking in front of my child, over whom I am legal guardian.


Let's see...Gay men are more prone to drug use? If there really is any correlation, I'd say it's because gays are significantly more liberally oriented than average people, and liberals have more positive opinion on drugs than average people. But so what if gays use more drugs? We're talking about banning gay sex, not homosexuality itself. They are not the same thing, are they?

Gays have more STDs? Although HIV is contracted a lot more easily in anal than in vaginal intercourse, the real problem is the amount of partners in unprotected sex. So are gays just more promiscuous and careless than straights? Could it be because all gay men are, well, men? Now you're not talking about banning sodomy, but banning all sex from males.

Homosexuals are unlikely to have kids? That's the only argument in your list that I consider valid. However, I don't believe that banning sodomy will make them think "Oh well, I'll go screw a woman instead". So unless you also make a law that requires people to breed, this argument is void.

Shorter life expectancy? Direct result from points number 1 and 2.

Mental illnesses? Again, not likely a result of gay sex.

Conclusion: as good as it would be to get rid of those nasty side-effects of homosexuality, that would require outlawing homosexuality, not just the act of gay sex. You can't do that, because most people don't choose their own sexuality. This doesn't apply to drugs, alcohol, or tobacco, because people are not forced to use them. Is that enough internal consistency? If not, go ahead and ban sodomy.

That crackling between your ears is what we in the buisness like to call "cognitive dissonance."

Actually, the stastically increased likelyhood of mental illness, drug use, and suicide are all directly related to the stress gay men suffer from negative social force and stigma, but thats beside the point.

You argument against banning sodomy boils down to: "people will do it anyway and there isn't much we can do to prevent it so why bother?" You rationalize that homosexuality is an inherant part of an individual's psyche while drug use is not, but you are simply wrong. There is a reason that every culture on earth knows of the intoxicants in it's area. There is a reason that the cultivation of grain in every culture on earth has been almost immediately followed by the discovery of fermentation. Human beings have a natural inclination to seek altered states of consciousness. In some the drive is stronger than in others, but it is present in everyone. More than that, the vast majority of drug users are recreational users.

Banning drug use is the same as banning sodomy. Just as a ban on sodomy does not really stop people from being homosexual, banning drugs doesn't stop people from seeking altered states of consciousness. A chemist who is able to stay two steps ahead of the DEA will always have a job, a moonshiner will always find someone to buy his jugs, and the shaman will never be hurting for devotees.

Still, lets continue our thought experiment. Lets say that the government had a way to actually outlaw homosexuality(say, a way to turn off whatever it is that makes someone a homosexual), would you support such an attempt?

That's different. During the time the child spends at school, the school is responsible for the well-being of the child. You could say that the school has temporary custody over the child. In that case it is the school's responsibility, like outside of school it's the parents' responsibility, to educate the child in healthy ways of living, instead of just providing whatever the child wants.

Besides, didn't you criticize me earlier for making an example with a kid buying cigarettes, by saying that children are not legally capable of making their own choices, or something to that effect?

The concept you're reaching for is called In Loco Parentis. Courts in the US have traditionally defined the parenting roles of the school very narrowly. The issue is that decisions about the care and upbrining of a child are, in all but the most extreme of cases, up to the parent. The government can act as facilitator but it has no right to act as true parent, no real say. A child cannot make their own choices, but the child's guardian can and the permanant guardian always trumps the temporary one.

In Britain you have principals and administrators complaining because parents have the audacity to bring their children something other than than state provided lunch. Don't you see a problem there?



So are you saying that the people living countries where overthrowing or even questioning the government is strictly forbidden, are not citizens of that country? Or are you saying that even if I choose to submit myself to the will of the government for the time being, I will always have the possibility to break that bond by overthrowing the government, in which case citizenship by your definition can never be removed from anybody?

I am saying that they are subjects until the moment they oust their leaders. It is then that they become citizens. China has no citizens(or perhaps only the very few who sit at the top of the system), only slaves of various ranks. If tomarrow there was a revolt and suddenly the people took control of their own destiny, then they would again be citizens.


OK, I'll take your word for it. I'd still like an explanation, why wars between drug gangs are not that big a problem in Europe? Or are they just too cleverly hidden from the public?

I don't live in Europe so I couldn't really make an educated guess.

I think I heard that first bit in a movie once, but I didn't know it was real. I do, however, remember reading somewhere that a newborn baby living in Los Angeles will intake in two weeks the amount of carcinogens, that would be the limit of a safe amount for a year.

Though the numbers surprise me, the premise does not. That's what bothers me so much about the fact that most foreigners tend to imagine the state of California as a massive extension of Los Angeles. The rest of California is beautiful; many part of it are considered by almost anyone who has ever seen them to be unparallelled in serene natural majesty. (Ever been to Yosemite?) In the south, they see things to be valuable, not by what they are, but by what you paid for them. (Hence why they sell $5,000 dog bowl on Rodeo Drive.) The north is beautiful, cultural, and vibrant, and unlike in L.A, where the various minority groups literally war with one another, in the north, they blend together forming a wonderful diverse melting pot where tolerance sweeps over the seemlessly multicultural land. Okay, you can tell I'm biased. I just can't stand L.A. I suppose the fact that I have relatives there doesn't help.

