(One Person's will against the law of the land. Should he be silenced?)Before I start I have to mention why there was such a long break and why the weekly postings stopped.
It seemed that being forced to write about the last topic was the problem. Although I do want to go in more detail about the morality I mentioned before, and even though I know exactly what to write about, I wasn't inspired to write it.
There was no drive to put ink to paper or in this case fingers to keyboard. :)
I'll make sure in the future I keep philosophy where it should be, the tipping point of inspiration, where the writers ink is at it's least dry.
To hold writings over for another day and force yourself to a topic, it seems, is a no-no. :D
Many times I'd be inspired and I wouldn't write here simply because i knew I had to write the previous topic first and then move onto the one I was truly inspired to write.
Eventually the inspiration became too much and this post worked it's way out of me.
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Legality to give credibility to your stance
The titles topic is important to understand in context. I'm not anarchistic and I don't believe that laws are useless.
The legality I feel that is useless though, is using legality to prove your point or to back up your claims.
- Why can't we use legality to back up our claims?
- Doesn't the law reflect the majority of people's opinions in a given area?
- If a law truly were wrong, why would so many people support it?
All credible questions and all worthy of an answer.
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Examples of where we went wrong
If we kept our laws the way they were we would be stuck with:
- 1) Slavery of all African Americans
- 2) Inability for Women to vote
- 3) No Social Security
- 4) Non land owning individuals unable to vote
- 5) No minimum wage
- 6) No ends to the terms of office of the President (Be re-elected as many times as possible)
- 7) Alcohol continuing to be prohibited
- 8) No Limit on immigration (Constitution and their amendments originally allowed unlimited migration to the U.S)
- 9) No Child Labor Laws
- 10) The Cuban embargo
There are many more examples but 10 should be enough for now.
I'm thankful I never had to have a discussion with a person arguing in favor of slavery. I wouldn't know how to contain myself if they mentioned legality to me and told me "Slavery is legal, it should remain that way and our country would fail without it."
All of the opponents for the above laws could simply say "Our founders didn't want this and thus we should not legalize it".
They might also say that "The law is the law, and we have to follow it and defend it and protect it, it's our duty as American Citizens to do so".
We've made many mistakes with our laws.
Making something illegal doesn't mean it has to stay that way forever.
Making something illegal also doesn't necessarily make it evil.
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Laziness
If we just conform to all the laws and refuse to analyze them we could be doing harm to ourselves and to the people of our community.
This lazy mentality means we ignore the problems of our city or country and we keep the status-quo.
We may spend 100 years saying "Such and such is illegal, just don't do it" and find out what we were doing was enabling the deaths of millions of people.
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The People's Will (Essence of Law)
The law in it's purest essence is just the people's will. It's an order established of the people, by the people, and for the people.
To say that my opinion or any other person's opinion doesn't matter, or is wrong, because it's illegal means you don't understand the essence of law.
If all of America feels something to be legal, and yet it is truly illegal, there will be nothing to stop it.
A good example is copying pages from a copyrighted book. It's substantially illegal, but no on enforces it, and if a police officer saw you doing the above crime he would hardly give it a second thought.
It takes political and public will to make a law, a law.
A piece of paper means nothing.
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A step in the right direction
In the end you have to understand the essence of law and how it's related to the will of the people.
It's completely ignorant to say something is illegal and therefor evil.
It creates a lazy mentality and will never force us to re-evaluate our positions.
If we want to head in the right direction we only need to follow a few simple rules:
- 1) Analyze all laws and base proper opinions about them using concrete details and facts
- 2) Remember that our opponent is not automatically wrong if he argues in favor of something illegal, because it may soon become legal.
- 3) Understand that the essence of Law is the will of the people not the ink of a judge on paper.
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Popular issues where you will hear this legality argument
1) Immigration (This was the source of my inspiration, someone mentioning that we must enforce the laws of this country. He didn't understand that our will is the law of this country.)
2) Gun Control
3) Abortion
4) Stem Cell Research
In all the above cases, people stand where the law currently resides, if it agrees with their point of view, and they simply say we should be patriotic and respect the laws of this country.
Again there is a loss of this essence of the law which says our will should dictate how society is run not necessarily what the law currently is right now.
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How the law should be treated
It should be respected as it stands currently but the opinions of those working against it should always be heard.
At the end of the day we can't be anarchists and all follow our own rules. We submit to each other and submit to the majority opinion.
We should keep our minds open though to the other side, soon enough it will be their turn to be the majority and you will regret then you gave no time no listen.
Keeping an open mind is essential but even more so is keeping an open heart.
The feelings of a few can topple the dictates of a hundred tyrants.
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