Coked Up Flag Burning Homos
Firstly, the urge to control other people whose behavior does not harm and has no affect upon me seems unsavory. A litmus test I use for considering legislation is the demonstration of harm. No harm or potential for harm, no law. Legislation concerning flag burning, recreational drug use and gay marriage come to mind.
If I purchase an American flag and burn it what harm has been done to you? If two guys get married what harm does this do to you? If I want to snort a couple lines of cocaine and not use heavy machinery, what harm has been done to you? Feel free to demonstrate the harm.
So, riddle me this: If a law limits behavior that will not harm others, what has the law accomplished?
3XHAR
posted by 3XHAR @ 7:42 PM
1 comments
1 Comments:
So for the first post of your first blog, you choose a topic that people literally write entire books arguing about. Jeez.
You brought me around a long time ago on the cocaine snorting thing. Uhhhhh.... I mean the drug legalization issue. But when the two of us agree that there's no "harm" in allowing neighbor A to snort some lines of coke, there's an underlying assumption that neighbor A is otherwise responsible and isn't going to stroke out and wind up living on a respirator at the public's expense. And that's a quasi-libertarian assumption that I'm willing to make on this issue for a number of reasons. For one, it's mostly accurate. For another thing, there's real costs (in money and lives) to having a "war on drugs," costs that can be weighed against the exceptions to the assumptions above. And lastly, when there's a balance like that, I'd rather go with the option that allows greater liberty.
As for gay marriage, perhaps it's helpful to break that down a bit. First, is heterosexual marriage an important institution in a free society, particularly in terms of creating subsequent generations of persons to maintain that society? If so, does the redefinition of that institution by judicial fiat make it more or less likely that people will adhere to the institution? I think that accurate answers to those questions are necessary to knowing whether there's any harm afoot.
One may object at this point that the original question concerned harm to the individual, and now it seems like I'm talking about harm to society. But notice that the question of a "gay marriage" issue presupposes a marriage definition that the entire society has to agree upon. That this should become aggravating to try to address from a libertarian standpoint should not be surprising.
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