Sunday, 18 October 2009

What is a Law?

There seems to be an endless amount of crap about what should be illegal or legal. When one says that, "X should become illegal", one must fully take into account exactly what is meant by that. Choosing to make a certain action illegal does not merely mean that you are condemning it; that you think it's wrong. No, legality and illegality goes far further than that.
Illegality has several steps:
1) The legislature deems X action to be 'illegal'.
2) If a man is to continue to do X action, they are subject to the will of the courts
3) If the man is found guilty, he is, against his own will, forced to give up his property, liberty, or in some cases life.

Therefore:
When you say, "X should be illegal", remember that what you're saying is, "If someone does X, they should forcibly have their liberty or property taken off them against their own will."
Substituting possible suggestions into that sentence:
"If someone smokes cannabis, they should forcibly have their liberty taken off them"
"If someone refuses to give money to the poor (benefits), they should forcibly have their property taken off them"

Think about what you're saying. Making X illegal is not the same as removing X from society. It is, however, the same as forcing someone to stop doing X or they get thrown in jail for it.

0 comments:

Post a Comment