Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by Ava Wilson on October 19, 2010 at 6:12pm

See, laws exist to stop the 'eye for an eye' among victims seeking retribution, with irrational punishments being dished out. I'm not in total disagreeance that somebody caught stealing should have a hand cut off. It's interesting to note that Vlad Tepes, the Impaler, who was hard on crime and pretty much impaled or otherwise mutilated and killed everyone who broke a law, came to a point in his rule where his crime rate was virtually null, where he could keep a golden chalice at the public fountain for drinking and not a single person would steal it. It makes one wonder: what is more effective in governing, laws that are more harsh or less harsh?

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Permalink Reply by NakkiNyan on October 19, 2010 at 7:42pm

I think that people who put their dick in places it does not belong lose the right to keep it. It will effectively stop the assault in the same way that people who abuse their right to own a gun are refused to own one later.

I think that people who steal should have all of their possessions taken and distributed among their victims. But now you are getting into what we want as opposed to whether it is ok for me to break the law to do it, which I wouldn't.

As for the harshness of laws that is up to the people, some are willing to follow laws and others only follow the laws by force. If you are in a country where the laws are not being followed they may follow them if the punishments are harsher, if not then a relatively peaceful culture could go crazy considering it unfair.

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Permalink Reply by Rufus on October 19, 2010 at 9:12am

Slavery used to be the law. Good people broke that law.
When the powers that be attempt to impose servitude, we are just in defying them.

The current event related to servitude is bankers imposing their own debts onto the public, leading to debt slavery:
Elite banksters who control governments in the West are learning today how Europeans view their attempts to impose servitude in the form of long-term debt slavery: The Icelanders told them to go to hell (so to speak) and now so are the French and Greeks and others.
And Europeans are just in defying the banksters: Bankers gambled with derivatives, bankers lost, and bankers want you the public to pay off their gambling debts. The alternative would be for the banks to be declared insolvent, at which point the bankers would lose their wealth and power. They don't want that: They want the public to lose its wealth and power and be enslaved with debt.
Laws merely codify plans. If the plans are unjust, if the plans harm innocent people, they should be rejected.

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Permalink Reply by Ava Wilson on October 19, 2010 at 5:11pm

This reminds me of a good example acted on here in the Detroit area, where someone involved with the Police department (a high up, but I'm not sure what position or department) in one of the towns actually came out and encouraged people who are having their homes foreclosed on, to physically refuse to leave the property. This is an instance where I believe that breaking the law, or general courtesy, is justifiable. Although I essentially agree that somebody who cannot pay for a home should not have something they can't pay for, usually such houses are bought by people who honestly make their payments but run into hard times, only to find their families on the streets or in the backs of vans after living in the same house for over two or three decades, and I would also probably refuse to leave my home no matter the consequence or backlash it earned me.

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Permalink Reply by Ava Wilson on October 19, 2010 at 5:19pm

The problem I see with your logic is that not all people adhere to 'empathy'. What you're relying on is an ideal that everyone has the same abilities to recognize what is naturally right or wrong and don't need laws to keep them in place (this is very reminiscent of anarchy). The problem is that a lot of people DON'T. Murders, for instance, are perfectly fine among religious people like Muslims who advocate 'honor killings', or killings with a religiously justifiable basis. Laws exist simply to tell you what you can and can't do, so that if you don't adhere to them, there is a corresponding punishment. Rightly, any Muslim man who kills his wife or sister or daughter for not sticking to their religious virtues should be arrested, tried, and imprisoned. Although the basic idea of 'murder is wrong' is a generally universal concept, abnormal psychology and religious or moral justifications for such heinous actions do occur more frequently than is comfortable. The idea that you should 'never follow the law purely because it is the law' implies you're disregarding your concept of right and wrong and simply choosing not to follow the law on principle's sake. A more appropriate summation of your philosophy would probably be, 'one should never go out of their way to obey the law because people should naturally know what's right or wrong and not have to be bossed around like little children into doing what they're told'. Yet another problem here is assuming that having laws limits your freedom. Actually, laws exist to protect the freedom of others. Murder is illegal by law because you're violating the right to somebody else's life. Stealing is illegal by law because you're violating someone's right to their own property. Trespassing is illegal for the same reason. Jay-walking is illegal because it can cause accidents that in turn cause financial damage or could possibly end the life of somebody, again violating a person's right to life-- and in the matter of finance, every business and home should have some level of protection of its assets that discourages their potential destruction. If Jay walking was legal, accidents would undoubtedly occur more often, causing cars to swerve into poles, or into businesses, or into homes, which therefore destroy public or private property and endanger lives.

I honestly think the idea of anarchy is a little silly. In the same. I don't believe in bowing to the state, either. I believe every person should follow the law within reason, and challenge it when they feel it is justifiable, by legal means or at least means that do no harm to others if they are illegal. Question authority always, obviously.

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Permalink Reply by Atheist Exile on October 19, 2010 at 1:24pm

Civil disobedience. Remember the '60s? Oops, maybe you weren't even born then :-)

Conscience: war dissenters and draft evasion (no more draft, though).

Assassinations. You might be approved by your own government but you'd be breaking the law of the foreign country ruled by the despot you just shot between the eyes.

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Permalink Reply by Ava Wilson on October 19, 2010 at 5:24pm

Yeah, my father was pelted in the head in the 60's with rotten vegetables because activists believed all of the returning veterans had been drafted. They were pelting them in protest of their following the draft and not evading it to make a statement, their form of civil disobedience wherein a lot of draftees left for Canada (they were recently pardoned). My father was one of the few in his company that actually volunteered to go without being drafted. Funny enough, when he was back, all he could talk about was returning to Vietnam. They wouldn't let him because he had contracted malaria (as well as amoebic dysentary and jungle rot).

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Permalink Reply by Ava Wilson on October 19, 2010 at 5:34pm

I'm asking what I asked: Is it ever okay to break the law?

No one else really seems to have any difficulty answering it.

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Permalink Reply by Seth B Rollings on October 19, 2010 at 5:38pm

Breaking the law is okay when you cause no harm to yourself, others, or the environment around you. Laws are set so you can do no bad, this is what they are for or else society wouldn't accept them (:

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Permalink Reply by Ava Wilson on October 19, 2010 at 6:14pm

So what do you define as harm in those three instances? Is it limited to the physical? Does it extend to the emotional-psychological and financial factors? What is 'harm' that the law is trying to prevent?

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Permalink Reply by Seth B Rollings on October 19, 2010 at 6:52pm

I think harm means anything negative to anything that deals with any of the examples I listed,

When you are confronted with a problem and you have multiple choices I believe that you must choose the best out of those, best meaning that you need to pick the one with the most benefits for ALL. Call me a communist, I'll agree (;

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Permalink Reply by Ava Wilson on October 20, 2010 at 9:51pm

That is a bit communistic, but not wrong. However, when you say 'breaking the law is okay if nobody is harmed and nothing bad happens to anyone or the environment', but then you say 'laws are set so you do no bad', you imply that law is somehow infallible therefore, making it useless to disobey the law because laws are set there already so we do no harm to people or the environment, while in the same breath advocating sometimes breaking it. I just want clarification.

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