Victimless Crimes - Politics Forum.org | PoFo

Wandering the information superhighway, he came upon the last refuge of civilization, PoFo, the only forum on the internet ...

Classical liberalism. The individual before the state, non-interventionist, free-market based society.
Forum rules: No one line posts please.
By mdinh1
#14600646
What is the argument behind the idea that the state shouldn't be involved in victimless crimes like drug and alcohol addiction? A typical argument I hear is that "we can't just make law based on protecting people, it has to be based on morality, too (and then something along the lines of drug usage is immoral). When we legalize drugs, we're pretty much saying that it's an okay act. Even if someone is just sitting in his house getting drunk or getting high and harming no one else, we are at fault if we do nothing about his problem."

What is the principle behind keeping the government out of victimless crimes (however self destructive they may be)?
User avatar
By Ganeshas Rat
#14600654
The argument is nobody can point to someone adult how to live, or, more correctly, what to do with his life. Oral sex, to move to another city or country, cheating, smoking, alcohol, drugs, euthanasia. It is just the question where would you set up the border between allowed and disallowed.
#14600678
mdinh1 wrote:What is the argument behind the idea that the state shouldn't be involved in victimless crimes like drug and alcohol addiction?

There are a number, of which perhaps the strongest is that it just makes things worse.
A typical argument I hear is that "we can't just make law based on protecting people, it has to be based on morality, too (and then something along the lines of drug usage is immoral). When we legalize drugs, we're pretty much saying that it's an okay act. Even if someone is just sitting in his house getting drunk or getting high and harming no one else, we are at fault if we do nothing about his problem."

The issue is that recreational drug use has social costs. The problem is that prohibition's social costs are typically -- and sometimes astronomically -- higher than the social costs of drug use.
What is the principle behind keeping the government out of victimless crimes (however self destructive they may be)?

It's typically based on a "right to liberty" or "pursuit of happiness" argument, but IMO these arguments misconstrue the nature and source of rights. There's an unavoidable tension between liberty and society, and society has a pretty strong interest in preventing self-destructive behavior. So it's not that government has no business interfering, but that prohibition is the wrong approach because it engages some very harmful social and economic consequences that rival or exceed the consequences of drug use. We would get better results by devoting the same expenditures to education, youth interventions, etc. rather than cops, courts, and prisons.
User avatar
By Joe Liberty
#14603166
mdinh1 wrote: When we legalize drugs, we're pretty much saying that it's an okay act.


No, we are not. We're saying that it's not something government has any business with. Adultery is quite legal, that doesn't mean "we" are saying that it's okay. Don't confuse the law as some kind of reflection of your personal morality, nor as a parental figure, it's neither.

I'll add a different perspective: in a self-governing society, the power of the government is derived from the consent of the governed. Now, since you can't give power you don't have in the first place, this technically means the government can't do anything that you couldn't do on your own, if you had the resources. Since you have no right to interfere with your neighbor in the name of protecting him from himself (or stealing some of his income to give it to somebody else, but that's a different topic), then government can't be given that power either. This is logically consistent, but of course not how it's been put into practice.

Another point is that government does not exist to treat adults like idiot children, but to secure their rights. If you want to kill yourself on drugs, this government has no moral authority to stop you. This argument is complicated when the welfare state is factored in, because then the statists can use the "cost to society" argument. That one is hard to counter, because it is very much true that he who pays the cost is the boss. If you're going to allow government to take on your personal responsibility for you, you're going to lose some liberty, that's just how it works.

For a practical argument, one needs only observe the militarization of the police force, the erosion of basic liberties, the increased surveillance state, and the corruption of police forces and prosecutors to know that the drug war has been an abysmal and expensive failure for everyone except police forces, the prison complex, politicians, and cartels.
#14603377
mdinh1 wrote: When we legalize drugs, we're pretty much saying that it's an okay act.

Joe Liberty wrote:No, we are not. We're saying that it's not something government has any business with.

No, we are not. We may only be saying that criminalization/prohibition is unwise and counter-productive. Which it clearly is. Government clearly does have business with people's private vices, to the extent that they harm the polity; the question is, what is the best approach to minimizing their social harm? The fact that prohibition has been a massive, catastrophic failure does not in any way imply that government should do nothing to mitigate harms caused by drug use, or that it has no business doing anything.
Adultery is quite legal, that doesn't mean "we" are saying that it's okay. Don't confuse the law as some kind of reflection of your personal morality, nor as a parental figure, it's neither.

