How closely do you adhere to the law?

[Lord Garnaat]

The fact is laws are not always set up to be the best for the society they apply to. They can often be absurd like the right wing in America trying to make unnecessary requirements to getting the perfectly legal abortion, to down right be used to oppress the entirety of people for the security not of the society but the vile establishment that rules over them.

I wish I could see the OP go to the internment camps in North Korea which force labors under brutal conditions and have him try to explain that they deserve it simply because they became aware that one of their local official is having a affair (yes this really happens for this reason) and explain that their children deserved to executed because they got too weak to work. After all the law is "absolute" right?

There is only one thing that can compare to someone who thinks laws should be followed and never broken nor challenged.

In 1943 it was illegal to be Jewish in Germany, and the punishment was death. So is the OP saying that all of those Jews deserved the gassing they got?

In Texas it's currently illegal to have gay sex, or even straight oral and anal sex. Should these people be locked up?

Prior to 1865 if my farm equipment stopped working I simply had to beat it to get it back to work. Was owning people okay back then because it was legal.


I haven't even gone to google yet, these are just coming straight off of my head.

If I consider a law immoral, and the actions it prohibits morally justifiable, I will break the law if I feel like it.

I find purely deonthologcal ethics to be a reprehensible practice, substituting individual thought and strife to find what is right and wrong for a blind adherence to the moral codes of authority. It's a perfect recipe for stopping progress dead in its tracks.

I haven't read the thread yet, but I'm guessing that your neighbours are engaged in recreational drug use. If this is so, I'd consider your reporting them an immoral act of malice.

After reading the comments I have come to the conclusion that I may need to better explain my position. A point that keeps coming up is that what is lawful is not always what is morally right, and that one should not follow the law blindly. And I completely agree with that sentiment.

I am of the opinion that the core purpose of the law is to protect those who are innocent, punish those who are guilty, and preserve what is just and what is morally right. When a law fails to do this, if it used simply for the purpose of unjust oppression, tyranny, or violating common sense than it is the duty of any and all lawful citizens to strike that law down and revise it. So the laws propped up by an unjust authority, such as Nazi Germany or North Korea, or laws that maintain a system that is simply reprehensible, like slavery, need to be opposed by anyone who truly believes in what the law is meant to be. That is the essence of democracy and civilized society in general.

I also do not believe, in any sense, that all crimes are equal. A murderer and a jaywalker are not even remotely similar in terms of their crimes, and should be treated as such. And while things like the aforementioned jaywalking are against the law, I feel that they are minor enough that it is forgivable if one cannot follow it at all times.

But you see, that's just the problem: the people I'm referring to are not opposing some morally repulsive authority. They aren't protecting an inherent human right, defending what is just, or supporting some moral cause by breaking the law. They're doing it simply for the sake of breaking the law, for the sole purpose of raising a big middle finger to the rest of society because they find it amusing to do so. Is that really right? Is it really worth defending them when they have clearly done something opposed by both the law and common morality?

When you have to choose between what is lawful and what is right, you should always choose what is right. The law is not inherently sacred, but the righteous principles behind those laws are. But when you are not asked to choose, why should you not do both? Why should people not be expected to follow the law when doing so does not violate what is right, but instead supports it? You can never follow the law and still be good, and you can follow the law all the time and still not be a good person, but the ideal that people should be held to is being able to do both.

 

[winginson]

Going past 70 mph on motorways I also have no problem with as modern cars are more than controllable at 80+.

If you can't safely do 60 in a 40 (out of a town 40), or 100 on a motorway you shouldn't be allowed to drive. I would like the limits raised a bit but then theres too many people who can't drive well as it is.

Apart from speeding and my bikes pipes I follow the law fairly close.

Both you and the poster you quoted seem to misunderstand what speed limits are for.It has NOTHING to do with how well you can control your car. It's all about how likely you'll need to stop and the amount of time you'll need to do so. That's why highways are 70+ (no lights or pedestrians, just the occasional idiot) and residentials are 25 (kids playing in or near the street)

OT I abide by laws for the most part, but occasionally i'll go 5 over the limit, or jaywalk across an empty street. Not proud of it, but sometimes i just don't care.

Thats why I specified out of town. I don't speed through town because, as you say, there are far too many things that you may need to brake for. I was complaining about the times you see a nice straight road in the middle of nowhere pegged at 50mph, and the fact that while any good driver could safely go down a motorway at 100mph there are far too many people who can't do 70 safely. There are far too many people that don't crash only because they they fall into routine, and don't have the awareness to deal with anything else.

