The Tyranny of Caring

Laci recently claimed that since gun control advocates "care" about people and society their opinions and desires should "win". Implicit in the appeal to moral authority is the basic premises that it is permissible to seek to control the actions of others. That is the goal of gun life control advocates. They seeks to limit the actions of other to those action which they feel are acceptable. This is oppression of the highest order.

Every man is inherently free. No one can directly control the action of another. A man maybe convinced to act in a certain manner but they can not be made to. To prevent some types of action you must persuade the individual not to preform it or you must prevent him from acquiring the means to accomplish it. Since controllers can not accept the free agency of others they seek to limit everyone by controlling what messages people see, what tools people may own, and what choices people may make.

They are willing to risk much in their quest to control the actions of others. Far more people have died for their own good or the good of society in the 20^th century than have died in the ways they seek to prevent. They will not see this as a risk that they are running because they can not see how control over the mechanisms of societal control will be loosed from their hands. The erosion of our freedoms increases the control of the government over and involvement in our lives. This I feel this has self evidently negative effect on the quality of everyone's lives.

I think that laws should be made to be fair and just. That criminal laws should punish instead of seeking to rehabilitate or control the undesirable portions society. The expansion of criminal law into petty and private actions is corrosive to any society of law. If through reasonable and responsible action a man can not avoid breaking the law his respect for it will be diminished. His diminished respect will cause him to care less about breaking the law then getting caught at it. Once he begins to feel antagonism toward those who might catch him in his petty violations he will cease to support and cooperate with those who enforce the law. This decreases the ability of the police to enforce and investigate the laws because we have turned ourselves into a society of criminals. The police are then forced to use objectionable means to acquire convictions and enforce their will. This may alienate even those who abide the myriad of oppressive laws creating a situation where the people fear the government. This is an unacceptable situation created by the attempt to use the law as a means of control rather than punishment.

It is nice to care about what happens to other people but using the law to force people to make the choices you desire makes you a Tyrant. If you want to reduce the number of murders end the prohibition which gives an economic incentive to violence. If you want to reduce suicides show people that they have options in their lives. You might even have to expend some compassion on white males to accomplish something on that issue. If you want to reduce drug use and addiction convince people through persuasion rather than legal coercion.

I care about what happens to people but I am willing to accept the consequences of giving them the freedom to make their own choices. I support non-governmental attempts to lessen the negative aspects of that freedom. But I will never accept the use of government to limit freedom as legitimate under any justification.