Adultery is legal -- but you can still be sued successfully for it. So government is not taking a hands-off approach, just a wiser approach than in the case of drugs.
I'll add a different perspective: in a self-governing society, the power of the government is derived from the consent of the governed. Now, since you can't give power you don't have in the first place, this technically means the government can't do anything that you couldn't do on your own, if you had the resources.

Wrong. There are many things people can't rightly do on their own which government CAN rightly do because its JOB is to secure and reconcile people's individual rights, and an individual can't do that. Most particularly, government arises in the first place because of the need, in a settled society, to administer possession and use of land to secure rightful property in fixed improvements. No individual can rightly do that.
Since you have no right to interfere with your neighbor in the name of protecting him from himself (or stealing some of his income to give it to somebody else, but that's a different topic), then government can't be given that power either. This is logically consistent, but of course not how it's been put into practice.

Non sequitur. Rights only have meaning in society, and interfering with people's drug use is not to protect them from themselves, but to protect society from the effects of their irresponsible drug use. I have no illusions about the atrocity of prohibition (especially its use effectively to reinstate slavery in the USA), but it's not wrong because government has no interest in curbing drug use. It's wrong because it does far more harm than good.
Another point is that government does not exist to treat adults like idiot children, but to secure their rights. If you want to kill yourself on drugs, this government has no moral authority to stop you.

Yes, it does, because rights COME FROM our condition as social animals of a specific sort in the first place.
This argument is complicated when the welfare state is factored in, because then the statists can use the "cost to society" argument. That one is hard to counter, because it is very much true that he who pays the cost is the boss. If you're going to allow government to take on your personal responsibility for you, you're going to lose some liberty, that's just how it works.

No, the radical libertarian view is not based on a sound analysis of the source and nature of individual rights. They exist only because they are socially useful, not because individuals have priority over society.
For a practical argument, one needs only observe the militarization of the police force, the erosion of basic liberties, the increased surveillance state, and the corruption of police forces and prosecutors to know that the drug war has been an abysmal and expensive failure for everyone except police forces, the prison complex, politicians, and cartels.

We're on board with the practical argument. We're agreed prohibition is an atrocity. But we differ on why.
User avatar
By Left Behind
#14603722
I've heard one rather novel argument for the legalisation of hard drugs. Namely, once legal, addicts will destroy themselves through the use of drugs, and many will die. Overtime "natural selection" will take its course and we will be left with a society free of drug addicts. They get what they want (drugs) and we get what we want (a society free of drug issues).

I don't agree with this, but saw fit to present it here.
User avatar
By Dagoth Ur
#14603730
What? It isn't like junkies birth little junkies. The most destructive drug users I have ever met have come from square households. Whoever said this has no idea why people do drugs.
User avatar
By Left Behind
#14603990
Dagoth Ur wrote:What? It isn't like junkies birth little junkies. The most destructive drug users I have ever met have come from square households. Whoever said this has no idea why people do drugs.


Exactly, that's why I don't agree with it,
User avatar
By Joe Liberty
#14605697
Truth To Power wrote:We may only be saying that criminalization/prohibition is unwise and counter-productive. Which it clearly is. Government clearly does have business with people's private vices, to the extent that they harm the polity;
[

Again with the nebulous "harm" to abstract concepts...

The fact that prohibition has been a massive, catastrophic failure does not in any way imply that government should do nothing to mitigate harms caused by drug use, or that it has no business doing anything.


That's true, as far as it goes, the massive failure of the drug war is not the reason government has no business prohibiting drugs. It's an unintended consequence (an utterly predictable one at that) of government's attempts to do something it has no business doing. The reason it has no business doing it is because it was granted no powers to do so by the constitution. They needed a constutional amendment to ban alchohol, there is no such amendment to ban anything else. Thus, it simply does not have the power.

dultery is legal -- but you can still be sued successfully for it. So government is not taking a hands-off approach, just a wiser approach than in the case of drugs.


The fact that a government-run court system will entertain divorce requests does not invalidate my analogy. Adultery is indeed perfectly legal, there are no laws against it at all, and by your logic that means the government is saying that it's okay. That is not the truth.

Me wrote:I'll add a different perspective: in a self-governing society, the power of the government is derived from the consent of the governed. Now, since you can't give power you don't have in the first place, this technically means the government can't do anything that you couldn't do on your own, if you had the resources.