Yes, I read the lyrics, and I'm definitely sure I had it in my textbook, when I was probably somewhere between 3rd and 6th grades.

I must admit I'm really shocked. Keep in mind, Lehrer is also the man who wrote such satirical classics as The Masochism Tango, I Hold Your Hand In Mine, and Poisoning Pidgeons In The Park. (They're all greatly funny; I suggest you look them up.)

[QUOTE=Nuovo Tenochtitlan;11738337We barely re-elected an incompetent president recently.

Well, there's a similarity. ;)

I also wouldn't be surprised if our TV channels showed more American shows than the Canadian TV does.

Actually, the Canadian government pays for some American shows with Canadian tax money, because one or more of the characters is performed by a Canadian actor. And yet they can still afford public health care?!?

(Besides, Canada is technically in America, just not in USA :p)

There are a lot of people who would attest to that. -And, unlike you, I'm not referring to America the supercontinent either. :rolleyes:

Uhh... I have to wake up for school in less than three hours. I think I'll go to bed now.

Hold on a minute- are you saying that there are people outside Guantanamo Bay who are more sleep deprived than I? Wow! I can't believe it! In fact, I can't beleive it... :eek: Tell the guards to go easy on you, okay? Tell them an American citizen told you to say that. -Just don't mention I'm Californian; that would ruin the whole thing. Bush is to California as Shwartzanegger is to... well... California. Let's just say the two don't go together. -Like Dick Cheney and Harry Whittington's face. Oh well... Tom Lehrer ahd another song for that. It's called The Hunting Song. You'll like it. I promise.

freedom is self limiting in the sense that anyone's freedom to limit anyone else's limits all freedom. so logicly the maximum freedom that can exist does not include the freedom for anyone to limit anyone else's.

so the morality is already there in a sense built in, without requiring further outside imposition. if you kill someone you've eliminated their freedom to be alive so again this is nonfreedom. likewise all of aggressiveness and coersion and chauvanism and generaly speaking fanatacisms of every stripe as well.

when people speak of freedom being harmful or of someone having too much freedom they are not fallowing or comprihending this logic at all.

really any freedom to harm is a nonfreedom because somewhere along the line/down the road, this is limiting someone else's freedom and is therefore not freedom at all.

=^^=
.../\...

freedom is self limiting in the sense that anyone's freedom to limit anyone else's limits all freedom. so logicly the maximum freedom that can exist does not include the freedom for anyone to limit anyone else's.

so the morality is already there in a sense built in, without requiring further outside imposition. if you kill someone you've eliminated their freedom to be alive so again this is nonfreedom. likewise all of aggressiveness and coersion and chauvanism and generaly speaking fanatacisms of every stripe as well.

when people speak of freedom being harmful or of someone having too much freedom they are not fallowing or comprihending this logic at all.

really any freedom to harm is a nonfreedom because somewhere along the line/down the road, this is limiting someone else's freedom and is therefore not freedom at all.


I wrote this several times earlier, though I admit the notion has crossed my mind several times now that I should have put it at the begining of the thread to clear up quite a bit of confusion. Perhaps this would simplify the problem a bit:

There are lines that have to be drawn. You draw these lines where personal freedoms begin to infinge on the freedoms of others. I don't know if it came across that way (Apparently, it didn't; I've had several people ask similar questions.), but I was talking about civil rights. One of the most basic aspects of civil rights is that they stop wherever someone else's begin. Otherwise you have anarchy. I'm not talking about a society in which people are free to do whatever the hell they like; I'm talking about a society where other people's personal beleifs do not infringe on your own. Take, for example, gay marriage. While it is illeagal, it's a victimless crime. Who gets hurt is someone else gets married? No one. Who get hurt if I practice my own religion and not the religion of the majority? No one. Who gets hurt if I am dying in a long, slow, an definite disease, and I decide, to preserve the memory of me to my family, that it's time for me to go? No one. In all these scenarios, if I make a bad choice, the only person who gets hurt is me. However, you cross the line if you, say, blare music out your window all night long. Suddenly, you're impacting someone else. Your neighbors can't sleep. They've lost their inalienable right to sleep. And, of course, you had no right to take their rights away. So you have violated the law. Your freedoms end where someone else's begin.

