personal responsibility and the victimless crime

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blauSamstag
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21 Aug 2011, 12:43 am

This is a question for the conservatives.

You talk about personal responsibility being a major tenet of your faith, but what about me taking responsibility personally for the consequences of my own trifling peccadilloes?

Granted I'm such a square that the worst things i do are:

1: exceed the speed limit on the freeway so carefully that i have not been cited since 2002 and have never caused an accident
2: occasionally get just drunk enough in the privacy of my own house (that i own) that i MIGHT trip and wrench my own back a bit
3: watch porn that i might not have paid for. And enjoy it.

But let's suppose i was more outgoing and engaged in some of the following:

1: Used cannabis produced by a local non-gang-affiliated grower in the privacy of my own house and without operating a vehicle
2: Engaged in consensual sodomy with some other person
3: Made myself a nice strong rum & coke in my stainless steel water bottle advertising the local NPR affiliate and walked across the street (potentially jaywalking) to the park to get very slighly toasted before walking right back home.
4: sold a 6-pack of beer to my good friend on Sunday when it is forbidden to sell alcohol in my city - saving him the trouble of driving 15 minutes in any direction to buy beer.

What say ye, conservatives? I am fully prepared to live with the real (non-legal) consequences of any of these actions. Why not?



Philologos
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21 Aug 2011, 1:30 am

If we are to accept [which I do not and never have] the principles [which I have heard ad nauseam - though in this case nausea comes early - pushed by Socialized and Socializers of a Liberal cast [not so say that Conservative Socialized and Socializers may not have their equivalent]:

A. No man is an island

B. I am my brother's keeper

C. Every man's death diminishes me

D. The State has an interest in the physical and mental health and education of its citizenry.

E. Not to forget thde butterfly effect

THEN it follows as the day the night that there is no such thing as a victimless crime because the State would not give us an arbitrary rule and if I do something the State has determined is bad for me I have negatively impacted the State and all humanity.

If I binge on [whatever I choose to binge on] I am sabotaging humanity by injuring one human unit.

If you choose instead to look at it from a moral standpoint, then the scofflaw by ignoring the rule injures his moral self. and if of certain religious backgrounds offends God or messes with his karma.

------------

AS usual much depends on your definitions. Is it a crime [in the eyes of God, of society, of my conscience] to offend against an unjust law? Is it a crime to break a law which is long forgotten but was never repealed?

-------------

One may ask - if a crime is actually victimless, why is there a law about it?



91
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21 Aug 2011, 2:00 am

blauSamstag wrote:
What say ye, conservatives? I am fully prepared to live with the real (non-legal) consequences of any of these actions. Why not?


Is this a question for conservatives only? It seems misdirected and aimed at anyone who is not a libertarian. Many left wing policies are interventionist, aimed at changing society and based on community based viewpoints. Perhaps your point is misplaced?


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Dox47
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21 Aug 2011, 3:12 am

You know how I'm going to answer this, right? :lol:

All of the above, at the same time, while snorting coke off a hooker's ass and shooting wildly into the air while possibly shouting some variation on "yeehaaw!! !".

On a personal note, I did just roll in from a local Seattle tradition known as Hempfest, which is sort of like a street fair except that you can light a joint in front of the cops and not hear a word about it and a contact high is pretty much a certainty when you walk through the gates. I'm pretty sure something very much like I described went down somewhere on the premises while I was there, though perhaps without the shouting.


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ruveyn
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21 Aug 2011, 5:55 am

Philologos wrote:
If we are to accept [which I do not and never have] the principles [which I have heard ad nauseam - though in this case nausea comes early - pushed by Socialized and Socializers of a Liberal cast [not so say that Conservative Socialized and Socializers may not have their equivalent]:

A. No man is an island

B. I am my brother's keeper

C. Every man's death diminishes me

D. The State has an interest in the physical and mental health and education of its citizenry.

E. Not to forget thde butterfly effect

THEN it follows as the day the night that there is no such thing as a victimless crime because the State would not give us an arbitrary rule and if I do something the State has determined is bad for me I have negatively impacted the State and all humanity.

If I binge on [whatever I choose to binge on] I am sabotaging humanity by injuring one human unit.

If you choose instead to look at it from a moral standpoint, then the scofflaw by ignoring the rule injures his moral self. and if of certain religious backgrounds offends God or messes with his karma.

------------

AS usual much depends on your definitions. Is it a crime [in the eyes of God, of society, of my conscience] to offend against an unjust law? Is it a crime to break a law which is long forgotten but was never repealed?

-------------

One may ask - if a crime is actually victimless, why is there a law about it?


A, B, C (above) are balderdash.

D is true. Health productive people are less likely to rebel and more likely to pay their taxes.

and E is just plain based on natural physical laws.

