Every now and then, I surprise myself.
Sometimes it's because I'll be having a conversation with myself in my head, and ask myself a question (that I think I don't know) and then provide myself with the answer. That doesn't happen often but when it does I get all weirded out.
Lately, in the past few years, I surprise myself when I realize that I've changed in some way. Mainly this has to do with my belief system (general beliefs, not necessarily religious beliefs).
A few years ago I realized that I had become a firm supporter of the separation of Church and State. I have nothing against someone expressing their religious belief... it's not that. What I am against is the smaller things like celebrating christmas and easter (christian holidays) and saying "one nation under god" in the pledge of allegiance. I am against a public school system doing things that alienates children of different beliefs (or no beliefs). Strangely enough, what really made me realize that I felt this way was an episode of the West Wing. One of the jewish characters had a short monologue about being the "odd kid out" when he was growing up because he didn't share the same beliefs. And that just isn't right.
But that's not what I'm talking about today.
A little while ago I realized that I was Pro-Choice when it came to the abortion issue. I feel that there should be no federal law telling a woman that she can't have an abortion EXCEPT if they one day prove that it is the equivalent of murder.
Now, this has nothing to do with my personal beliefs about abortion. I believe that sex has consequences and you have to live with them. But that's my own personal belief and I don't think that anyone else should have to follow it.
Laws should be made to stop people from hurting other people (or property). Laws should be made to keep people from doing bad things. We shouldn't make unnecessary laws that could help prevent other laws from being broken.
For instance, when I was in college they passed a new law preventing bars on campus from having drink specials after 9PM. They did this because they felt there was too much "drinking and driving" going on (and general binge drinking by students) and they wanted to suppress it. They penalized the majority instead of focusing on the minority. It really infuriated me. Why couldn't they just increase penalties for those that drive drunk? Or put out a few more check points?
Anyway, that's a total side point.
So ending with a question...
I know very little about the difference between republicans and democrats. With these beliefs, which way do I lean? And feel free to reference libertarians in the answer (because I like the sound of them).
Friday, August 22, 2008
Why we have laws - a personal revelation
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2 comments:
You do realize that your 'stop people from hurting people or property' is in itself a belief? Ergo, you are imposing your beliefs on other people by insisting on those.
There are quite a few arguments for laws. All of them that I've heard of are based on one of three basic modes of thought:
First, 'Enforced' laws. The argument for these is generally 'because we said so'. No real argument, so they can't be a logical fallacy, but no real logical support, either.
Second, 'Emotionally Satisfying' laws. These are laws imposed on many by a few, and the argument is generally that it's 'for their own good'. The imposers generally feel that 'everyone knows' that '/insert activity here/ is wrong'. The problem is that there are NO human activities that have fallen into that /insert activity here/, even for completely rational, reasonable humans, at some point in history. Several societies don't or didn't have the concept of sanctity of life, for instance. Emotionally satisfying laws therefore don't have a solid logical reason for existence. They do make the people who agree with them feel good, but I have yet to hear a good argument why the government should focus on making its citizens 'feel good'.
The third type of laws are 'Social Contract' laws. These are laws passed specifically to ease day to day interactions between individuals in the society. The argument is that people within a society are reliably measurably better off than lone humans. While Ted K (unabomber) disagrees with that, and presents an interesting argument for anarcho-primitivism, his measurements are generally fairly 'soft' as opposed to 'hard' measurements like life expectancy, infant mortality rates, and such. With the justification being the benefits of society, and the goal of making society work, 'social contract' laws tend to focus on things that enhance interactions. Social contract laws are logically justifiable, but hard to argue for, as they often fly in the face of both enforced and emotionally satisfying laws, both of which have more visceral components.
Wow you wrote a lot there. The only response I feel the need to make is that I took the assumption that no matter how "anarchy centric" a group is they will still have rules... even if that rule is "don't do something that pisses off the leader". And 2 of the most widely accepted rules in the world are "don't kill" and "don't steal". Yes, they are created to maintain some social peace.
So my point is that laws should be kept to the simple stuff like that, and not venture into stupid stuff.
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