I wrote this several times earlier, though I admit the notion has crossed my mind several times now that I should have put it at the begining of the thread to clear up quite a bit of confusion. Perhaps this would simplify the problem a bit:

There are lines that have to be drawn. You draw these lines where personal freedoms begin to infinge on the freedoms of others. I don't know if it came across that way (Apparently, it didn't; I've had several people ask similar questions.), but I was talking about civil rights. One of the most basic aspects of civil rights is that they stop wherever someone else's begin. Otherwise you have anarchy. I'm not talking about a society in which people are free to do whatever the hell they like; I'm talking about a society where other people's personal beleifs do not infringe on your own. Take, for example, gay marriage. While it is illeagal, it's a victimless crime. Who gets hurt is someone else gets married? No one. Who get hurt if I practice my own religion and not the religion of the majority? No one. Who gets hurt if I am dying in a long, slow, an definite disease, and I decide, to preserve the memory of me to my family, that it's time for me to go? No one. In all these scenarios, if I make a bad choice, the only person who gets hurt is me. However, you cross the line if you, say, blare music out your window all night long. Suddenly, you're impacting someone else. Your neighbors can't sleep. They've lost their inalienable right to sleep. And, of course, you had no right to take their rights away. So you have violated the law. Your freedoms end where someone else's begin.

sounds like we aggree exactly except i would not call it drawing lines. because drawing lines allows for that kind of arbitraryness of regulation that is also not freedom.

the summation that my freedom to swing my arm stops where your nose begins is a good generalization, although not everyone realizes from this that disturbing the peace is not victumless. likewise as you have pointed out.

yes civil rights = freedom, really. the pretense that denying anyone the right to do anything that does not limit someone else's freedom is freedom at all makes no sense and never has.

disturbing the peace robbs others of the freedom to think their own thoughts as do all kinds of coerciveness.

i cannot think of one instance in which the 'freedom' to cause someone else's suffering would fit my deffinician of freedom at all.

=^^=
.../\...

Most criminal law is an attempt to externally force people to act as if they shared morals with the legislators. I dont have a problem with this. A moral which is imposed upon others might be a very good idea. Even though some people have no moral stopping them from killing and consider it their right and even obligation I am still OK with laws against murder. In the same vein the fact that "Thou shalt not kill " is one of the Ten Commandments does not mean that it is a not a suitable moral for Atheists or Scientologists. The source of a moral does not soil it or polish it or lend any virtue or vice. The source merely defines a moral and advocates people to adopt it into their behaviors. It's easy enough to see if the behavior works for them. I mostly have a problem with laws (no matter which moral they are based upon) which are so unfair or fiercely legislated that we end up with criminals with no victims. This applies to the traditional hookers booze porn and drug victimless crime as well as to pre-crime laws like felonious drunk driving prior to the drunk crashing. (Drunk crashing should be dealt with severely)

I agree, though I am less opposed to some preventative laws. Drunk driving is sufficiently likely to end in drunk crashing that I believe it should be illegal. The risk is so obvious -- at least before you start drinking -- that I think it should fall under the "prudent person" concept, which the law uses to argue that a "prudent person" could reasonably be expected to foresee the problem and take steps to avoid causing it, and thus, if you did not take those steps, then you are at least partially responsible if the worst happens.

That said, I used to live in a rural state where it was physically impossible to get to and from various entertainment venues and places to eat and drink without driving, and where there was no public transportation option. I think that should not be allowed. If the state is going to make it illegal to drink and drive, then the state MUST offer an option to driving after drinking. Otherwise, it's just unfair.

So put it to competition. I have trouble believing that Pablo Escobar could manage to stand up to the sheer force of Archer Daniels Midland. Give it six months and ADM will have a genetically engineered coca that yields twice the product with half the growing time in Indiana and with full power industrial processing. In the meantime you'll have Walmart driving the price of poppies down through wholesale force and bringing the Afghan Warlords to the beggar's table with hats(or turbans) in hand. While all thats going on RJR will quietly start converting tobacco fields in Virginia to Marijuana fields. On top of that you'll have all these strong US companies in control of production and distribution, and all the old tools of the drug trade will fail. Threaten a US executive with friends on the hill and you'll see a cruise missile before breakfast. Smuggle your product in and find out that theres no one willing to buy it at a price which will turn you a profit.

Lets face it, the cartels just aren't equipped to deal with the big boys. If drugs became legal they would become big buisness overnight. Cartel heads would either have to adapt to the new way of doing things or retire.

Oh, no doubt, ADM could wipe out the cartels and bury the bones where they'll never be found. I am not arguing that we should keep the status quo just because it's become too bad to change.

What I am saying is that I think we should not just jump 100% to the other side all at once, as heedlessly as we did when criminalization was legislated. Before doing so, we should have a plan in place for dealing with the several years, possibly decades, of extra violence that will happen as the cartels struggle for survival and extra addiction that will occur in the immediate novelty of being able to get high without going to jail. Eventually, the cartels will disappear and people will learn how to get high socially, just the way most drinkers do. But I am always concerned with avoiding unnecessary violence and suffering, and so I would prefer a more cautious approach to legalization.

Above all, I think it would be a mistake to legalize drugs without addressing our society's moralistic attitudes against addicts. We do not want legalization to end up just creating a permanent underclass of despised people.

<snip>
OK, I'll take your word for it. I'd still like an explanation, why wars between drug gangs are not that big a problem in Europe? Or are they just too cleverly hidden from the public?
<snip>

I have heard experts say that it has to do with gun control. Guns are not as readily available in Europe than in North America. According to what I have read from the DEA and Interpol, organized crime gangs in Europe are just as involved in illegal trafficking as in the US, but their violence tends to be less spectacular due to the lack of guns. Nevertheless, shootings do still occur in Europe every now and then, and gangs are responsible for many murders related to illegal trafficking. Some law enforcement experts believe that, if they had guns, their wars would be as big a problem in Europe as in the US.

