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dblaney
Human Being
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Posts: 7,894
Loc: Here & Now
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Picking and Choosing Laws
#3811138 - 02/21/05 01:25 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
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I just had a rather interesting discussion with an anti-drug friend of mine. I managed to argue well, in fact they ended up changing the topic to money. But they did make one point that I was and still am having trouble countering. They said that one cannot pick and choose laws to disobey (in regards to psychedelics and other drugs). You shouldn't just run a red light because no one is there. I argued that its irrelevant because the law simply is unjust.
However I am at a loss for a good counter arguement. Any suggestions?
-------------------- "What is in us that turns a deaf ear to the cries of human suffering?" "Belief is a beautiful armor But makes for the heaviest sword" - John Mayer Making the noise "penicillin" is no substitute for actually taking penicillin. "This country, with its institutions, belongs to the people who inhabit it. Whenever they shall grow weary of the existing government, they can exercise their constitutional right of amending it, or their revolutionary right to dismember or overthrow it." -Abraham Lincoln
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moog
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Re: Picking and Choosing Laws [Re: dblaney]
#3811230 - 02/21/05 01:46 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
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You should do what you want to do, and then worry if there's laws against it later. If you want to do something illegal, go ahead. Just try not to get caught doing it.
I'll probably get flamed for this but who cares. Be an individual and do what you want to, not what someone else tells you to.
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phi1618
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Re: Picking and Choosing Laws [Re: dblaney]
#3811382 - 02/21/05 02:25 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
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Quote:
You express a great deal of anxiety over our willingness to break laws. This is certainly a legitimate concern. Since we so diligently urge people to obey the Supreme Court's decision of 1954 outlawing segregation in the public schools, at first glance it may seem rather paradoxical for us consciously to break laws. One may won ask: "How can you advocate breaking some laws and obeying others?" The answer lies in the fact that there fire two types of laws: just and unjust. I would be the Brat to advocate obeying just laws. One has not only a legal but a moral responsibility to obey just laws. Conversely, one has a moral responsibility to disobey unjust laws. I would agree with St. Augustine that "an unjust law is no law at all"
Martin Luther King http://almaz.com/nobel/peace/MLK-jail.html
Quote:
Unjust laws exist: shall we be content to obey them, or shall we endeavor to amend them, and obey them until we have succeeded, or shall we transgress them at once? Men, generally, under such a government as this, think that they ought to wait until they have persuaded the majority to alter them. They think that, if they should resist, the remedy would be worse than the evil. ... If the injustice is part of the necessary friction of the machine of government, let it go, let it go: perchance it will wear smooth--certainly the machine will wear out. If the injustice has a spring, or a pulley, or a rope, or a crank, exclusively for itself, then perhaps you may consider whether the remedy will not be worse than the evil; but if it is of such a nature that it requires you to be the agent of injustice to another, then I say, break the law. Let your life be a counter-friction to stop the machine. What I have to do is to see, at any rate, that I do not lend myself to the wrong which I condemn.
Henry David Thoreau http://www.cs.indiana.edu/statecraft/civ.dis.html
And Gahndi? The Boston Tea Party?
While there is a clear difference between willingly going to prison on a point of principle and smoking a joint, these examples clearly show the absurdity of equating law and morality.
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phi1618
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Re: Picking and Choosing Laws [Re: phi1618]
#3811392 - 02/21/05 02:26 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
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The examples I gave above are more rhetorical than anything else.
Here's the basic point: The law's stupid. You know it's stupid; I know it's stupid. Fuck the law, just don't get caught.
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Baby_Hitler
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Re: Picking and Choosing Laws [Re: dblaney]
#3813177 - 02/21/05 07:31 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
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1. The government lies.
2. If nobody broke the law, on-one would ever find out they were lieing.
3. the law is unconstitutional, and therefore the government broke the law creating the illegal law.
4 It is illegal to speak out against the government in China. Is it wrong for a Chinese citizen to break that law?
-------------------- "America: Fuck yeah!" -- Alexthegreat “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.” -- Thomas Jefferson The greatest sin of mankind is ignorance. The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally. --Salena Zeto (9/23/16)
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Baby_Hitler
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Re: Picking and Choosing Laws [Re: dblaney]
#3813194 - 02/21/05 07:34 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
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5. What if the light is broken? Should you just sit there and wait for them to fix it?
-------------------- "America: Fuck yeah!" -- Alexthegreat “Nothing can now be believed which is seen in a newspaper. Truth itself becomes suspicious by being put into that polluted vehicle. The real extent of this state of misinformation is known only to those who are in situations to confront facts within their knowledge with the lies of the day.” -- Thomas Jefferson The greatest sin of mankind is ignorance. The press takes [Trump] literally, but not seriously; his supporters take him seriously, but not literally. --Salena Zeto (9/23/16)
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Ravus
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Re: Picking and Choosing Laws [Re: dblaney]
#3813378 - 02/21/05 08:03 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
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If a law is unjust, which means it violates your rights as an individual by criminalizing actions that harms nobody else directly, one does not need to obey it. If there was a law saying black people shouldn't drink from water fountains, would that also need to be obeyed? Of course not, because black people would harm nobody else drinking from a water fountain, and it's the same with smoking a joint in the privacy of your home. However, if you drank a lot of vodka and then went driving on the highway, that should be illegal, because you are potentially harming or killing others from your decisions. People have the individual right to be protected from actions that potentially harm or kill them, which is why drunk driving is illegal but drinking a few beers and watching the Superbowl at your house is completely legal over a certain age. It should be the same with drug laws.
Law is not absolute, and those making them often take away your legitimate rights as an individual, in which case you not only can, but oftentimes should choose to disobey it.
-------------------- So long as you are praised think only that you are not yet on your own path but on that of another.
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Silversoul
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Re: Picking and Choosing Laws [Re: dblaney]
#3814413 - 02/21/05 10:49 PM (19 years, 1 month ago) |
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Fuck the law! The government doesn't know what's best for you. Just don't hurt anyone, and when you do break the law, just don't get caught. Doing what's right and doing what's legal are totally unrelated.
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