Following up on my thoughts on "laws", I will say I believe there is a huge distinction between "legal" and "right". I am not a lawyer so I do not pretend to have any expertise in legal matters. What some may call "simplistic", I think of as "cutting through the crap". I also believe that the "law" has lost most of its relevance to "right and wrong" precisely because it has become so convoluted and self-contradictory that it requires legal scholars to decipher.
In my view, laws should be easily understood by the average person in a particular culture. "Average" means that person would probably seem rather dull-witted to most people who concern themselves with "legal matters". If a law requires panels of judges or law-firms to interpret and rule upon, then it is too complicated to be useful in day-to-day life. I have had lawyers admit to me that they have very little understanding of laws outside of their direct area of expertise. How then could a government expect you and I to understand the laws which they expect us to obey to the letter? I don't think that most of these "laws" were put in place in order to destroy our lives; most were probably proposed with good intentions, but I do think that has been the unintended consequence that has come out of it. Plus, in the case of "laws" which attempt to regulate something other than actual initiation of force or fraud, they have no ethical standing to begin with. They are "counterfeit" just as surely as if I were to run dollar bills off my home printer. Having the appearance of legitimacy does not make something legitimate. "Legalese" does not make a "law" legitimate.
Someone made the comment to me that my simplistic views on "laws" can't work in today's society because we no longer live in the 13 original colonies, but in 50 states with a multitude of jurisdictions. Perhaps. I believe that the more people you try to apply the "law" to, the less specific it must be. This could be called the "simplest common denominator" legal theory. You can't declare that all people must be 5'6" tall and weight 200 pounds. Human variances make such declarations absurd. You must accept that people are different, and have different values. As long as they do not aggress against others or defraud them in any way, you must leave them alone to live their lives as they see fit. Doctors have a principal precept which states "First, do no harm". If it is your intention to write, pass, or enforce laws, you should make the exact same pledge: "First, do no harm".
As I have said many times in the past, I don't care if you pass laws from sun up to sun down "legalizing" some criminal action such as taxation or "no-knock raids". A "law" will never make those things right. The claim that I am incorrect for thinking this way is a symptom of how far from free our society has fallen.