I have heard experts say that it has to do with gun control. Guns are not as readily available in Europe than in North America. According to what I have read from the DEA and Interpol, organized crime gangs in Europe are just as involved in illegal trafficking as in the US, but their violence tends to be less spectacular due to the lack of guns. Nevertheless, shootings do still occur in Europe every now and then, and gangs are responsible for many murders related to illegal trafficking. Some law enforcement experts believe that, if they had guns, their wars would be as big a problem in Europe as in the US.

I have to say, I think you're wrong. It's actually much easier to get a gun in Canada than it is in the United States. Nonetheless, Canada does not have the sort of gun crime we do. In fact, it has almost no gun crime at all. How can this be explained? Of course, no one knows for sure, but there are some fairly good theories out there. If you ever get to see the Oscar winning documentary "Bowling For Columbine," it goes into this in great detail and introduces some fascinating theories about America's "culture of fear." I highly reccommend it. Perhaps it could shed some light on an otherwise dark situation.

The United States: :sniper: --highly advanced weaponry used to kill

Japan: :mp5: --very little weaponry, but extremely lethal when combined with George Bush Sr.'s dietary habits

Germany: :gundge: --France took away their real guns (and replaced them with France's usual weapon: bananas)

Canada: :fluffle: --Making love, not war, since it got its independance and aquired several copies of Bill Clinton's "My Life" memoirs

Well, I think this thread has finally died. Time for it to go; let's give it a decent burial. We'll donate its organs, though. It's only fair.

Sorry for not posting earlier. I couldn't connect to this forum yesterday for some reason.

Well, theres the meat of the issue. We have a fundamental disagreement that cannot be dealt with through rational discussion. I believe that there are simply certain things which government cannot be allowed to do, certain actions which make governments illegitimate, crimes which deeply violate everything I feel makes life worth living that their commission gives the citizens right to murder the trangressors. You, however, do not. To even flippantly suggest that punishments from the darkest time in western history should be used to enforce morality, to suggest that forced addiction could be tollerated by justice, it sickens me. That is the same kind of reasoning that justifies the horrors we see around the world, it is the kind of logic which allows interrogators to sleep at night after waterboarding someone.

Yeah. Let's just agree to disagree.

Oh, and please check your logic a bit better. An increase in drug use cannot be used as both evidence and state. Just because you get wet when you're outside in the rain doesn't mean you're always outside in the rain when you're wet.

No, I only used is as a counterexample to question your argument. Just because it's raining, it doesn't automatically mean you'll get wet, but there is still a good chance of it happening.

As a matter of pragmatism, I believe that most murderers should be executed. There are exceptions and extenuating circumstances, the average murder 1 convict needs to be excised.

I agree with you there. But you get my point.

In actuality, I'm not a big fan of prisons the way they exist today. They are warehouses which hold criminals without really doing much to prevent them from repeating previous patterns of behavior and ending up in the same place. They happen to be the best of a bad set of solutions, but I hardly think that means we should stop looking.

True. My point was that it's probably impossible to punish a criminal without somehow restricting his rights or limiting his freedom. I like the concept of community service for minor offences, because although it involves unvoluntary work, it will put the convict's time in good use instead of just storing him in the prison to fall out of touch with the outside world and further build his criminal attitude.

No pattern of behavior is purely genetic. I'm saying that the tendancy to be a failure is a combination of factors, some genetic but most social. People have choices, and at every step of the descent they have the choice to keep sliding or start climbing. Most addicts I have known do not differ significantly form other failures in the game of life in any factor other than the length of time it takes before they die. It is a lack of will and ambition, a general laziness that leads people down that path.

It's just that you implied that letting those people die will make the gene pool better. Anyway, do you think all failures in the game of life were just like, "Fuck it, I don't want to wake up early for work every day. I'd rather live in a dumpster"? That's not a matter of ambition, it's a matter of basic survival instincts. Lack of ambition is when you become a male nurse with an IQ of 150. Although for some people those reasons might be the cause, I think for most it comes from reasons they have limited capabilities to affect. Mental health problems. High unemployment rates.

Of course this all depends on how failure is defined. Do you have to be a homeless bum, or is it enough to make less money than what your intellectual capability might permit?

Intellectual sloth and a crude attempt to emotionalize your argument.

OK, from now on I will substitute nazi Germany with soviet Russia, if that is somehow more clever. And I have no strong resentment towards the nazis, so I wouldn't try to use them for emotional effect.

Again, the fact that you consistantly lack the ability to see the big picture astounds me. The PATRIOT Act was built on smaller incursions against civil liberty from previous presidents going back to FDR. More importantly, if you take a close look at how the PATRIOT act has been used and you'll see it is invoked far more often in drug cases than terrorism cases. Theres those unintended consequences coming back. You get a law to deal with those filth A-rab terrists, it ends up being used to get those filty drug dealers, and thats hardly the first time a law has been twisted around to be used in other cases. You have the RICO act, originally intended to go after mobsters and other oganized criminals, being used against cigarette companies. You have the Anti-trust act, originally intended to prevent coal and railroad companies from starting a standoff that stopped the country, being used to bully corporations that produce luxury goods.