Truth to Power wrote: Wrong.


No, that's exactly right, the US government gets its power by the consent of the governed, and you can't give away something you don't have.

There are many things people can't rightly do on their own which government CAN rightly do because its JOB is to secure and reconcile people's individual rights, and an individual can't do that.


An individual most certainly can defend his own rights. That's why he can grant government the power to do it on his behalf, when the threats to one's rights are on a grander scale (such as an invasion).

Most particularly, government arises in the first place because of the need, in a settled society, to administer possession and use of land to secure rightful property in fixed improvements. No individual can rightly do that.


Sure they can, and did, before government came along. You can stake a claim to a property and defend it, so that power can be granted to government to do on a large scale.

Rights only have meaning in society, and interfering with people's drug use is not to protect them from themselves, but to protect society from the effects of their irresponsible drug use.


If by "society" you mean other individuals (because it means nothing else), you've now granted government the power to pre-emptively take action before any harm has been done to anybody. That's a dangerous precedent, and one of the reasons prohibition is so corrupting.

Yes, it does, because rights COME FROM our condition as social animals of a specific sort in the first place.


No, privileges and "civil" rights are granted by government. You have inherent rights as an adult human being that government does not grant, that was the whole point of the Constitution, to prohibit the federal government from interfering with those rights.

Even if I were to accept the flawed premise of your statement, that doesn't mean government can treat you like an idiot child.

No, the radical libertarian view is not based on a sound analysis of the source and nature of individual rights.


Don't tell me how I've arrived at my political philosophy, and I won't tell you how you arrived at yours.

We're on board with the practical argument. We're agreed prohibition is an atrocity. But we differ on why.


But from what I can tell, your "why" doesn't actually prohibit the government from doing it, in fact you defend the power of the government to treat citizens like retarded children. I don't see how that would correct this problem at all.
User avatar
By Saeko
#14605763
Recreational drugs are the very essence of useless and socially harmful consumerism.

Drug dealers get rich for doing essentially nothing.

Drug abusers don't do anything productive except get high all day, and eventually destroy their health (taking medical resources away from people who actually need them) and turn to crime to feed their habit.

There are absolutely no upsides to drug legalization from my perspective.
By Pants-of-dog
#14605771
Saeko wrote:Recreational drugs are the very essence of useless and socially harmful consumerism.


I doubt it.

I find that the (perfectly legal) market in automobiles and fossil fuels causes far more harm to society than marijuana.

Drug dealers get rich for doing essentially nothing.


So does anyone born to wealthy parents.

Drug abusers don't do anything productive except get high all day, and eventually destroy their health (taking medical resources away from people who actually need them) and turn to crime to feed their habit.


These are all myths.
User avatar
By Saeko
#14605798
Pants-of-dog wrote:
I doubt it.

I find that the (perfectly legal) market in automobiles and fossil fuels causes far more harm to society than marijuana.


You can't take the most harmful example in one category, compare it to the least harmful example in another category, and then claim that the whole latter is harmless.

Fossil fuels and automobiles are extremely useful, and if managed properly, pollution can be minimized. On the other hand, even if we could get people to consume drugs 100% responsibly, we would gain absolutely nothing of use by it.

The only thing we would get is a transfer of money from poor people to...

So does anyone born to wealthy parents.


Drug dealers.

These are all myths.


No they're not. Quit trolling.
By Pants-of-dog
#14605818
Saeko wrote:You can't take the most harmful example in one category, compare it to the least harmful example in another category, and then claim that the whole latter is harmless.


I agree.

So let us say that different types of recreational drug use have different levels of uselessness and social harm. And let us also say that other aspects of consumerism also have different levels of usefulness and social harm.

Fossil fuels and automobiles are extremely useful, and if managed properly, pollution can be minimized. On the other hand, even if we could get people to consume drugs 100% responsibly, we would gain absolutely nothing of use by it.


Drugs are also useful, as medicine and performance enhancers. And the harmful side effects can also be minimized through intelligent use of laws and regulations. The savings in costs for police and jails would be an immediate and quantifiable benefit.

The only thing we would get is a transfer of money from poor people to...

    So does anyone born to wealthy parents.

Drug dealers.


I assume you are trying to be witty here.

No they're not. Quit trolling.


Many drug users also work, and then abuse drugs afterwards. Thus, it is incorrect to claim that drug abusers do not do anything productive all day.

