KentForLiberty pages

Thursday, March 10, 2011

More laws only create more chaos

More laws only create more chaos (As written; not as published!)

Robert LeFevre, one of the bright stars of the freedom movement who is now gone, but whose legacy remains, once said with regards to liberty that most people like freedom for themselves, but as soon as they feel a fear that someone else may try to take away their freedom, they become tempted to act like a tyrant first and try to take away the freedom of those they fear. In other words, in their fear they become the very thing they were afraid of and become the embodiment of the opposite of freedom. This is what people who really love freedom and liberty need to guard against in their own lives.

I would imagine that everyone is afraid of something. Many people live under the belief that if just the right "laws" are passed and enforced, life will be safe. They believe they will then be protected from those things they fear.

This has never been the case in the entire history of civilization, but hope springs eternal, and those who wish to rule the rest of us feed on this hope for safety.

A while back someone wrote "We wouldn't need so many laws if there weren't so many idiots." This is apparently a very common opinion, but it ignores reality and the law of unintended consequences.

"Laws" create "idiots" by protecting some people from the full consequences of their actions, and by giving a false sense of security to others; encouraging them to not take responsibility for their own life. The existence of these "idiots" and the tragedies that inevitably result are then used as justification for more "laws" which in turn create more "idiots" and more tragedies. It's the same old drama that has played out for thousands of years all over the globe.

What cost "safety"? You could reduce the frequency of hangnails by cutting off every finger to ever develop one, but most people would recognize the price as too high. You might make life "safer" by outlawing liberty, too, but that cost is immeasurably higher.

The reality is that bad things happen. You could criminalize every last shred of liberty and freedom, and even if you refused to admit this is a bad thing in itself, other bad things would still happen every single day without fail. No "laws" can change this. There is no Utopia. No one is able to guard you from harm better than yourself. Accept your responsibility, for it lies with no one else.

Why don't I just shut up?

Back when I was in high school, in a zoology class, the teacher was giving us a test on the classification of various pickled or otherwise prepared critters. We were allowed to look over the various dead things, along with their classifications, before the test.

I was glancing over the specimens without thinking too much about it until I came to a mislabeled fish. It was clearly a tiny flounder (a "bony fish") of the type commonly sold in pet stores, yet it was labeled as a "skate" and classified as "Class: Chondrichthyes" ("cartilaginous fish").

I pointed out this error to the teacher. To me, it was a critical mistake, on the level of claiming a dolphin is a fish or a bat is a bird. But the teacher just said, "for our purposes, it is a Chondrichthyes".

I said he was misleading his students in this way; he was not educating them but giving them false information. In fact, I just wouldn't shut up about it.

He said I was "beating a dead horse" and I needed to "drop it". Even on my test, though, I wrote a comment about "mislabeled as..." rather than just letting it go.

Yes, I was a pain even then.

That's why I still speak out. I value the truth. Truth, even when inconvenient, painful, or annoying is still better than a comforting lie. Liberty is better for the individual than The State. Taxation is theft. The military is anti-liberty and pro-tyranny. And no amount of denial will change the facts.

Added:
I've recently realized this is why I won't go along with the "transgender" lie or the "non-binary" nonsense. If it's a flounder, it's a flounder even if it imagines it is (or lies about being) a skate. I won't lie or go along with a lie (or a delusion) just because I'm told to do so. You aren't helping by going along. If you identify the speeding truck that's coming at you as a butterfly, it's still a truck and will kill you if you don't move out of its way. No matter how much it hurts your feelings to admit it's really a truck. Reality doesn't care about your feelings. Every cell in your body will testify against you if you misidentify your sex (and "gender" is a feature of some words, not of biological lifeforms-- another lie). Now, you might get away with it if I can't tell by looking, and I don't really care in that case. But if I can tell by looking that you are lying about what you are, I'm not going to go along with the lie. And I'm not sorry.

.