It's not that EVERYTHING about it bothers me. There are intermediary states between all and nothing, you know. I was referring to the parts about it allowing people be arrested for an infinite time without being charged with anything, and other similar stuff that limits the lives of law-abiding citizens. Even I would have a problem with being thrown into a holding cell for saying "allah" and "bang" in the same sentence over a telephone, to put it strongly. Also if there is evidence of drug money being used to fund terrorism, it is understandable to use anti-terrorism laws against drug dealers.

And yes, governments do encroach on people's rights. That's kind of to be expected. The point is, that is alright as long as people approve of it. When people start lashing out, you'll know you have crossed the line at which society still accepts loss of freedom in exchange for something else. Beyond that point, people will simply vote for different politicians, and the development is interrupted. America came very close to that point on Bush's first term, as evidenced by the subsequent presidential election between him and Kerry.

Actually, the stastically increased likelyhood of mental illness, drug use, and suicide are all directly related to the stress gay men suffer from negative social force and stigma, but thats beside the point.

In other words they have nothing to do with sodomy, which is what I was saying.

You argument against banning sodomy boils down to: "people will do it anyway and there isn't much we can do to prevent it so why bother?" You rationalize that homosexuality is an inherant part of an individual's psyche while drug use is not, but you are simply wrong. There is a reason that every culture on earth knows of the intoxicants in it's area. There is a reason that the cultivation of grain in every culture on earth has been almost immediately followed by the discovery of fermentation. Human beings have a natural inclination to seek altered states of consciousness. In some the drive is stronger than in others, but it is present in everyone. More than that, the vast majority of drug users are recreational users.

Banning drug use is the same as banning sodomy. Just as a ban on sodomy does not really stop people from being homosexual, banning drugs doesn't stop people from seeking altered states of consciousness. A chemist who is able to stay two steps ahead of the DEA will always have a job, a moonshiner will always find someone to buy his jugs, and the shaman will never be hurting for devotees.

No, and no. My argument boils down to the fact that sodomy is a symptom, and homosexuality is its cause. Banning the former and not the latter would be like allowing drug use, but banning getting high. Or like allowing gambling, but banning losing. It's unfair and unreasonable.

But now you are claiming that people can't help using drugs, just as they can't help being gay. You're saying that using psychoactive chemicals is natural behavior, and therefore shouldn't be banned. I'm saying that drugs are harmful, and therefore shouldn't be allowed. So where does that leave us? Should we make a compromise, so that drug usage is allowed, but selling and making isn't? I might support it, if there is a way to drastically decrease the amount of drug users, and some evidence to back that theory. In the end, that's what I care about, not how many junkies we can lock up before we run out of prisons.

Still, lets continue our thought experiment. Lets say that the government had a way to actually outlaw homosexuality(say, a way to turn off whatever it is that makes someone a homosexual), would you support such an attempt?

Depends. Would the gays then become fully heterosexuals after whatever is done to them, just as capable of having a happy normal life like normal people? Could it be done easily, without years of forced therapy/medication? Yes, I'd support it. As you mentioned earlier, gays suffer from many mental problems due to the social stigmas and whatever, so I don't see a reason why they would object either, except out of spite.

The concept you're reaching for is called In Loco Parentis. Courts in the US have traditionally defined the parenting roles of the school very narrowly. The issue is that decisions about the care and upbrining of a child are, in all but the most extreme of cases, up to the parent. The government can act as facilitator but it has no right to act as true parent, no real say. A child cannot make their own choices, but the child's guardian can and the permanant guardian always trumps the temporary one.

In Britain you have principals and administrators complaining because parents have the audacity to bring their children something other than than state provided lunch. Don't you see a problem there?

This was in the UK, not US. Not that it matters. The parents, of course, have the final say on what the kids eat, so it's fine if they make the lunch for the kids. The school, however, does have some responsibility over the child's well-being both as a pedagogue and as a guardian, however temporary that responsibility might mean (basically it means that if the child is somehow hurt while in school because of the school's neglect, it's considered to be the school's fault). That means two things. 1) The school is responsible to teach the kids healthy ways of living, whether the kids choose to follow the advice later in life or not. 2) The school is responsible of providing a healthy diet for the kids, even if they'd like hamburgers more than vegetables. If the kids want to eat something else, possibly provided by their parents, that's fine, but that's no longer the school's concern.

If principals and administrators are complaining about this, then my guess is that it's out of genuine concern over the health of children, whose parents are too lazy to do more than drive the kids to McDonald's three times a day for a meal.

I am saying that they are subjects until the moment they oust their leaders. It is then that they become citizens. China has no citizens(or perhaps only the very few who sit at the top of the system), only slaves of various ranks. If tomarrow there was a revolt and suddenly the people took control of their own destiny, then they would again be citizens.

Alright. Another fundamental disagreement then.