Many enjoy good health. I think it is probably safe to say that the health costs associated with obesity outweigh the costs associated with drug abuse.

And since many drug users also work, they have the money to pay for their drug habits.
User avatar
By Saeko
#14605830
Pants-of-dog wrote:
I agree.

So let us say that different types of recreational drug use have different levels of uselessness and social harm. And let us also say that other aspects of consumerism also have different levels of usefulness and social harm.


All recreational drugs are equally useless, but some are more harmful than others.

Drugs are also useful, as medicine and performance enhancers. And the harmful side effects can also be minimized through intelligent use of laws and regulations. The savings in costs for police and jails would be an immediate and quantifiable benefit.


We're not talking about medicine and performance enhancers, we're talking about recreational drug use. Like I said, even if recreational drugs could be used 100% responsibly, society wouldn't gain anything from it.

I assume you are trying to be witty here.


Yes, drug dealers exploit poor people and children.

Many drug users also work, and then abuse drugs afterwards. Thus, it is incorrect to claim that drug abusers do not do anything productive all day.


Among those that are employed, they would still be employed even without their drug habit, and they would have more money to spend more intelligently.

Many enjoy good health. I think it is probably safe to say that the health costs associated with obesity outweigh the costs associated with drug abuse.


That doesn't mean that drug abuse has no health costs.

And since many drug users also work, they have the money to pay for their drug habits.


A lot of them don't.
#14605852
Saeko wrote:Recreational drugs are the very essence of useless and socially harmful consumerism.

Some are more than others. Smoking in shared spaces, for example, exposes others to toxic substances. But I'd say idiots who ride loud motorcycles on city streets are doing more harm than someone who smokes weed once or twice a week in the privacy of their home. People who let their dogs shit in public parks and don't clean it up are worse than someone who has a couple of drinks at a party.
Drug dealers get rich for doing essentially nothing.

Oh, garbage. They are meeting a demand, same as any merchant. If you want to see people getting rich for doing and contributing nothing, check out banksters and landowners.
Drug abusers don't do anything productive except get high all day,

False and absurd. Some studies have actually found a positive correlation between alcohol consumption and income. I think their methodologies are suspect, but still.
and eventually destroy their health (taking medical resources away from people who actually need them)

That depends on the drug. There is no evidence that marijuana users do so, and plenty of evidence that abusers of, say, junk food are doing far more harm to their health than potheads. The social medical costs of legal tobacco use far outweigh the medical costs of all illegal drugs combined.
and turn to crime to feed their habit.

Only because prohibition makes their drug atrociously expensive. When heroin was legal, there were hundreds of thousands of addicts, and there was no evidence that their crime rate was greater than that of the general population.
There are absolutely no upsides to drug legalization from my perspective.

But others have perspectives that are more reasoned and informed.
By Pants-of-dog
#14605866
Saeko wrote:All recreational drugs are equally useless, but some are more harmful than others.

We're not talking about medicine and performance enhancers, we're talking about recreational drug use. Like I said, even if recreational drugs could be used 100% responsibly, society wouldn't gain anything from it.


Even if recreational vehicle use was 100% responsibly done, society also gain nothing from it.

Are you on board for banning recreational vehicle use?

Among those that are employed, they would still be employed even without their drug habit, and they would have more money to spend more intelligently.


Sure, but that does not mean they are not productive despite their drug habit.

That doesn't mean that drug abuse has no health costs.


The health costs for certain types of drug use are negligible.

A lot of them don't.


And a lot of them are rich enough that they do not need to resort to crime to pay for their nose candy.

Needless to say, not all drug users turn to crime.
#14605994
Truth To Power wrote:We may only be saying that criminalization/prohibition is unwise and counter-productive. Which it clearly is. Government clearly does have business with people's private vices, to the extent that they harm the polity;

Joe Liberty wrote:Again with the nebulous "harm" to abstract concepts...

There is a difference between a concept, which is an abstraction, and the real thing the concept designates. The polity is a real thing with certain characteristics and interests, and can indeed suffer harm, such as economic decline, military invasion, an epidemic of contagious disease, etc.
The fact that prohibition has been a massive, catastrophic failure does not in any way imply that government should do nothing to mitigate harms caused by drug use, or that it has no business doing anything.

