Personal Freedom vs. Public Welfare

chair

Well-known member
Harry likes to play with weapons. He especially likes to throw hand grenades around, and watch them explode. He likes to do this in a local city park. So far, he hasn't harmed anybody, so the police let him continue with his grenade-throwing. If he harms somebody- then they'll arrest him.

Makes sense?
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Harry likes to play with weapons.

Who doesn't? :banana:

He especially likes to throw hand grenades around, and watch them explode. He likes to do this in a local city park. So far, he hasn't harmed anybody, so the police let him continue with his grenade-throwing. If he harms somebody- then they'll arrest him.

Makes sense?

Are these silent hand grenades that don't make any sound?

Are these non-destructive hand grenades that don't blow a big hole in the ground and the lawn and the trees and the shrubbery?
 

chair

Well-known member
Who doesn't? :banana:

Are these silent hand grenades that don't make any sound?

Are these non-destructive hand grenades that don't blow a big hole in the ground and the lawn and the trees and the shrubbery?

These are military destructive ones. He throws them into sandboxes so it doesn't cause any real damage.
You're avoiding dealing with the basic question.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
You're talking about rights. The political philosophy concerned with rights is liberalism. The idea that liberalism and the regard for rights is "freedom" or "liberty" is an interpretation of rights, an interpretation of liberalism. We must be careful to not run too far with an interpretation when it goes far beyond its foundation, which are rights.

The conflicts we see especially in America but also wherever the people recognize rights is imo because we have not formed a canonical enumeration of almost any of our rights. Some exceptions to this are the rights against being murdered and raped and kidnapped or falsely arrested, and the rights to remain silent and to not be coerced into incriminating ourselves, and the rights to a trial by jury and to due process of law, and the rights against having your possessions stolen and being falsely testified against and being slandered or libeled or defamed. There are many other examples where rights have been precisely defined and enumerated, but for the most part rights are not so carefully explicated.

So whenever conflict arises between "liberty" or "freedom" and whatever is posed as their opposites, I recommend pondering that dispute and framing it as a struggle to define our rights, rather than it being between the forces of good against the forces of evil. To perpetuate it as the latter is to presume that an anarchistic liberalism is the correct interpretation of our rights, and that requires additional argument to sustain (and I personally would object that anarchistic liberalism is the correct view).

Can you think of another law like drunk driving where if you admit to it after the fact no action will be taken?

I can't.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
These are military destructive ones. He throws them into sandboxes so it doesn't cause any real damage.
You're avoiding dealing with the basic question.
Do we have the right to not have our hearing damaged without justification?
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
These are military destructive ones. He throws them into sandboxes so it doesn't cause any real damage.
You're avoiding dealing with the basic question.

And these sandboxes are configured so that the shrapnel doesn't carry outside of the enclosure? Shrapnel can travel up to 230 meters.

Is the sound contained as well?
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Do we have the right to not have our hearing damaged without justification?

If Chair had said that his guy does this on public lands I can think of lots of public lands especially out West where this would be unremarkable.
 

Idolater

"Matthew 16:18-19" Dispensationalist (Catholic) χρ
Can you think of another law like drunk driving where if you admit to it after the fact no action will be taken?

I can't.
Used to be that it wasn't a crime. The idea was to be responsible, if you drive impaired, that you drive more carefully. Too many people acted irresponsibly and then Karen voted for politicians to outlaw drinking and driving. "Problem solved" says Karen. Of course it wasn't and instead Karen kept voting for politicians who added more and more restrictions to the simpler laws that already said you can't drive drunk, now it's about "blood alcohol content". Even still Karen is unsatisfied. Karen is not satisfied until liquor itself is banned completely---wait, we already did that. It causes organized crime. You know, the statistics.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Used to be that it wasn't a crime. The idea was to be responsible, if you drive impaired, that you drive more carefully. Too many people acted irresponsibly and then Karen voted for politicians to outlaw drinking and driving. "Problem solved" says Karen. Of course it wasn't and instead Karen kept voting for politicians who added more and more restrictions to the simpler laws that already said you can't drive drunk, now it's about "blood alcohol content". Even still Karen is unsatisfied. Karen is not satisfied until liquor itself is banned completely---wait, we already did that. It causes organized crime. You know, the statistics.