I have to say, I think you're wrong. It's actually much easier to get a gun in Canada than it is in the United States. Nonetheless, Canada does not have the sort of gun crime we do. In fact, it has almost no gun crime at all. How can this be explained? Of course, no one knows for sure, but there are some fairly good theories out there. If you ever get to see the Oscar winning documentary "Bowling For Columbine," it goes into this in great detail and introduces some fascinating theories about America's "culture of fear." I highly reccommend it. Perhaps it could shed some light on an otherwise dark situation.

The United States: :sniper: --highly advanced weaponry used to kill

Japan: :mp5: --very little weaponry, but extremely lethal when combined with George Bush Sr.'s dietary habits

Germany: :gundge: --France took away their real guns (and replaced them with France's usual weapon: bananas)

Canada: :fluffle: --Making love, not war, since it got its independance and aquired several copies of Bill Clinton's "My Life" memoirs

The comparison was to Europe, not Canada, and I was merely remarking on what some experts have said. I think they may have been talking about the character of the criminals in question, not the general cultural attitude regarding violence in any given country. In other words, they were talking about how violent the criminals are, not how violent the culture is. If they are wrong, take it up with them.

Though the numbers surprise me, the premise does not. That's what bothers me so much about the fact that most foreigners tend to imagine the state of California as a massive extension of Los Angeles. The rest of California is beautiful; many part of it are considered by almost anyone who has ever seen them to be unparallelled in serene natural majesty. (Ever been to Yosemite?) In the south, they see things to be valuable, not by what they are, but by what you paid for them. (Hence why they sell $5,000 dog bowl on Rodeo Drive.) The north is beautiful, cultural, and vibrant, and unlike in L.A, where the various minority groups literally war with one another, in the north, they blend together forming a wonderful diverse melting pot where tolerance sweeps over the seemlessly multicultural land. Okay, you can tell I'm biased. I just can't stand L.A. I suppose the fact that I have relatives there doesn't help.

The thread was declared dead today, so this is not really necroposting yet, is it?

I've never been to America, even though I have been planning a trip there for most of my life. I was even seriously considering coming to California to study in college, but it turned out to be way too expensive. I was supposed to take a trip there after my graduation from high school, but my parents and grandparents didn't let me. Their reason was that I'll be killed in a gang war as soon as I get off the plane, or at least someone will drug me and steal my kidneys. I said that most of America isn't like that, to which they replied that I've been watching too much TV.

($5000 dog bowl? What's it made of? Weapon-grade plutonium?)

I must admit I'm really shocked. Keep in mind, Lehrer is also the man who wrote such satirical classics as The Masochism Tango, I Hold Your Hand In Mine, and Poisoning Pidgeons In The Park. (They're all greatly funny; I suggest you look them up.)

I will try. Unfortunately my music-downloading capabilities decreased drastically recently, when I removed Kazaa. The adware was pissing me off.

Actually, the Canadian government pays for some American shows with Canadian tax money, because one or more of the characters is performed by a Canadian actor. And yet they can still afford public health care?!?

Yep, being able to afford public healthcare is the upside of not having more stealth bombers than the rest of the world has soldiers.

Hold on a minute- are you saying that there are people outside Guantanamo Bay who are more sleep deprived than I? Wow! I can't believe it! In fact, I can't beleive it... :eek: Tell the guards to go easy on you, okay? Tell them an American citizen told you to say that. -Just don't mention I'm Californian; that would ruin the whole thing. Bush is to California as Shwartzanegger is to... well... California. Let's just say the two don't go together. -Like Dick Cheney and Harry Whittington's face. Oh well... Tom Lehrer ahd another song for that. It's called The Hunting Song. You'll like it. I promise.

I'm not exactly sleep-deprived. That's because I oversleep four days out of five. And when I say 'oversleep', I mean that I wake up around 3 pm, give or take an hour. I just don't often go to bed before sunrise. (There's another reason for me to come to California; jet lag would just set my internal clock straight.)

I have heard experts say that it has to do with gun control. Guns are not as readily available in Europe than in North America. According to what I have read from the DEA and Interpol, organized crime gangs in Europe are just as involved in illegal trafficking as in the US, but their violence tends to be less spectacular due to the lack of guns. Nevertheless, shootings do still occur in Europe every now and then, and gangs are responsible for many murders related to illegal trafficking. Some law enforcement experts believe that, if they had guns, their wars would be as big a problem in Europe as in the US.

That's a probable explanation, but I don't believe it's the whole truth. Guns are a black market item just like drugs, and if the gangs get drugs, there's no reason why they couldn't get illegal guns too. Or they could just saw up a hunting rifle/shotgun, which are readily available to anyone, who passes a hunting permit examination (depending on the country, I suppose).

Lack of ambition is when you become a male nurse with an IQ of 150.

Wow, love the implicit sexism you have nestled in there.


And yes, governments do encroach on people's rights. That's kind of to be expected. The point is, that is alright as long as people approve of it. When people start lashing out, you'll know you have crossed the line at which society still accepts loss of freedom in exchange for something else. Beyond that point, people will simply vote for different politicians, and the development is interrupted. America came very close to that point on Bush's first term, as evidenced by the subsequent presidential election between him and Kerry.

