Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP
Posting-Version: $Revision: 1.6.2.16 $; site inmet.UUCP
Path: utzoo!lsuc!watmath!clyde!burl!ulysses!bellcore!decvax!inmet!janw
From: janw@inmet.UUCP
Newsgroups: net.politics
Subject: Re: Re: YOU ARE LOSING YOUR FREEDOMS
Message-ID: <7800927@inmet.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 27-Jan-86 03:21:00 EST
Article-I.D.: inmet.7800927
Posted: Mon Jan 27 03:21:00 1986
Date-Received: Thu, 6-Feb-86 10:36:32 EST
References: <712@cylixd.UUCP>
Lines: 110
Nf-ID: #R:cylixd:-71200:inmet:7800927:000:4756
Nf-From: inmet!janw    Jan 27 03:21:00 1986


[Richard Carnes, ihnp4!gargoyle!carnes]
>Will Martin writes:
>
>>So it is inevitable that, as the number of laws imposed  upon  us
>>constantly increase, our freedoms steadily decrease ...

>Question for Mr. Martin:  What were the intended purposes of these
>laws, or of others that may occur to you which you particularly
>dislike?
 
 The question is not for me, but I see  no  reason  not  to  butt
in...   Probably everyone has a pet peeve, as far as bad laws are
concerned.  But don't you think  one  can  object  to  the  sheer
*volume*  of legislation? If someone made you swallow a bucket of
water (there used to be a torture like this) no particular mouth-
ful would be objectionable *in itself*, but they would be togeth-
er.  As for "intended purposes",  why  read  minds  -  collective
minds  to boot ? It is the *effect* of a law that matters. Inten-
tions are irrelevant.

>Dave Kirby writes:
>
>>How about a Constitutional amendment that requires a 90% vote in
>>Congress to enact a law, and a 51% vote to repeal it?

>Thought experiment:  What would have happened in the US if the
>Constitution had contained such a provision from the beginning?

I don't know. Do you ?

>What bills passed both houses by a nine-tenths majority (or  even
>a three-fourths majority)?

Very few, I am sure. The Tonkin Gulf resolution was one ...

>What would things now be like in the US if
>only these bills had been enacted?

I don't know. Do you ?

>Would these same bills have been passed into  law  if  the  nine-
>tenths provision had been in effect, or would different ones have
>passed?

Different laws. (Better or worse ? - I don't know).

>Too bad the Constitution was drafted by a committee  of  Founding
>Fathers rather than technoids from the net.

Come on, Richard, that is a snobbish remark.  They  weren't  pro-
fessional  Founding  Fathers  - just plain professionals like the
netters: lawyers, planters, traders. And Franklin might  even  be
called  a  technoid  by someone who disliked him. Whatever they
were, they would hardly discourage non-founding-fathers from dis-
cussion and suggestions, would they ?

>  For law in its true notion is not so much the limitation as the
>  direction of a free and intelligent agent to his proper interest, and
>  prescribes no farther than is for the general good of those under
>  that law:  could they be happier without it, the law as an useless
>  thing would of itself vanish; and that ill deserves the name of
>  confinement which hedges us in only from bogs and precipices.  So
>  that, however it may be mistaken, the end of law is, not to abolish
>  or restrain, but to preserve and enlarge freedom.  For in all the
>  states of created beings capable of laws, where there is no law there
>  is no freedom.  For liberty is to be free from restraint and violence
>  from others; which cannot be where there is no law:  and is not, as
>  we are told, a liberty for every man to do what he lists.  (For who
>  could be free when every other man's humour might domineer over him?)
>  But a liberty to dispose, and order as he lists, his person, actions,
>  possessions, and his whole property, within the allowance of those
>  laws under which he is, and therein not to be subject to the
>  arbitrary will of another, but freely follow his own. --John Locke,
>  *Second Treatise of Civil Government*

Well spoken, John. Well quoted, Richard.

Let me quote another classic:

But this I know, that every Law
  That men have made for Man,
Since first Man took his brother's life,
  And the sad world began,
But straws the wheat and saves the chaff
  With a most evil fan.

--Oscar Wilde, *Ballad of Reading Gaol*

Can the two texts be reconciled ? They might be, if laws were not
something  "men made for Man" but contractual obligations, volun-
tary undertaken. They would then be more like Locke's  "direction
of free and intelligent agent to his proper interests".

Let me ask you a few questions, too. Can we have *too many* laws?
If  the 51% - 90% rule is bad, what ratio would you favor ? Or
is 51-51, by sheer chance, ideal ?  Don't you think,  if  Locke's
ideal is to be fulfilled, that people should *know* the laws they
obey ? Is that possible now?  The new  simplified  tax  code,  as
passed by the House, has 1400 pages... Do you think the garden so
well planted by Founding Fathers is never to be  *weeded*  ?  And
don't you think that is how the 51/90 formula could be described?

Personally, I think the formula imperfect in that it does not ad-
dress  *length*  of laws, or their clarity; but most importantly,
*regulations* which Founding Fathers somehow omitted  from  their
blueprint  for the Republic. Are you sure they would side
with you in this discussion?

			Jan Wasilewsky