The list is endless, but especially in the realms of religion, politics, and individual's choices of how to spend their own time and money, some people see certain activities as immoral, while others find them moral and engage in them. Some people see finer distinctions within categories of human behavior, where others do not.
Each one of us must make our own judgements and develop our own codes, with a certain amount of tolerance for other's differing choices.
Some abhor all hunting, whereas I disdain hunting deer with dogs, but if I had the power, I would not make such an activity against the law. I see no particularly disturbing problem with raising chickens to fight and kill each other, whereas I do very much so when the combatants are dogs. That is my distinction. Yet I am still uncertain as to whether my personal code should be enacted into law.
Yet many other people have felt strongly about and certain enough of their own codes to do so. but they have also done so throughout history concerning the ingestion of certain plants and animals, chemicals, both natural and unnatural, as well as liquids, even images, tunes, and words.
To me, the character of the people who would breed and train dogs to fight and kill each other, and take great pleasure from the actual combat, disturbs me more than the activity itself. But the same also applies to so many other activities, many of which are illegal, some of which are not.
Most people handle drugs, alcohol, and promiscuity without endangering others, some do not. It is primarily an indicator of character that is tested by their ability to compartmentalize and comport themselves morally and with reason. The greek ethos, "moderation in all things" comes to mind.
A society's character is illustrated by how they deal with the small percentage of those who cannot handle themselves, and more laws, police, courts, and prisons, strikes me as symptoms of far too much piety, desire to control, and frugality on society's part.
If I am asked, indeed commanded, to accept other's practices that I consider abhorrent, as well as refrain from those that I consider to be appropriately within the realm of my personal choice that have been made illegal by majority rule against my preferences, do I not then have the right to insist that everone else do so as well?
Where to draw the lines is truly difficult and everchanging, but erring on the side of permissiveness and widely distributed, limited power, has more benefits and fewer consequences, than trying to control so much of people's behavior via the legal codes and the lethal force which ultimately provides it's authority.
Power over individual's range of choices, once in the hands of a State, via the legal codes, is an invitation to perpetually increasing abuse and a recipe for inevitable self-destruction. Just as no individual can be expected, for very long, to wield such power morally and with reason, no group of hundreds, thousands, or millions can either. It is the accumulation of Power itself that, like Hate, eventually corrupts and destroys the container it is carried in.
Thus the commanding rationale for as few laws as possible, enforced as fairly as practible, within as limited a scope of State prerogative as was necessary to guarantee free and fair commerce, property rights, and the integrity of the nation's borders.
Once upon a time Americans were all Rebels and then Confederates who had an opportunity to get these checks and balances right, but the twin Revolutions of 1789 in Paris and Philadelphia, destroyed it.
stephenhsmith
24July2007