That's true, as far as it goes, the massive failure of the drug war is not the reason government has no business prohibiting drugs. It's an unintended consequence (an utterly predictable one at that) of government's attempts to do something it has no business doing. The reason it has no business doing it is because it was granted no powers to do so by the constitution.

That's just the legalistic fallacy, and is refuted by the general welfare clause in any case.
They needed a constutional amendment to ban alchohol, there is no such amendment to ban anything else. Thus, it simply does not have the power.

Nope. Wrong. Flat, outright wrong as a matter of objective fact.

The SC disagrees, and as they have the final word UNDER THE CONSTITUTION, you are out of luck, sorry.
Adultery is legal -- but you can still be sued successfully for it. So government is not taking a hands-off approach, just a wiser approach than in the case of drugs.

The fact that a government-run court system will entertain divorce requests does not invalidate my analogy.

Ignoratio elenchi. You can be sued by the spouse of someone you had an adulterous affair with.
Adultery is indeed perfectly legal, there are no laws against it at all, and by your logic that means the government is saying that it's okay.

Wrong. As already explained, there are no laws prohibiting many torts, but government still takes an interest in suppressing such behavior, just through the civil courts.
Me wrote:I'll add a different perspective: in a self-governing society, the power of the government is derived from the consent of the governed. Now, since you can't give power you don't have in the first place, this technically means the government can't do anything that you couldn't do on your own, if you had the resources.

Truth to Power wrote: Wrong.

No, that's exactly right,

Nope.
the US government gets its power by the consent of the governed, and you can't give away something you don't have.

But consent to be governed is something people DO have.
There are many things people can't rightly do on their own which government CAN rightly do because its JOB is to secure and reconcile people's individual rights, and an individual can't do that.

An individual most certainly can defend his own rights.

No, he cannot. Rights ARE societal undertakings to constrain its members' actions wrt each other.
That's why he can grant government the power to do it on his behalf, when the threats to one's rights are on a grander scale (such as an invasion).

Nope. The governed can consent to government using powers and authority they themselves do not have.
Most particularly, government arises in the first place because of the need, in a settled society, to administer possession and use of land to secure rightful property in fixed improvements. No individual can rightly do that.

Sure they can, and did, before government came along.

Nope. Flat false. No one ever had a right to exclude others from natural opportunities without making just compensation. They only did it because they had the power to do it. But by that "logic," slavery, rape, murder, etc. are also things people can rightly consent to their government doing.
You can stake a claim to a property and defend it,

But as land can never rightly become property, that's nothing but forcible, uncompensated abrogation of others' rights to liberty.
so that power can be granted to government to do on a large scale.

Nope. Having a power to steal from others is not evidence of a right to steal from others.
Rights only have meaning in society, and interfering with people's drug use is not to protect them from themselves, but to protect society from the effects of their irresponsible drug use.

If by "society" you mean other individuals (because it means nothing else),

It definitely means something else. Your refusal to know the meanings of ordinary English words is not an argument, sorry.
you've now granted government the power to pre-emptively take action before any harm has been done to anybody.

As with drunk driving. Correct.
That's a dangerous precedent, and one of the reasons prohibition is so corrupting.

True, that kind of law is dangerous, but in certain cases justified.
Yes, it does, because rights COME FROM our condition as social animals of a specific sort in the first place.

No, privileges and "civil" rights are granted by government.

Ignoratio elenchi.
You have inherent rights as an adult human being that government does not grant, that was the whole point of the Constitution, to prohibit the federal government from interfering with those rights.

Still ignoratio elenchi. You are not addressing the fact that rights COME FROM an evolutionary process where individual survival and success were very much a function of societal survival and success.
Even if I were to accept the flawed premise of your statement, that doesn't mean government can treat you like an idiot child.

There is no flawed premise of my statement. It's biological fact.
No, the radical libertarian view is not based on a sound analysis of the source and nature of individual rights.

Don't tell me how I've arrived at my political philosophy, and I won't tell you how you arrived at yours.

You don't know how I arrived at mine, but as a former libertarian, I know how you arrived at yours.
We're on board with the practical argument. We're agreed prohibition is an atrocity. But we differ on why.

But from what I can tell, your "why" doesn't actually prohibit the government from doing it,

Correct. It depends on the drug. None of the commonly used ones should be prohibited, because they aren't as harmful as prohibition -- obviously: if they were that bad, people wouldn't be using them. But there are more dangerous ones that need to be banned.
in fact you defend the power of the government to treat citizens like retarded children.

