> I hear the Prohibition example a lot. Under this school of thought, the cure to a lot of crime problems would be to make those crimes legal. We're talking about drug use, child porn, public nudity, and basically anything else that doesn't physically harm anyone except maybe the person performing it. Never mind phychological harm, because that's immeasurable. It doesn't count. So all this stuff should become legal.

Well, wait a second. You're making a false analogy here. Drug use and prohibition are similar, but these are not similar to child pornography or public nudity. Drug and alcohol prohibition essentially tell adults what they can and cannot do with and to their own bodies. It is my contention that free thinking people should be allowed to decide what they do to themselves.

Child pornography, as has already been mentioned, involves the use of children who cannot give their consent. This is wrong. Likewise, I do not believe children should be allowed to buy or use dangerous substances. Public nudity is also different in that we have more stringent rules for what you can and can't do in public. In the privacy of my own home, it's reasonable to assume I can scream and shout all I want (assuming it's not bugging my neighbors). This is rightfully called disturbing the peace when done in public. And, for the record, I'm fine with laws that prevent public intoxication (and public smoking) for similar reasons.

>
> That's *ONE* definition of morality. But not everyone thinks that hurting or not hurting other people is a reasonable model for morality. Who decided it was, anyway?

Wait. Who was defining morality? Dave was specifically outlining a system of legislation that eliminated the concept of morality from legislation! The point is that, since people differ on what is moral and what isn't, our laws shouldn't be based around a subjective morality. We need to determine what the purpose of the law is in the first place.

Here's a real quick summation of most modern political philosophy (which hasn't changed much since Locke): governments are a coalition of force set up by individual people to protect their natural rights (the most basic of which are life, liberty and property). As such, the purpose of the law is to maintain these rights and little more. The Declaration of Independence says pretty much exactly the same thing.

Dave's argument was that when the state criminalizes things that do not infringe on people's rights, it is infringing upon the rights of the people who would engage in those activities. You see? This argument is actually very simple and sound. If we start trying to make it illegal for people to do things we don't like just because we don't like them, we are coercing other people to behave in a certain way for little reason. Most people agree this is bad.

> I'm not superintelligent, but I can see holes in that. Like, what about the mother who needs to punish her child with a spanking (tough love)? If the kid's never punished in this way, he'll grow up into a spineless, selfish brat with little respect for anyone or anything. Don't laugh, I've seen this happen numerous times before and it's not funny.

I don't know where to start here. First, you're making absolute claims based solely on anecdotal evidence ("I know some people this happened to"). Well, I also know people who weren't spanked and have turned out to be nice, responsible people. Even with that said, I have no problem with spanking because children are largely a special case -- most of their rights are designated to their parents, because children are pretty much unable to consider their actions.

> Or what about little Johnny, whose female next-door neighbor likes to garden in the nude? The neighbor may not be physically hurting anyone, but it doesn't take a huge amount of logic to reason that Johnny will grow up with a much different image of women after seeing this than if he didn't. Whether his change of thinking is a good thing may be debatable, but there's no denying the effects of sight and sound in shaping young minds. Physical pain is not the only influence in the way a person will turn out, and anyone who thinks that is being rather shortsighted.

A much different image of women than what? People who haven't seen women naked? I suppose we could describe such people as Catholic priests... Anyway, you're weasling around here. You seem to be arguing that seeing a naked woman would have a profound effect on a child, but you don't say it's a bad thing per se. Are you against it? If so, why?

Nobody would argue that people are influenced by things other than physical pain. But, if we take your argument further, does this mean we should restrict speech because hearing ideas may affect children? I'm not a big fan of Communism, so does that mean I should make sure nobody under 18 reads Marx?

A main component to your philosophy seems to be that Dave ignored the psychological aspect of life, which is true. Because it's virtually impossible to decide what is good and bad in this arena. Everyone who values life agrees it's bad to murder someone. But not everyone agrees on what ideas, thoughts and concepts are "bad." The U.S. government is founded on the idea that if something does not directly harm somebody else, then it should probably be allowed; this prevents tyranny. I feel I'm getting muddled, but I'm having trouble precisely pinning down what your argument is.

> I think our current democratic system works well enough. I'm speaking of the USA in particular, because it's the only government with which I'm really familiar. At any rate, nothing is legislated without extensive voting. The voters reflect the philosophical and ethical beliefs of the people, to a decent extent. Personally, I feel threatened by the uprise of liberals legislating liberal ideas in this country, but again, that's another thread.

I find it interesting that you believe there is an "uprise" among liberals; the executive branch is conservative and the congress is pretty evenly split. I'd say things are proceeding as they usually do.

> The thing about democracy is that sometimes people get what they want (yay, we win) and sometimes they don't (aww, we lose). Hopefully it all evens out in the end. And as long as the key force in power reflects the ideals of the majority of the people, I suppose the government's doing a good job. Even if that does place me in a political minority. If anyone can come up with a better method of government (something new, please) I'd be very interested to see it.

Actually, uh, the U.S. government is LOADS better than a simple democracy. The Bill of Rights consists of 10 statements largely limiting the power of the majority (embodied by the state, since the majority tends to dominate the government, though we'll get to that in a second) to tyrannize the minority. The bicameral structure of congress is an attempt to limit the powers of the majority (the Senate is unabashedly undemocractic) and so on. It's pretty much impossible for any majority to control the federal government since it's so spread out, and an entire one-third of the federal government (the judicial branch) is not elected by the people.

It is very, very important to never allow the majority in a country to have total dominance over the minority (nor must you allow a minority to dominate a majority). Everyone's rights must be protected, because everyone's rights are equal. This is why it makes sense to not allow people to legislate against things they simply don't like; legislation should only be used against things which cause a real danger to innocent people.

> As a side note, does anyone else find it odd how societies seem to begin conservative and slowly get more liberal?

No, this isn't really odd. It's called "progress."

Of course, you're probably using the modern definition of liberal. Classically, liberal meant oppossed to the status quo and people who favored greater personal freedom and participation in the government. Conservative *should* mean people who wish to maintain the status quo (think about what the word means in other contexts). The words now mean different things in different countries; a liberal in America would hardly be considered very liberal in Europe.

> I mean, look at America. It began with the puritans and slowly drifted away from that. Equal rights, womens rights, it sounds good. Then gay rights.

GASP! OH NO THE SPECTRE OF GAY RIGHTS. Wait... how is this bad?

> Now it's starting to bug me. Sometimes it seems like people want to rebel from traditional morals just because it's different (and maybe fun). I read on other message forums on the web about how great it is that culture is constantly pushing the envelope. People say "Hooray, we're getting more sex and nudity in video games! What an accomplishment for humanity!" and "Yeah! Did you see the naked butt on broadcast TV? Isn't that a groundbreaking achievement!?!" Sure, it's as if there's some kind of goal we're striving toward. What would that goal be, then? Total absence of any moral code? And the point would be...?

The problem is you just have a different morality than others do! Really, there are all sorts of people who have no problem with nudity. Don't think that they're "rebelling" against your code just because they feel like it. See why it's so difficult to legislate based on morality?

> Maybe people should consider what they really want before they push for it. What so many people consider victories, I call failures. It's sad to see a culture that rejoices when it becomes more corrupt and perverted. Oh well, that's entropy for you.

You're totally right. We should just make the Pope in charge again. Or maybe we should institute a Taliban. Theocracies work so well.

>
> -useless"People who think that bad is good are twisted, and bug me"ness

Ste "People who constantly want to control how others live their private lives bug me" phen