Using law against someone uncivilized

(My Clovis News Journal column for August 12, 2016)

Using laws to meddle is uncivilized (my chosen headline)

I can relate when someone gets upset about laws being used against them. Especially the phony laws which have nothing to do with protecting life, liberty, or property. To me, this is the height of uncivil behavior. 

If someone has a problem with me, and goes behind my back instead of bringing the problem to me first, I can't take them seriously. Involving the law seems, to me, a cowardly act. They skipped right past being an adult and ran to tell mommy. Or Big Brother, as the case may be. It's as if their very first response to a problem is to pull a gun.

People like that aren't people I can respect or deal with.

So, when anyone has a counterfeit "law" used against them, I understand the anger and frustration they feel.

What is beyond my understanding is when the same people who don't want the meddlesome laws used against them turn to the same sort of law as a weapon to use against others.

What are they thinking, if they are thinking at all?

You only deserve the liberty you respect in others. If you run to report anyone for doing things which upset you-- things you may even feel are wrong, though they don't violate you or any third party-- how can you complain when someone turns the tables and does the same to you? When it comes to "an eye for an eye", I want to be selling eye patches.

You don't like someone's sex life? They may not like yours, either. It's not the law's concern.

You don't like what someone smokes, drinks, or otherwise consumes? Maybe they don't like something you do. Perhaps they even believe something you do is wrong and should be punished.

Maybe you suspect someone doesn't have their papers in order, or is breaking some law you support. On average, you commit three felonies every day without intending to, or even realizing it. No one is law-abiding.

To send the law after people is hypocritical, or worse.

It doesn't matter that some politician once had a warped idea, made up a law about it, and has an army of hired guns at his disposal to enforce his opinion under threat of death. If you send the enforcers after someone because they violated one of these "laws", you have broken the truce society depends upon for its very survival. If there is any such thing as a "social contract", you have discarded it.

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