Strawman.
I don't see how that would correct this problem at all.

I'm advocating a reasoned approach. That's always going to correct the problem, if it can be corrected at all.
By JohnDoe176
#14608877
I know that this post is relatively inactive, and there's a whole other conversation going on, but I'm going to put my $.02 into the OP's statements and questions.

mdinh1 wrote:What is the argument behind the idea that the state shouldn't be involved in victimless crimes like drug and alcohol addiction?

First we need to analyze what a "victimless crime" is. Defined by reference.com, a victimless-crime (sic) is "a legal offense, as prostitution or gambling, to which all participating parties have consented." There are other victimless crimes, like recreational drug use, but you get the idea. Keep in mind this definition also includes solitary acts.

In regard to criminal activity, my motto is "no harm, no foul." That is, if there is an action performed with all parties involved consenting to the action, then the state should not be involved. If there were harm in it that the parties did not want to partake in, they would not have consented. This statement means that I'm against the state's interference in prostitution, recreational drug use, gambling, restrictions on guns, etc. However, your question is "what is the argument", or why I'm against state interference into such "crimes."

My view is that individuals should have the free choice as to what decisions they make with their own bodies, how they associate with others, and their property they rightfully own so long as the rights of any other individual aren't violated. The state should not be involved because it's none of their damn business.

The principle behind it though? I myself believe that the state, if it is to exist, should be in the defense of three things: life, liberty, and property. The state shouldn't be our collective nanny, and it shouldn't be some enforcer of morality either. As free men, we should not delegate the running of our lives to others. If you feel like not participating in prostitution, be my guest. If you do not like guns, don't get one. However, don't try to regulate others' behavior simply because you don't like it.
#14609946
JohnDoe176 wrote:In regard to criminal activity, my motto is "no harm, no foul." That is, if there is an action performed with all parties involved consenting to the action, then the state should not be involved.

So dueling, for example, would be OK by you? How do you determine consent after one or more of the participants is dead? Documents can be forged, "consent" obtained under duress, etc.
If there were harm in it that the parties did not want to partake in, they would not have consented.

So? The community has interests that aren't necessarily covered by participants' consent.
This statement means that I'm against the state's interference in prostitution, recreational drug use, gambling,

Those are pretty low-hanging fruit, in that there are very good reasons to think prohibiting them does more societal harm than engaging in them. What about drunk driving? OK as long as no one's rights are violated? Does getting into the car constitute consent to whatever the driver does?
restrictions on guns, etc.

Nerve gas? Bioweapons? Nukes? Society has an interest in lethal weaponry not being readily available.
My view is that individuals should have the free choice as to what decisions they make with their own bodies, how they associate with others, and their property they rightfully own

There's the rub....
so long as the rights of any other individual aren't violated.

What about property "rights" like land titles, which inherently violate everyone else's rights?
The state should not be involved because it's none of their damn business.

The state is society's agent, and rights are society's business by definition.
The principle behind it though? I myself believe that the state, if it is to exist, should be in the defense of three things: life, liberty, and property.

Why? Any rational account of the source of individual rights to life, liberty and property (property in the fruits of one's labor, that is) is going to be based on how they serve society's interests. But that means society's interests ultimately trump individual rights, which is already established legal principle anyway.
The state shouldn't be our collective nanny, and it shouldn't be some enforcer of morality either.

Morality comes from its effects on society, so the state has a legitimate interest in enforcing it. The questions of interest revolve around what morality is appropriately the state's concern, and to what degree it should be enforced.
As free men, we should not delegate the running of our lives to others.

Strawman. No one is suggesting the state should run people's lives. But as rights ARE nothing but societal undertakings to constrain its members' behavior wrt one another, the state has a role in defining and securing them.
If you feel like not participating in prostitution, be my guest. If you do not like guns, don't get one. However, don't try to regulate others' behavior simply because you don't like it.

Strawman. It's not merely that someone doesn't like someone else's behavior, but that such behavior is considered a threat to society's welfare, and thus indirectly to the welfare of all its members and their posterity. That is the ultimate basis of morality and individual rights, so individual rights can't take priority over it.
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
  • 7

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=o4e4fI_r3b0 huma[…]

Israel-Palestinian War 2023

... rape ... You have mentionned "rape&quo[…]

The importance of out-breeding

DOG BREEDING https://external-content.[…]

Who needs a wall? We have all those land mines ju[…]