What you're talking about is mob rule, plain and simple. There are pleanty of cases where minorities were treated like crap because the majority was fine with it. Any society which does not have basic protections for individuals, hard limits on things that the majority cannot do no matter how much they want to or how good an argument they have, deserves to be put to the torch.


Depends. Would the gays then become fully heterosexuals after whatever is done to them, just as capable of having a happy normal life like normal people? Could it be done easily, without years of forced therapy/medication? Yes, I'd support it. As you mentioned earlier, gays suffer from many mental problems due to the social stigmas and whatever, so I don't see a reason why they would object either, except out of spite.

At the expense of losing the moral high ground here, I'm gonna come right out and say it. You're a bad person.

If I was a gay man and someone came to me and said "hey, we have a cure" I'd be more than a little offended. If they then decided to try to force it on me, I'd start killing. It wouldn't be about spite, it would be about the rape of conscience. I cannot tell you how disgusting your argument is:

"Well, sorry Ted, but I just don't like that you like Bob, and you have so many problems because I treat you like shit to mask my own insecurities that I'm just going to have to change who you are as a person. No hard feeling, its for the greater good. No, really, we voted on it."

Do you really mean to say that if society has a viable way to stamp out individual difference that it not only has the right to do so, but anyone who would dare to resist is spiteful? Do you honestly, at the core of your beliefs, feel that people have no right to be different if it might cause them or others stress? That the majority has the right to impose itself upon the minority? If thats your social order I'm quite glad theres an ocean between us and, if necessary, a gun.


I'm gonna go with Congressional Dimwits. This discussion is pretty much over. There is nothing left to talk about.

What you're talking about is mob rule, plain and simple. There are pleanty of cases where minorities were treated like crap because the majority was fine with it. Any society which does not have basic protections for individuals, hard limits on things that the majority cannot do no matter how much they want to or how good an argument they have, deserves to be put to the torch.

That's why it's a good idea to have strong local governments, and keep the federal government less powerful. That way people with similar interests and traits can gravitate towards same areas to live in. For example, I believe passing a law that allows gay marriage would be easy in California, but less so in Alabama.

That's how things have worked for thousands of years, mostly. If you don't like the policies of the government, go somewhere else that has more comfortable political atmosphere. And no, this is not an infringement of freedom, because nobody is actually forcing you to move.

At the expense of losing the moral high ground here, I'm gonna come right out and say it. You're a bad person.

I know, no need to feel embarrassed for pointing out the obvious.

If I was a gay man and someone came to me and said "hey, we have a cure" I'd be more than a little offended. If they then decided to try to force it on me, I'd start killing. It wouldn't be about spite, it would be about the rape of conscience. I cannot tell you how disgusting your argument is:

"Well, sorry Ted, but I just don't like that you like Bob, and you have so many problems because I treat you like shit to mask my own insecurities that I'm just going to have to change who you are as a person. No hard feeling, its for the greater good. No, really, we voted on it."

Do you really mean to say that if society has a viable way to stamp out individual difference that it not only has the right to do so, but anyone who would dare to resist is spiteful? Do you honestly, at the core of your beliefs, feel that people have no right to be different if it might cause them or others stress? That the majority has the right to impose itself upon the minority? If thats your social order I'm quite glad theres an ocean between us and, if necessary, a gun.

In case you missed it, I did mention that a prequisite for me supporting the law would be that the procedure would simply change their preference from boys to girls. Let's imagine for a while that the situation is reversed, and a vast majority of people, who also happen to be gay, starts demanding that I'll be turned gay to conform me to the society's norm, because heterosexuality is disgusting and wrong. I'd be insulted, I suppose, but seriously, so what? I can take an insult without bursting into murderous rage. Furthermore, if the only thing that will be changed, is that after the operation I'd no longer find women sexy, but would instead drool for men, what difference would it make? I'd still be the same person; I don't know about you, but my sexual preference isn't a fundamental bedrock, on which my entire personality has been built. If it would stop people from constantly bitching about my preferences, I'd have no problem with doing it. That is also why I think that most gay people, who would refuse, would be doing it just to be a pain in the ass of the majority (no pun intended).

But what the hell do I know. Maybe gay people do define themselves by their sexuality. If they do, that's not a healthy mindset. When I say I'd support it, I mean that if I heard a politician mentioning it, I'd just go "might be a good idea", and return to what I was doing. It's not like I would go campaigning for it, or vote on the issue; it's just none of my business.

I'm all for individual difference. The world would be a dull place without it, so I don't think it should be suppressed. How about you, do you think it should always be maintained in every case, at all costs? I'm not saying that letting people be gay would dismantle the society, but what merits does it have? You have listed several bad sides of it; what are the good sides?

I'm gonna go with Congressional Dimwits. This discussion is pretty much over. There is nothing left to talk about.

Now you're talking.

In other words, they were talking about how violent the criminals are, not how violent the culture is. If they are wrong, take it up with them.

