09-02-2018, 07:05 PM
PaulW - I get to choose which laws apply to me (according to your theory), so it's your problem if you don't like it. By your reasoning.
Correct, you taking my stuff and shooting my dog is my problem - who else's would it be? And yes, we all get to choose which laws to obey, same as law enforcement gets to choose which laws to enforce. And when laws are unjust and harmful, some people choose not to obey, to exercise their own personal judgement and conscience as to what is right and wrong, regardless of the consequences. It's how the law bends towards justice; it's why the U.S. is a separate country from Britain, why slavery was ultimately ended, why children no longer work 13 hour shifts, why women got the right to vote, why public facilities were desegregated, why gay people can legally marry. All this, and much more, was won by those who fought for their rights regardless of the law.
No doubt you however would be a heavily-taxed, but content, British slave owner, sending your kids off to their shifts at the factory and telling the missus to stay out of politics and in the kitchen. Because of course, that was The Law.
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. [...] Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice." - Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau
Correct, you taking my stuff and shooting my dog is my problem - who else's would it be? And yes, we all get to choose which laws to obey, same as law enforcement gets to choose which laws to enforce. And when laws are unjust and harmful, some people choose not to obey, to exercise their own personal judgement and conscience as to what is right and wrong, regardless of the consequences. It's how the law bends towards justice; it's why the U.S. is a separate country from Britain, why slavery was ultimately ended, why children no longer work 13 hour shifts, why women got the right to vote, why public facilities were desegregated, why gay people can legally marry. All this, and much more, was won by those who fought for their rights regardless of the law.
No doubt you however would be a heavily-taxed, but content, British slave owner, sending your kids off to their shifts at the factory and telling the missus to stay out of politics and in the kitchen. Because of course, that was The Law.
"Must the citizen ever for a moment, or in the least degree, resign his conscience to the legislator? Why has every man a conscience, then? I think that we should be men first, and subjects afterward. It is not desirable to cultivate a respect for the law, so much as for the right. [...] Law never made men a whit more just; and, by means of their respect for it, even the well-disposed are daily made the agents of injustice." - Civil Disobedience, Henry David Thoreau