# Is it wrong to be an outlaw?
**URL:** https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064
**Category:** Great Debates
**Created:** [March 30, 2001, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064 "2001-03-30T03:31:28Z")
**Posts on this page:** 12
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@Scylla](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Scylla)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2001, 3:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/1 "2001-03-30T03:31:28Z")
It seems to me that right and wrong, are increasingly being replaced by legal, and illegal.
200 years ago it was a man’s right, no, his duty, to beat his wife.
It used to be a crime to teach a black person to read.
60 years ago we locked citizens of Japanese descent into prison camps.
My neighbor’s son was suspended for carrying a Swiss Army knife to school. He helps feed the livestock in the morning, and uses the knife to open bales of hay and grain. He forgot that it was in his pocket.
He says that he used the scissors in class without thinking about it, and the teacher saw the knife.
Even though he did nothing threatening, school policy carries an automatic two week suspension for this, and the possibility of further disciplinary action.
My neighbor says that the teacher and the principle all recognize that it was an honest and harmless mistake. THey have no intention of pushing it further than the two weeks, but since that’s policy he has to be suspended.
I personally think this is ridiculous. I’ve seen the knife. A regular pen is potentially more dangerous.
So much of life is like this. Rules are set up to provide justice and protection, and only the letter is followed. Nobody uses discretion. Nobody recognizes that the rules exist to provide justice, not to circumvent it. Nobody is willing to stick there neck out for the right thing, we just blindly follow the legal thing.
You can commit the most heinous atrocity you like, but if you do it within the rules nobody says boo.
It makes me think of the terms Outlaw and Vigilante.
If the rules are wrong. Are we obligated to break them?
How can we argue them in the courts and the commitees when it was those same courts and commitees that set them up?
Who wants to grab some guns and head on down West Virginia and start over?
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### Author:  [@Kaz](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Kaz)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2001, 4:00am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/2 "2001-03-30T04:00:19Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Scylla \*
> **If the rules are wrong. Are we obligated to break them?**
Of course we are! At least I am… Henry David Thoreau preached Civil Disobedience, which is not following a law if you believe that it is incorrect.
In a case like your son’s pocket knife, I would definatly fight it. When I was in sixth grade I had a pocketknife in my backpack from a boyscout camping trip. A kid in my class saw it, and told the teacher, and I got sent to the priniple’s office. However, since it had the Boy Scout Insignia on it, he “let me go” without any punishment, just called my parents and told them, and sent the knife home in an envelope. That seemed like a pretty logical thing to do, use rational thinking in a case by case basis instead of just always following the book.
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### Author:  [@Britt](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Britt)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2001, 4:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/3 "2001-03-30T04:09:27Z")
Act to follow you conscience, as long as you are prepared to accept the consequences the rest of society may feel obliged to impose for doing so.
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### Author:  [@jmullaney](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jmullaney)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2001, 4:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/4 "2001-03-30T04:10:09Z")
I’m reminded of Harlan Ellison’s short story “‘Repent, Harlequin,’ Said the Tick-Tock-Man.”
Which was itself inspired by Thoreau’s [Civil Disobediance](http://sunsite.berkeley.edu/Literature/Thoreau/CivilDisobedience.html), of which I’ll quote a piece:
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> The mass of men serve the state thus, not as men mainly, but as machines, with their bodies. They are the standing army, and the militia, jailers, constables, posse comitatus, etc. In most cases there is no free exercise whatever of the judgement or of the moral sense; but they put themselves on a level with wood and earth and stones; and wooden men can perhaps be manufactured that will serve the purpose as well. Such command no more respect than men of straw or a lump of dirt. They have the same sort of worth only as horses and dogs. Yet such as these even are commonly esteemed good citizens.
And, it goes on like that such that I must resist the temptation to quote too much further, only, re: West Virginia –
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> All men recognize the right of revolution; that is, the right to refuse allegiance to, and to resist, the government, when its tyranny or its inefficiency are great and unendurable. But almost all say that such is not the case now.
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### Author:  [@dixiechiq](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/dixiechiq)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2001, 5:53am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/5 "2001-03-30T05:53:34Z")
is it wrong to be an inlaw??
we each are born on some part of this planet. none of us chooses which country is going to claim it owns us. i see no moral obligation to obey any rules it may impose upon us. i do see common sense in avoidance of being captured and caged.
being an outlaw? i guess everyone breaks some rules some times.
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### Author:  [@Monocracy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monocracy)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2001, 7:37am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/6 "2001-03-30T07:37:40Z")
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> _Scylla_
> Rules are set up to provide justice and protection, and only the letter is followed. Nobody uses discretion.
