6 ms·
Did you just make the argument that the government enforcing the laws is immoral?
by eridius 10y ago
Did you just make the argument that the government enforcing the laws is immoral?
- LyndsySimon 10y agoIt looks that way - and for what it's worth, it's not exactly an unprecedented position.
- ahoy 10y agoWelcome to libertarianism.
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoThis is not normal. But on Ayn Rand, it is.
- ska 10y agoLike other drugs many people experiment with in high school, a little won't hurt you but prolonged exposure to Rand can lead to cognitive deficits and antisocial behavior.
- lacampbell 10y agoI experimented with socialism in High School. I was actually reading authors much more banal than Ayn Rand could ever hope to be - like Karl Marx and Leon Trotsky. Really glad I grew out of that stage. Gave up half way through Atlas shrugged I'm afraid. I did enjoy how accurately it depicted socialists and social democrats though - as I was reading it I could help but laugh as I've come across people talking like that so often.
- Florin_Andrei 10y agoThe extremes are always wrong.
- Karunamon 10y agoDepends on what the laws are. A law gains no special moral quality via the legislative process. Immoral laws exist.
- eridius 10y agoOP was arguing that because they don't like the law it's immoral to enforce. Whether or not OP likes the law really has nothing to do with whether the law is immoral.
- Karunamon 10y agoNot sure I read it that way, but okay. But that reading requires you to ask "why", and sometimes it feels very much like the government lost the consent of the governed a looooong time ago..
- sgift 10y agoIf the government had lost the consent of the governed it wouldn't have been elected / it won't be elected again. That's basically what all this is about. Sure, democracy, elections, all this things may not be the best system, but it is very effective at damage control. You don't govern well? You're out after four or five years. All other system known have far worse damage control.
- Karunamon 10y agoAlternative view: The government has lost the consent of the governed, but people are so engrossed in other stuff that they don't do anything about it due to how painful the upheaval would be. In other words, it's tolerated rather than accepted. Roman poets would call this "bread and circuses".
- sgift 10y agoEvery revolution in history is proof that this doesn't really work. If the government really looses the approval of the governed and not just of a small minority revolution will follow.
- snappyTertle 10y agoIf the law is immoral, wouldn't forcing people to follow something immoral be immoral?
- eddieplan9 10y agoYes. We were happy when the border control releases folks detained at airport after the immigration ban.
- darawk 10y agoThe government enforcing laws is immoral at times. It is the law in Saudi Arabia to stone homosexuals to death.
- mindcrime 10y agoFor many years gay sex was illegal in many states. Likewise many states had laws against inter-racial marriages. Enforcing those "laws" was totally immoral.
- camus2 10y agoSaudi Arabia is a monarchy and theocratic dictatorship. The law of this country is not made by the people for the people unlike any decent democracy. Picking up the worst example on the planet to try to make your argument look good discredits you.
- darawk 10y agoOk, so how about slavery. Or eugenics laws in the 1930s. Or Jim Crow. Or anti-sodomy laws in the US. Or women not being allowed to vote. Or like, any, of the literally thousands of horribly immoral laws that have been on the books in literally every country on the planet.
- mindcrime 10y agoDid you just make the argument that the government enforcing the laws is immoral? When most of the laws are immoral, then I would say that it is. And an immoral law is - IMO - any time the State is doing anything other than acting, as Bastiat[1] put it, "as the collective extension to our individual right to self defense". [1]: http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G004 http://bastiat.org/en/the_law.html#SECTION_G004