To be honest, and this is very rude of me to say, I think they are. I don't see why America's lack of gun control would lead to such levels of gun crime when Canada's even more lax policies don't. There has to be something cultural in there. For exapmle, I recently heard that, during the day, even if they're out of the house, Candians usually leave their doors unlocked. I lock my doors when I'm home! Even though there hasn't been a burglary on my block in fourteen years. To the best of my knowledge, there hasn't been a violent crime in my neighborhood since it was built in the 1960s, and there hasn't been a murder in my entire town since the nineteenth century! So why the hell am I so paranoid?!? Everyone is...

-Like I said: culture of fear.

And fear leads to violence.


Violence is, as you said, one of the problems with the criminals here.

Of course, no one knows, and I'd like not to have to learn it the hard way. But still- you said what some proffessional theories are, but you never told us: what are yours?

Well, I think this thread has finally died. Time for it to go; let's give it a decent burial. We'll donate its organs, though. It's only fair.

By the way, I'm murdering the burial. Oh, that came out all wrong...

The thread was declared dead today, so this is not really necroposting yet, is it?

I only declared it dead, because no one was posting. I didn't want to be accused of talking to myself again. Now if you'll excuse me, I have to go feed my giant pink dinosaur.

I've never been to America, even though I have been planning a trip there for most of my life. I was even seriously considering coming to California to study in college, but it turned out to be way too expensive. I was supposed to take a trip there after my graduation from high school, but my parents and grandparents didn't let me. Their reason was that I'll be killed in a gang war as soon as I get off the plane, or at least someone will drug me and steal my kidneys. I said that most of America isn't like that, to which they replied that I've been watching too much TV.

They've been watching too much TV. The only reason telvision looks like that is, because- I'm almost ashamed to say it, it can be interesting. As for the news, I should warn you that the media in America is very sensationalistic. They'll spend two minutes on why Tony Blair is here (and why analysts say he's really here), they'll skip Dick Cheney's visits entirely (Thank goodness for that... (Ignorance is bliss.)), and yet they'll spend seven minutes or so on a relatively low-profile murder (in an urban area with a population of 7,500,000). By the way, the only regions of California with gang problems are the Los Angeles area (Don't worry; you're not missing anything.) and the East Bay (the peninsula forming the eastern portion of the Bay Area, dividing the San Francisco and San Pablo bays). Other than that, there's really no reason to worry. Take me for example, I stand out like a sore thumb, and I make a lot of people very very angry. I'm far more worried about the high prices of healthcare.

Drug you and steal your kidneys? What have you heard?!? This doesn't have anything to do with America's happy lack of steak and kidney pie, does it?

($5000 dog bowl? What's it made of? Weapons-grade plutonium?)

No, sometimes they stud them with diamonds (Yes, seriously), but most of the time they're just "designer products." (You know, some famous fashion designer making a dog bowl. Yes, it's just as stupid as it sounds.)

I will try. Unfortunately my music-downloading capabilities decreased drastically recently, when I removed Kazaa. The adware was pissing me off.

If you want, you can just look up the lyrics. Google it.

Yep, being able to afford public healthcare is the upside of not having more stealth bombers than the rest of the world has soldiers.

I know. I heard the new budget on the news recently, and it disgusted me. They're spending more than half a trillion dollars of tax revenue on the military this year alone. ($518,100,000,000 to be exact.) As a little note, America is currently 8.837 trillion dollars in debt. (Since I like putting that in numerical form: $8,837,000,000,000 in debt- almost all of which as appeared under Bush.) As another little note, the country is, once again, this year spending more than half a trillion dollars (Funny, that's the military budget...) more than its two trillion dollar per year tax revenue. And we still don't have public healthcare... Happy? I'm not.

I'm not exactly sleep-deprived. That's because I oversleep four days out of five. And when I say 'oversleep', I mean that I wake up around 3 pm, give or take an hour. I just don't often go to bed before sunrise. (There's another reason for me to come to California; jet lag would just set my internal clock straight.)

Mmmm... I was nocturnal for a while. It wasn't intentional, nor a matter of choice in the slightest, but I hated it (Primarily, because there was nothing I could do about it.), and it was really bad for my health. -But that's just me. If it works for you, that's great! You'll have a great niche when it comes to careers. [That was my attempt at a quick save; I've only been getting around five hours sleep per night for the last several weeks, and it just occurred to me how pessemistic I'm getting right now. I'll have to nip this in the bud.] Adios!

Why should morals have anything to do with freedom?

Why should morals have anything to do with freedom?


Precisely.



[That's Option 2, by the way.]

As another little note, the country is, once again, this year spending more than half a trillion dollars (Funny, that's the military budget...) more than its two trillion dollar per year tax revenue. And we still don't have public healthcare... Happy? I'm not.

Ever been to a VA hospital? I'll pass on the public health care, thank you.

Seriously, universal health care is a nice concept and it works fine in countries that have a more society-centered outlook, but it wouldn't work well here in the US. The taxes would have to go too high and everyone above the 25th percentile would bitch about wait times and quality of care. I mean, come on, we hear people complain about the way they get treated by HMOs, do you really think many people will be happy with health care run like the post office?