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Philologos
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21 Aug 2011, 12:09 pm

ruveyn wrote:
Philologos wrote:

A. No man is an island

B. I am my brother's keeper

C. Every man's death diminishes me

D. The State has an interest in the physical and mental health and education of its citizenry.

E. Not to forget thde butterfly effect


A, B, C (above) are balderdash.

D is true. Health productive people are less likely to rebel and more likely to pay their taxes.

and E is just plain based on natural physical laws.

ruveyn

ruveyn


ABC - I quite agree. I have been sorely annoyed by them since my earliest memories. Add in the "takes a village" thing - as if la belle Hilaria would be able tp stand village life for a day.

D is true IF you take State as a corporation rather than as a convenient tool of the people. I may have to live under a state which thinks itself independent of me but I do not have to recognize it.

E As for the butterfly effect, at even the scale of Brooklyn let alone the USA let alne the Earth and forget about the solar system and beyond, past a certain point calculable effects peter out and it becomes just dumb to worry did my sneeze cause the critter on Beta Cygni 24 to scratch his / her / rafs / our rump, or did their / xrs / its itch make me sneeze?



blauSamstag
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21 Aug 2011, 10:44 pm

91 wrote:
blauSamstag wrote:
What say ye, conservatives? I am fully prepared to live with the real (non-legal) consequences of any of these actions. Why not?


Is this a question for conservatives only? It seems misdirected and aimed at anyone who is not a libertarian. Many left wing policies are interventionist, aimed at changing society and based on community based viewpoints. Perhaps your point is misplaced?


This is in fact a question directed solely at conservatives, who espouse personal responsibility while enacting laws to protect us from our own lusty urges.

I should point out that my tolerance for alcohol is such that a triple rum & coke is just barely enough to get a buzz going. I'm not contemplating public intoxication, but merely public consumption.



Fnord
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21 Aug 2011, 10:54 pm

Whoever first said, "I am my brother's keeper" either didn't have any brothers, or he had his brother locked up in the cellars where he could do no harm.

I am not now, nor will I ever be, my brothers' keeper.


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blauSamstag
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21 Aug 2011, 11:00 pm

Fnord wrote:
Whoever first said, "I am my brother's keeper" either didn't have any brothers, or he had his brother locked up in the cellars where he could do no harm.

I am not now, nor will I ever be, my brothers' keeper.


I have four brothers.

3 of them have gone through jackass stages.

When one of my older brothers started setting up his still in the kitchen when i knew damn well that dad was going to be back home shortly, I took his still back apart and hid it, because i did not need that excrement coming into contact with the air handler. That all ultimately came to a head about a year later and he got kicked out of the house.

But when one of my younger brothers was going through a phase where i figured he might end up calling from jail, I thought about this for a while and decided that if that happened, my response would be "Watch your cornhole!" followed by hanging up.



blauSamstag
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21 Aug 2011, 11:07 pm

Also, I was raised mormon. I am 35 years old and have been drinking for 3 years. The only grandfather i ever knew was an alcoholic who drank himself to death - literally pickled himself. I understand the teetotaler perspective.

And yet, I recall a couple years ago that some state had decided to ban the sale of single beers from convenience stores and gas stations, to clamp down on the "one for the road" phenomenon.

One beer. A guy buying one beer to drink between the gas station and his destination is supposed to be a public safety hazard.

Just. One. Beer.

You can still buy a six pack, but you can't buy a single beer. Because that means you're going to consume a tiny amount of alcohol, potentially while driving.

One beer is merely refreshing. As for myself i don't think i can get drunk on beer that is less than 10% ABV, and even then i'd have to drink more of it than I'd be interested in drinking.

How is this rational?



Philologos
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21 Aug 2011, 11:25 pm

How in principle do the laws regulating the use of alcohol and other drugs A B C differ from laws regulating the use of tobacco and other drugs D E F?

And of course various foodstuffs and the like.

And various types of literature.

And other things which this state or that feels bound to control.



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21 Aug 2011, 11:27 pm

That's the Democratic/Leftist/Liberal "Nanny State" for you - protect people from themselves at everybody's expense by making it illegal for anyone with a little common sense from having any fun at all.


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blauSamstag
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21 Aug 2011, 11:35 pm

Philologos wrote:
How in principle do the laws regulating the use of alcohol and other drugs A B C differ from laws regulating the use of tobacco and other drugs D E F?

And of course various foodstuffs and the like.

And various types of literature.

And other things which this state or that feels bound to control.


Drugs that are smoked have an area effect, and when used in excess that effect follows around the user even when they are not using it.

Drugs in general when used to excess represent a failure to accept personal responsibility, and it is well within the powers of the state to intervene only in incidence of excess if it so chooses.

I don't care if people use nicotine patches or gum around me. I'm offended if they decide to burn a nicotine-containing substrate in my presence without first making sure that they are down-wind of me. It's not the drug, it's the smoke.

Social conservatives have made it quite clear that the state should not intervene in cases of abuse of personal health, so the state can thus have no interest in protecting it.