Ok, so I have been pondering this for awhile and I just heard something on the news about having to send your kids to daycare with toothbrush cause it’s the rule now. Now to get things started I am not some huge radical and I try to live with some morals but when it comes to things like my buddy getting a
four hundred dollar ticket because he was smoking in the car with his kids in the car, or a one hundred and fifty dollar fine for not wearing a seatbelt I think thats getting a little ridiculous, me and alot of people I know have travelled all over the country in a car with parents smoking like chimneys and none of us has suffered any ill effects from that that I am aware of and we are in our forties and fifties now, and if I don’t want to wear my seatbelt (which I do wear by choice and always have even before the rule), I think that should be my choice. There are all kinds of other rules which I disagree with and don’t follow and lots that I do, and the one thing that really irks me is when one day something stupid is illegal and the next day it’s ok. So my question is this:
Who says I have to follow rules that I disagree with. I have never signed a piece of paper or took any oaths that I agreed to abide by any of the rules. I am not sure if the American pledge of allegiance would somehow hold you to the laws, but being in Canada, we don’t have anything like that . Is it just assumed that since I was born here that I have tyo follow all the laws?
Okay, seriously. You don’t have to follow any rules. However, many rules are associated with punishments - these are put in place to adjust your cost-benefit assessments of commiting the nominally undesired act, but they can’t stop you from doing it. So if you are okay with the punishment, then go right ahead.
I understand what you are saying but if I disagree with the rule, I obviously disagree with any punishment that may come with breaking said rule. I guess what I am getting at is there any legal defense, even if not tried yet, that one might use to say " I don’t believe in that law so therefore I will not follow it" or " that law is outdated and/or ridiculous therefore I will not follow it" or mainly dealing with the OP " I have never agreed to follow your rules therefore they do not apply to me"
Just for the record I am not planning on trying it, it’s just that sometimes I have a hard time wrapping my head around why I have to follow rules that nobody asked if I was ok with.
I believe the way this traditionally works is that you break the law, get arrested for it, go to jail, become highly publicized, inspire public support, and eventually political pressure is put on legislators and they change the law. At least I believe that’s how it worked with regard to blacks riding busses and whatnot.
I honestly don’t know if you can expect to be freed when the dust is settled. Okay, I’m not well-read, sue me.
But I do know if you can’t gather popular support behind you, you’re screwed.
You can always hope for jury nullification as well.
Or a pardon by the Governor/President (depending who has jurisdiction).
That said you are most likely screwed. It is not for people to break laws they happen to disagree with. If that was ok there’d be anarchy. For the life of me I cannot remember the case but essentially some person defied a court order (journalist to protect a source or something) and while in the end the court felt they had acted correctly they still defied a court order and the judge packed them off to jail. Rightly or wrongly they broke the law and the law says you go to jail for that. End of story.
If you do not like a law/rule then you are free to work to see that law/rule changed. Otherwise the chances are excellent you will see yourself punished for breaking that law or rule.
You accept that you will abide by the rules of a society every day that you continue to live with the benefits of that society. If you don’t like the rules, move somewhere where those rules no longer apply to you.
If you have a moral objection to a rule, then you may wish to engage in civil disobedience, that is, refusing to abide by the rule. But if you do, you should accept that you will be punished by society for failing to abide by the rule. The idea behind civil disobedience is not to break a rule and not be punished; it is to break a rule and shame your society by the fact that they do punish you.
Just as an aside: if you, like me, drove around in a car with both your parents smoking like chimneys, you most certainly DID suffer ill effects from the second-hand smoke. Just saying.
Actually a lot of lawyers will have sympathy for your position. To the police and the common people, laws are set in stone - Things To Be Obeyed Without Question - but (perhaps surprisingly) to lawyers the law is a work in progress. It’s a constantly evolving thing. At any one point in time some of the laws will be incomplete, some will be out of date and some will be just plain wrong and need changing.
So lawyers end up viewing laws as more like guidelines to be followed. They don’t accord them the respect that other members of society do. It is, after all, their job to find loopholes and get-out clauses for their client. So, in a way, the lawyers job is to find ways round the law (at least in some cases). Thus lawyers see the law as more like a clay model that gets constantly moulded and changed and they’re constantly looking at ways round it. When a new law comes in, the first thing lawyers do is look for loopholes and gaps.
DSYoung,
What ill-effects did we suffer from. I don’t want to argue the point , but at 42 I still play hockey at a high level, I play baseball and can still run. I am by no means a health nut, i don’t eat right, drink sometimes and I have smoked for almost 30 years ( because all my friends did and I thought it would be cool), but I have not ever noticed any ill effects of second hand smoke.
No ill effects other than not using periods and having long run on sentences that cover a lot of territory and jump around from one thing to the next without pause or division, you mean?
Whack,
I know what your saying about anarchy, but at what point did I agree to follow all thses rules whether I agree with them or not. I don’t want to kill people or steal from anyone, but if I don’t want to wear my seatbelt, that should be my choice, or say I want to smoke a joint, my choice. If I am not hurting anyone else, should be my choice.
Because if you (the general you) didn’t follow the rules, life would be nasty, brutish, and short. If you’re interested in the question you posted, you’ll be glad to know that this is something people have been dwelling on for centuries, and there is a large body of literature devoted to it. Take a gander at the Wiki page for the Social Contract for a good overview and sampling. In essence:
Society (in the form of our laws) disagrees, in many cases both that you aren’t hurting anyone and that you have the right to do certain things that only hurt yourself.
I was thinking that as I was writing it but I was in a hurry and said F*#k it. I’ve got way too much going on at the moment to worry about punctuation but I think the spelling is ok…lol Just try to keep up, I type as I think. lol
I suggest that it was JFLuvly’s parents who made the choice to subject him or her to this society’s laws. It didn’t become his choice until after he reached the age of majority or had the real/practical option of remaining under the state’s jurisdiction.
I think this is kinda deep seated with me because all my life I have marched to the beat of my own drum, and now it seems that is getting harder to do.
As already stated, you don’t have to follow the rules, but you do have to accept the possible consequences. If its a nice clear day and I want to drive 75 in the 55 mph zone, I can, but I shouldn’t complain if I get a ticket.
