A West Wing-related thought
Oct. 6th, 2008 08:51 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
I've moved on to the West Wing now, and am watching episodes and reading such scripts as have been published (not enough I say) and I came in my reading to the bit where Ainsley Hayes is justifying her opposition to the Equal Rights Amendment by saying that as a Republican, she believes that every time the government passes a new law, it leaves people with a little bit less freedom. I take that to be an accurate statement of one of the planks of Republicanism, and address it as such after this wise:
Laws are passed to deal with specific things, and should be dealt with specifically. "Freedom" is a fuzzy generality and doesn't exist in that form. The law against murder means that one is not free to kill someone else, at least not and get away with it. A law against paying a woman less than a man means that one is not free to pay a man one dollar and a woman seventy-nine cents for doing the same work. A law against abortion (to cover all extremes) means that one is not free safely and legally to have a foetus removed from one's body. If that freedom is important to you--if you want, or need, for people to be able to shortchange a human being for their efforts in your behalf, or if you want, or need, for people to be able to murder someone with impunity, or if you want, or need, for women to be able to terminate an unintended pregnancy and live through it--then you fight that law. You don't fight it because you looked at the gauge and there's less freedom in the tank than there was when you set out. Looked at in that way, all laws should be fought, even the ones that you might think make sense, and no new laws should ever be passed, even ones that we find later on we sorely need.
There are laws that should be fought. There are laws that should never have been passed. But "because they take away our freedom" is a stupid reason for fighting them. Of course they do. That's what they're for, mostly. The question is, is that particular freedom that is affected by that particular law...a freedom you want people to be able to exercise? And are you willing to stand up and say so in public?
EDIT: to sort out phraseology in the middle there. You should fight what you believe to be bad laws and fight for what you believe to be good laws whether they affect you directly or not.
Laws are passed to deal with specific things, and should be dealt with specifically. "Freedom" is a fuzzy generality and doesn't exist in that form. The law against murder means that one is not free to kill someone else, at least not and get away with it. A law against paying a woman less than a man means that one is not free to pay a man one dollar and a woman seventy-nine cents for doing the same work. A law against abortion (to cover all extremes) means that one is not free safely and legally to have a foetus removed from one's body. If that freedom is important to you--if you want, or need, for people to be able to shortchange a human being for their efforts in your behalf, or if you want, or need, for people to be able to murder someone with impunity, or if you want, or need, for women to be able to terminate an unintended pregnancy and live through it--then you fight that law. You don't fight it because you looked at the gauge and there's less freedom in the tank than there was when you set out. Looked at in that way, all laws should be fought, even the ones that you might think make sense, and no new laws should ever be passed, even ones that we find later on we sorely need.
There are laws that should be fought. There are laws that should never have been passed. But "because they take away our freedom" is a stupid reason for fighting them. Of course they do. That's what they're for, mostly. The question is, is that particular freedom that is affected by that particular law...a freedom you want people to be able to exercise? And are you willing to stand up and say so in public?
EDIT: to sort out phraseology in the middle there. You should fight what you believe to be bad laws and fight for what you believe to be good laws whether they affect you directly or not.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-06 10:58 pm (UTC)The problem isn't so much laws or even the number of laws that might restrict someone's freedom in a "good cause". The problem is partly that one person's definition of a "good cause" may not be someone else's and partly that the more laws you get, the greater the temptation to enact one for the next -- perhaps not universally popular -- good cause.
There's also the problem that laws are enforced unevenly. That speed trap (or speed camera in your case) is there for the public good, right? Of course, should the speed trap pick up the son of the mayor, well, he might be let go with a warning.
Me, not so much. :)
Now, I am not one of the around-the-bend libertarians. There are clearly things that government can and should do. I'm not a fan of, for example, private police forces. Or courts, for that matter.
But the temptation to pass the stupid law just gets worse the more that our elected leaders think that they should have control of everything and correct every possible injustice. At the risk of offending someone, I'll mention Chicago's recently repealed ban on pate de foie gras, which was originally enacted because the force feeding of the ducks was deemed cruel.
It may well be -- I am no expert on the subject, nor do I particularly care to be (so we can skip the links :) ). But I'm far from convinced that this was a matter that the Chicago City Council needed to be involved in.
The most common reaction here: Doesn't that bunch of wardheelers have something better to do with their time?
no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 12:20 am (UTC)One person's definition of a good cause may indeed not be someone else's (and we're back with the question of whether there's such a thing as an absolute morality, so let's back away slowly), but it's usually easier to sort it out if you take the reverse case. Who wants ducks to be force fed, and why? Who wants to be able to blow their neighbours away and not be punished for it, and why? Who wants women to be entitled to lower wages than men for the same work, and why? Who wants to make it impossible for women to obtain legal abortions, and why? When you see who is benefiting by a particular "freedom," and who would be harmed by its curtailment, it's easier to see whether a law limiting that "freedom" would be harmful to the general welfare or not.
"Correcting every possible injustice" is a worthy goal to aim for, if hardly achievable. "Having control of everything" is a different thing entirely, and anyone who wants that should have been screened out of the political process before they got to be nominated, let alone elected. I don't believe one equates to the other.
If a stupid law is proposed, it should be fought as a stupid law. I don't think the number of laws already on the books has any influence on the actual probability of the next one being a stupid one. And, of course, one person's definition of a "stupid law" is not the same as someone else's. "The smallest (actual) harm to the smallest number" might be a possible basic rule of thumb, though it's by no means a perfect one and I'd hate to have to defend it in court.
For instance, to stick with the examples we've been using: the law against foie gras benefits nobody directly, and curtails the actual freedom of the relatively small number of people who can afford to pay for a particular delicacy and the relatively small number of suppliers who charge through the nose for it.
