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My understanding of history argues otherwise. Do you have some examples in mind? When you say that the boundary of "scoundrel" expands to include non-scoundrels... well, pretty clearly if they're accusing people of being scoundrels, they think they are scoundrels, no? How do you distinguish between the definition of scoundrel being too narrow, and expanding to match reality, versus the definition being perfect, and growing too broad?
Further, if it does expand too far... what then? What's to stop people from simply assessing that it's gone too far, correcting, and dialing it back to the appropriate level?
And if they don't dial it back to what you consider an appropriate level, what happens if their society simply operates in that fashion indefinitely? Is your claim that, if the borders expand too large, something catastrophic happens? If nothing catastrophic happens, is your theory disproven?
Kohlberg stage III/IV morality, which says "that which gets you in trouble is bad", makes it hard to abolish rules against things; "it's illegal, so it's immoral, so it should stay illegal". This is a ratchet effect, which does justify caution.
To give a simple (if petty) example, webforum rules lists almost always get longer over time.
The ratchet can be pushed back, but it's not easy. Usually (but not always) involves some sort of Year Zero, whether that be a revolution, a counterculture, or more pettily and virtually a breakaway webforum redrawing its rules from scratch.
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The USA PATRIOT Act was passed and implemented with the ostensible goal of combatting a group most of us would consider "scoundrels" by any reasonable definition: terrorists, especially Islamist extremists. Almost immediately, it was used as a tool for oppressing any group the federal government didn't like the look of, such as people operating Stargate SG-1 fan websites, people suspected of having committed non-terrorist crimes (without being formally indicted or being served a search warrant), legal permanent residents who the Attorney General suspects may cause a terrorist act and so on.
There are people that most reasonable people would consider scoundrels (murderers, rapists, drug dealers). The government is afforded various powers to combat these scoundrels. But there will always be a natural temptation for the government to abuse this privilege by using it against people the government doesn't like, but that no reasonable person would consider scoundrels (anti-war activists, environmentalists, homosexuals, directors of low-budget horror films and so on).
An ounce of prevention is better than a pound of cure. Better that ten guilty men escape than one innocent man hang.
Not necessarily. To use my earlier example of the USA PATRIOT Act, I don't think anything "catastrophic" has happened as a result of that piece of legislation - it hasn't led to a genocide, or destabilised the US, or anything of that magnitude. But I think it's fair to say that numerous people have had their civil liberties unfairly infringed upon - or indeed, their lives ruined - as a result of this legislation and how it was (ab)used, and I think that's bad.
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