But see, when you start to judge things subjectively, bad things like favouritism and forced morality pop up. For instance, student #1 is a good Christian Boy Scout … he takes his pocket knife to school because he has a scout meeting later, in which he’ll need it to make his dumb little wooden derby racing car (you former Boy Scouts will know what i mean). Student #2 is an “evil” Marilyn Manson worshipper … he takes his pocket knife to school because he needs to buy a devil worshipping rock n roll CD after school, and that’s the only way he can get the damn plastic wrap off of it (you music lovers will know what i mean). Both students get caught with their knives, if they are judged subjectively, who’s going to get the shit end of the stick?
But i agree that a two week suspension is way too much punishment for the possession of a pocket knife with no threatening intent. “Grown ups” today are just way too paranoid about this supposed violence in school.
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### Author:  [@Odesio](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Odesio)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2001, 10:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/7 "2001-03-30T10:43:15Z")
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Monocracy \*
> \*\*
> But see, when you start to judge things subjectively, bad things like favouritism and forced morality pop up
\*\*
Heaven forbid we expect teachers and administrators to use their best judgement. I don’t remember who said it but it goes “irrational consistancy is the hobgoblin of small minds” or something like that. And zero tolerance policies are indeed irrationaly consistant.
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> \*\*
> For instance, student #1 is a good Christian Boy Scout … he takes his pocket knife to school because he has a scout meeting later, in which he’ll need it to make his dumb little wooden derby racing car (you former Boy Scouts will know what i mean). Student #2 is an “evil” Marilyn Manson worshipper … he takes his pocket knife to school because he needs to buy a devil worshipping rock n roll CD after school, and that’s the only way he can get the damn plastic wrap off of it (you music lovers will know what i mean). Both students get caught with their knives, if they are judged subjectively, who’s going to get the shit end of the stick?
\*\*
Odds are if the teachers and administrators know the student to be a decent fellow they’ll just let 'em go regardless of his t-shirt. Now I suppose it is possible that you’ll find someone with a bug up their butt regardling a MM t-shirt but I doubt most teachers are like that.
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> \*\*
> But i agree that a two week suspension is way too much punishment for the possession of a pocket knife with no threatening intent. “Grown ups” today are just way too paranoid about this supposed violence in school. \*\*
\*\*
Why is it to much? After all the punishment is objective with no room for subjective thought. The intent of the student does not matter because under zero tolerance policies having posession of the knife, no matter what kind, is enough to be punished. We wouldn’t want his intent to be under the subjective gaze of the administrators would we?
Marc
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### Author:  [@jmullaney](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/jmullaney)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2001, 12:43pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/8 "2001-03-30T12:43:41Z")
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> A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines. With consistency a great soul has simply nothing to do. He may as well concern himself with his shadow on the wall. Speak what you think now in hard words, and to-morrow speak what to-morrow thinks in hard words again, though it contradict every thing you said to-day. — ‘Ah, so you shall be sure to be misunderstood.’ — Is it so bad, then, to be misunderstood? Pythagoras was misunderstood, and Socrates, and Jesus, and Luther, and Copernicus, and Galileo, and Newton, and every pure and wise spirit that ever took flesh. To be great is to be misunderstood.
>
> – Ralph Waldo Emerson, [Self-Reliance](http://www.jjnet.com/emerson/selfreliance.htm)
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### Author:  [@Monocracy](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Monocracy)
#### Post date: [March 30, 2001, 12:49pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/9 "2001-03-30T12:49:08Z")
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> _MGibson_
> Odds are if the teachers and administrators know the student to be a decent fellow they’ll just let 'em go regardless of his t-shirt.
But what if he weren’t a decent fellow? What if he didn’t have a crystal clear reputation? Do you think he should be punished more harshly for breaking the same rules that the “good boy” broke? With a subjective system, he would be.
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> _MGibson_
> Why is it to much? After all the punishment is objective with no room for subjective thought.
I didn’t say that all rules should be strict, i said that they should be equally applied to everyone.
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### Author:  [@A\_Friend\_of\_the\_Devil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Friend_of_the_Devil)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2001, 5:32am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/10 "2001-03-31T05:32:37Z")
Some observations:
> [@](#):
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> \*Originally posted by Scylla \*
> **It seems to me that right and wrong, are increasingly being replaced by legal, and illegal.**
>
> The two groups of concepts (right/wrong, legal/illegal) are difficult to compare. Right and wrong are most often moral or cultural concepts espoused by groups whereas legal and illegal are documented criteria. An action, for example, may be considered “wrong” yet can legal.
