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Culture War Roundup for the week of September 9, 2024

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No, there is a big difference between various kinds of laws. A blanket principle of "always obey every law, simply because it is the law" makes no sense, since many laws are stupid and/or immoral, and that is even more the case in authoritarian countries than in the US. The law, in and of itself, has no moral authority. So one must pick which laws to obey. The law against, say, raping people makes sense to obey because clearly, raping people is immoral because it seriously harms others. Using marijuana, on the other hand, does not harm others, so the law against doing it is stupid and immoral.

Making laws against things that do not harm anyone except the person who does them is a quick path to raising generations of people who feel contempt for lawmakers and the legal system. And then you get more leftism, because some of those people who feel contempt eventually go down the rabbit hole of starting to believe that the entire system, rather than just part of it, is fundamentally wrong, and that it must be overthrown and so on.

A blanket principle of "always obey every law, simply because it is the law" makes no sense

Good thing that this is not what I said. I said that your particular statement makes no sense unless you're extremely stupid, not having any idea how law works, or drank the propaganda kool aid. Yes, dawg, you will be arrested for something that's obviously illegal, even if it's a dumb law. This happening can't possibly shift your position, unless you were really really dumb/naive.

Many teenagers are naive, or more charitably, they think of the people around them naturally while the law is not a natural thing. In the natural world, you either face the consequences for an action with some degree of certainty (therefore it's a bad thing to do) or do not (therefore it's an okay thing to do); there is no "as long as you don't get caught", or rather, the ones doing the catching would be fellow members of the community, not faceless distant "authorities". When they're faced with a dumb law, their naive expectation is that no one would really put you through the wringer over such a dumb law, come on. Everyone does that. They'll just give you a slap on the wrist unless you do it so stupidly openly that the authorities have no choice.

Then they learn what cops are and conclude that cops, too, are not natural, hardly human.

Many teenagers are naive, or more charitably, they think of the people around them naturally while the law is not a natural thing. In the natural world, you either face the consequences for an action with some degree of certainty (therefore it's a bad thing to do) or do not (therefore it's an okay thing to do); there is no "as long as you don't get caught", or rather, the ones doing the catching would be fellow members of the community, not faceless distant "authorities".

Up to this point, all of this is relevant to all law.

When they're faced with a dumb law, their naive expectation is that no one would really put you through the wringer over such a dumb law, come on. Everyone does that. They'll just give you a slap on the wrist unless you do it so stupidly openly that the authorities have no choice.

This beggars belief. What kind of childhood did you have? Did you literally never get in trouble for something that seemed dumb? That happened to me allllll the time.