A law against unequal pay for women (leaving out of consideration any short-term upheavals it might cause, and taking the long view) benefits every employed woman (and every man who might otherwise be done out of a job because the female applicant was cheaper), and curtails the freedom of bosses to use women as a cheap labour pool and the freedom of men to feel superior to women because their work is "worth" more.
And a law against abortion benefits nobody directly, and curtails the potential freedom of every single female child now alive in America.
The uneven enforcement of laws is a separate problem, as is the perception that because a rich/connected person is let off with a warning the law is therefore invalid. As long as property is unevenly distributed, whoever has the gold will, if not make, at least be variably subject to, the rules. This may also explain the repealing of a law that infringes the freedom of a bunch of rich restaurant-goers to eat one particular thing and not have to pick something else from the wildly diverse menu at their disposal. :)
no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 02:28 am (UTC)It also prevents the legal system from producing a first precedent that allows you to outlaw the manufacture and consumption of a food because it's "cruel". As a committed omnivore with a taste for beef, pork, and the like, I'd rather hate to outlaw meat because raising animals for food is deemed inherently cruel by a group that's sufficiently well connected to get a law passed against it. Yes, I understand that this is a slippery slope argument, but an examination of laws and precedents will show that there are indeed times when you find yourself sliding off somewhere that the first person to set legal foot on the slope would never imagine.
The need for a law against a particular activity seems to me to be pretty directly connected to the magnitude and the immediacy of the harm to an individual by someone who would be breaking the proposed law. Thus, a law against murder is pretty easy to see the need for. (It's a shame that it isn't so obvious that we don't need the law, but that's humanity for you.)
So it's pretty obvious, to pick another example, that you shouldn't be driving when absolutely blotto from drink. But is .08 the right limit? (That's our limit here; yours may be different.) Wouldn't we all be safer if the limit was .001? Maybe so, but would we be enough safer for this to be a good idea?
There are groups that think so. I don't think I agree.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 03:22 am (UTC)I'm primarily a carnivore and if eating meat were outlawed I would be in real trouble, but there is a palpable difference between, say, outlawing beef (which is meat from cows however produced) and outlawing veal (the production of which, as I understand it, involves procedures that are undeniably and unnecessarily cruel to the calf involved). For one thing, outlawing beef on the grounds of cruelty would lead to the mass extermination of millions of suddenly uneconomic cows that nobody is going to want to feed, and I would think even the most avid animal rights extremist could see the disconnect there. There are better ways of keeping and raising food animals, but they are expensive in terms of money and effort, and the only way these will ever gain ascendancy over the more "efficient" and cheaper non-humane options will be if they are enforced by law. At which point meat becomes a lot more expensive, and I learn to love the soya bean, probably.
I agree that slippery slopes do happen, having used similar arguments myself, but I maintain that they happen because instead of looking at the points on the slope individually and judging where to slam in the piton, you have one side crying out for fewer laws, the other side (possibly, though I'm not sure I believe it) crying out for more laws, and no-one looking at which laws.
The commonsense view on drink/driving is that the "safe limit" is the level past which a policeman can see there is something wrong so that he stops you. Anything under that level will not be detected, at least till the judgment fails and the accident happens. In my own personal opinion, there are too many other variables (fatigue, emotional state, light levels, weather) and the only safe level is zero, but the police have to have a figure they can reasonably enforce. I have to trust them not to let too many drunks past or to give themselves too much needless work. (I don't know what our figure is here, and the units may be different anyway.)
This is another area where there has been a ton of moral persuasion to no visible effect. Some people know it's stupid to drink and drive and don't; they don't need persuasion. Some people don't care, do it, and hopefully get caught by the law; they don't notice the persuasion.
I too would like to believe that moral persuasion could achieve more, and in a better way, than legislation. Unfortunately, I can't.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 12:51 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 03:24 am (UTC)We do the best we can with what we've got.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 04:43 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 08:28 am (UTC)I like the idea of a well-armed society. It is indeed true, I think, that a society equipped with strong laws founded in a consensus of decency, an effective yet not oppressive enforcement agency, an impartial and yet humane judiciary and other such nice things is likely also to flower in courtesy and other virtues. I hope one day to see such a society upon the earth, though I'm betting it won't be yours or mine.
A collection of individuals each of whom has a gun isn't a society, it's just a collection of individuals who are scared of each other. I realise that for some people that's the ne plus ultra, and I'm talking about people whose idea of "protect[ing] their rights and property the old-fashioned way" hasn't altered since they did it with a bone club...but I'm not one of those people, you're not one of those people, and I don't believe (unless you tell me differently) your friend is either.
Down here, when we talk about our rights and property, we have a somewhat more developed idea of "rights," "property," and for that matter "our." Our rights are not something we can defend by blowing the head off anyone who comes within ten feet of the barbed wire around our bunker. Our property is not defined as whatever we can grab and keep hold of by the same means. And "we" are not "myself, my family and the rest of the world can go to hell."
We could, if we're not careful, end up back there in the swamp, but it would be a real shame after all the centuries we've spent trying to find a way to move forward and out of it and build ourselves some solid ground, a place to stand so that we can move the world. We can do great things when we have time to think and space to breathe, and we do not have those things when all we are thinking about is survival and building a more devastating bone club.
Anyway, that would be my answer to your imp. If he were my imp, the answer would be much shorter and involve a fly swatter and a jam jar. My imp knows me better than to try that one.
no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 06:51 pm (UTC)So is it the imp that gives us an impulse? If so, what kinds of ulse might we get from other mythlogical creatures that hang around near us?
no subject
Date: 2008-10-07 10:01 pm (UTC)