I live in northern New York on the border of Canada on the Saint Lawrence river and there are many places here where passage ways are tight and you can't avoid crossing over the imaginary border. OPP has been having a field day pulling over American vessels and applying Canadian law to them when they're on their side of the line. In New York your passengers in the boat can have open containers the driver can't. In Canada you can't have open containers in the boat at all. A lot of unhappy boat owners have been facing ridiculously expensive fines because of this.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Harry likes to play with weapons. He especially likes to throw hand grenades around, and watch them explode. He likes to do this in a local city park. So far, he hasn't harmed anybody, so the police let him continue with his grenade-throwing. If he harms somebody- then they'll arrest him.

Makes sense?

If he doesn't harm anybody, if he isn't engaging in an action that's disturbing the peace, if he isn't engaging in an action that is destructive of the rest of the park then yeah sure why not?

Similarly when I drove home drunk last night I didn't squeal my tires, I didn't do donuts on my neighbor's lawn, I didn't drive recklessly. I drove home cautiously and arrived unharmed.

But you say that I should have been arrested and charged because statistics.
 

chair

Well-known member
Billy has a different hobby. He likes pistols. So he goes to downtown Houston and shoots a pistol with a silencer in different directions. So far he hasn't broken a window, caused damage, or killed anybody, so the police are leaving him alone.

In Dallas, the situation is similar, except that there are 500 guys like Billy, all with the same idea. So far only 2 of them have killed anybody, so the police arrested them, and let the other 498 continue shooting.

Make sense?
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond

You say that I should have been arrested and charged because statistically speaking some proportion of people who drive drunk will not drive cautiously and harmlessly as I did but will drive recklessly and dangerously. Is that it?
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Billy has a different hobby. He likes pistols. So he goes to downtown Houston and shoots a pistol with a silencer in different directions. So far he hasn't broken a window, caused damage, or killed anybody, so the police are leaving him alone.

I do something very similar up here.

In Dallas, the situation is similar, except that there are 500 guys like Billy, all with the same idea. So far only 2 of them have killed anybody, so the police arrested them, and let the other 498 continue shooting.

Make sense?

Yes it does. Statistics show that the other 498 know how to engage in their hobby safely.
 

ok doser

lifeguard at the cement pond
Billy has a different hobby.


Shaniqua has a different hobby. She likes to get pregnant from men who are not her husband and have black children without fathers. Statistics show that her children are more apt to be involved in crime and violent antisocial behaviors than others. Should the government regulate Shaniqua's childbearing?

Should the government regulate all childbearing of black Americans?
 

chair

Well-known member
Shaniqua has a different hobby. She likes to get pregnant from men who are not her husband and have black children without fathers. Statistics show that her children are more apt to be involved in crime and violent antisocial behaviors than others. Should the government regulate Shaniqua's childbearing?

Should the government regulate all childbearing of black Americans?

The point of this thread is to try to see where the line is. You say: the government shouldn't regulate drunk driving, because we don't know for a fact that a particular drunk driver will kill someone. How about stop signs? I've driven through dozens of those- never hurt a soul.
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
What I want to see are scientific studies proving masks work. I want to see long-term double blind studies proving the effectiveness of masks at stopping airborne viral infections. If you can't post any studies showing this then masks are only a political ploy.
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
Shaniqua has a different hobby. She likes to get pregnant from men who are not her husband and have black children without fathers. Statistics show that her children are more apt to be involved in crime and violent antisocial behaviors than others. Should the government regulate Shaniqua's childbearing?

Should the government regulate all childbearing of black Americans?

The government already does this thanks to Socialists. The Fabians came here around the beginning of the 20th century in the person of Margret Sanger and began putting Planned Parenthood abortion clinics in black communities. Today's socialists still fight for the right to kill millions of black babies every year. And you support such slaughter.
 

Gary K

New member
Banned
Can you think of another law like drunk driving where if you admit to it after the fact no action will be taken?

I can't.
Yeah, any law that has a statute of limitations involved in it as most laws do. About the only law I know of that has no statute of limitations is murder.
 
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