>
> **So much of life is like this. Rules are set up to provide justice and protection, and only the letter is followed. Nobody uses discretion. Nobody recognizes that the rules exist to provide justice, not to circumvent it. Nobody is willing to stick there neck out for the right thing, we just blindly follow the legal thing.**
>
> The parties involved may talk about justice and protection, but rules are really set up by one group in a position of power to enforce a desired form of behavior upon another group. I agree, there is a strong difference between “justice” and the strict interpretation of the law. Too frequently, true justice gets the short end of the stick.
> [B}It makes me think of the terms Outlaw and Vigilante.\*\*
>
> Vigilante is probably one of the most mis-understood terms from the Old West. Today it is used to mean an individual who “takes the law into his own hands”, in effect circumventing the established legal system to meet out his own form of jsutice. This is not the actual historical vigilante. In the Old West, Committees of Vigilance (or such) were generally set up by the members of a community in cases where no system of justice existed. In most cases, they operated with the support of the community, maintained a form of law and order, and disbanded when a formal legal system was established.
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> On much of the American frontier, “the law” in the form of sherrifs, judges, jails, etc. was a latecomer to the scene. An isolated community sometimes had no other option but to set up its own system for maintaining order. To go back further in history, the concepts of the “posse comitatus” and the “hue and cry”, where every able bodied man was expected to join in the pursuit and had some responsibility for the general welfare come from England before a stable system of law enforcement existed.
>
> **If the rules are wrong. Are we obligated to break them?**
>
> If the rules are wrong from a point of view of common morality, common welfare, certainly. We are obligated to break them from the perspective of that point of view. For example, the case of Rosa Parks refusing to take her seat at the back of the bus is a case of breaking the law from a perspective that racial discrimination is morally wrong.
>
> As an interesting side point, it is also written in the Declaration of Independence (I believe, don’t have my copy in front of me) something to the effect that when a government becomes tyrannical it is the right of the people to replace it.
>
> **How can we argue them in the courts and the commitees when it was those same courts and commitees that set them up?**
>
> We can’t, in court. That’s why lawyer’s wives wear mink coats and my wife wears a cloth one. In other venues, however, the average person still has a voice, and has an obligation to use that voice to express his/her opinion. Write letters - to the newspaper, your representatives, to the President if you wish. Speak out at your local school board meetings. Join and support organizations that work to support your point of view. Be an INFORMED voter. As Frederick Douglass advised: “Agitate, agitate, agitate”.
>
> Consider that bugaboo of the modern liberal: the oft maligned gun lobby. We hear story after story about how powerful the lobby is and how tough it is to take them on. The reason it’s effective and powerful is because it is a grass-roots movement of people who are vocal about their rights. Money has nothing to do with it. The monetary contributions of the AMA, the pharmecutical industry, the defense industry and a score of others dwarf the minscule amount from the “gun lobby”.
Always enjoy reading your posts, Scylla. Keep up the good fight.
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### Author:  [@A\_Friend\_of\_the\_Devil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Friend_of_the_Devil)
#### Post date: [March 31, 2001, 5:35am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/11 "2001-03-31T05:35:25Z")
Sorry about the format of that last post. I need more practice editing.
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### Author:  [@A\_Friend\_of\_the\_Devil](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/A_Friend_of_the_Devil)
#### Post date: [April 1, 2001, 4:28am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/is-it-wrong-to-be-an-outlaw/60064/12 "2001-04-01T04:28:29Z")
Scylla:
Maybe I’m beating a dead horse (or a dead thread), but I can’t let this one go without a few more comments. I feel too strongly about some of these, you see.
> [@](#):
>
> \*Originally posted by Scylla \*
> \*\*So much of life is like this. Rules are set up to provide justice and protection, and only the letter is followed. Nobody uses discretion. Nobody recognizes that the rules exist to provide justice, not to circumvent it. Nobody is willing to stick there neck out for the right thing, we just blindly follow the legal thing.
> \*\*
It’s always necessary to speak up, to speak out, and to make your views known. This is even more important in a case such as this, an outrageous injustice. In fact, I’d argue that it is an obligation of a good citizen to do so. In our form of government, the average person has a voice and his opinion carries as much weight as that of the next man.
Speak up! Get involved! Question those in power, keep them on their toes. If you don’t stand up, you will be walked over by those who want to set the rules. “All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing” - a quote, don’t remember the source, but it’s a good one.
Too many times, people give up and don’t protest because they cannot affect the immediate situation. In the case that you mention, the boy is probably (and unfortunately) screwed. But what about the next boy that this happens to?