 

[Faladorian]

snip

I'm an 18-year-old male and I've never done any of those besides jaywalk and infringe copyright. Why do I feel like this post was just a way of showing off how "badass" you are?

Or it was a list of extremely average things that have happened in my life that if interpreted by the law, would see me charged with those offences... Go ahead, ask me about any of those charges and i'll tell you how "badass" it really was.

I didnt mean that they were somehow major offenses, because most of them arent. What i meant is, making the list in the first place seemed more along the lines of being showy, and deviated from the topic of simply stating your position.


But it was merely an observation. Everyone has their way of conveying their opinion, I just found yours odd. That's not to say that I'm implying you're just doing it for attention, that's just how it came across.

Believe me, I'm the king of bad first impressions, so I know face value as I interpret it can be far off the mark. For example, you probably felt antagonized by my statement, and I can see why, but that's not how I meant it to be. Needless to say I'm not applying to be a diplomat.

 

[Raven's Nest]

I didnt mean that they were somehow major offenses, because most of them arent. What i meant is, making the list in the first place seemed more along the lines of being showy, and deviated from the topic of simply stating your position.


But it was merely an observation. Everyone has their way of conveying their opinion, I just found yours odd. That's not to say that I'm implying you're just doing it for attention, that's just how it came across.

Believe me, I'm the king of bad first impressions, so I know face value as I interpret it can be far off the mark. For example, you probably felt antagonized by my statement, and I can see why, but that's not how I meant it to be. Needless to say I'm not applying to be a diplomat.

No worries. I guess I don't really know how I feel about the law in general. I consider myself to be a good, moral person but then as the argument has been waged, morality doesn't necessarily equal ethics. And since we are judged by a set of ethics rather than morals I think by displaying a list of laws I know have been broken (no matter how trivial or misconstrued), I aim to speak actions rather than words I guess.

I feel entirely indifferent, neither proud nor ashamed to the actual situations in which those laws have been broken. Apart from a few, the vast majority are victimless crimes. The excessive speeding was done on my own, on a clear motorway at the deadest part of the night. I wouldn't necessarily do it again but I can sure respect why we have such laws. The attempted theft was me drunkenly attempting to pinch someone's hubcap, because mine were also stolen... Not exactly crime of the century. The drugs offences, well being friends and occasionally doing the rounds with a drug dealer will make you an accessory to all that. I find the idea of making money off of selling drugs very reprehensible. And I don't hang with that person any more.

I think mostly I was demonstrating how an average, well meaning person can still find themselves foul of the law. I certainly wasn't aiming to show off so to speak. More of a commentary on the way teens from my background have grown up and respond to the sometimes arbritary laws in our society. Nothing more, nothing less.

 

[not_you]

Friends of mine hate the law, and do everything in their power to oppose it without actually being punished... But petty things aside, I do hold it in very high standard...

Within the best of my ability, I adhere to all letters of the law, well, mostly... I should probably clean out my external to remove illegal material.

I admit, I'm not perfect, and I do break it every now-and-then without punishment just because I couldn't be bothered to look for things and just go "yeah, this will do" without thought...

I mean, that's a big vague, but it makes sense in my mind...

OT: As for reporting a crime of a neighbour... Yeah, I would... Mainly because I don't know my neighbours very well, if they were friends of mine, I'd ask them to stop (or at least get it out of my sight) before saying anything to police... But for the strangers, I have right now, I wouldn't wait a minute before reporting.

 

[Moderated]

I follow it, and disprove of people who don't, but I'm not a snitch. Everyone knows _____ smokes pot, and ____ downloads music illegally. Unless it's a serious crime, I'm silent. If on the other hand, I see someone being murdered or raped, then I'll speak up.

 

[Faladorian]

-8<---

I see where you're coming from. There are a lot of ways that a perfectly moral person can end up in the same cell as a violent criminal, and end up enduring punishment far, far beyond their actual wrongdoing.

Case and point: Marijuana. A teenager who smokes pot could end up going to jail and being beaten to death in a prison fight, simply because the consequence for an action was astronomically higher than the societal consequences of the action.


It's for this reason I abide by the law to the fullest: Not because I think it's absolute or always the right thing, but because my country's justice system is so irreparably fucked that even minor offenses can absolutely ruin your life.

If you haven't gathered, I'm not a very patriotic person.

 

[CAPTCHA]

Last time I broke the law was when I attempted to steal a DVD about 8 years back. I got caught and the security guards, ex military types, took me in the back room and kicked the absolute shit out of me. I still have a scar across my lower back where they hit me with a metal chair. Worst part was when they threw me into a corner and one of them pressed all their weight down on the top of my head. Almost broke my neck. That would have been a bad way to go out, in the back room of HMV.