By Paul Weiser
A libertarian outlook - shared to some degree by most Americans - has begun to cause serious, even dangerous problems for the nation’s future. Since the most fervent libertarian - if rational - will admit he needs a nation to protect him from other nations, we must analyze and address this threat.
What many libertarians fear (and so do many non-lilbertarians, even totalitarian socialists on other issues) is that government might seek to enforce a moral standard they wish - in the nicest, most private and unobjectionable way - wish to violate. They may wish to indulge in sodomy, marijuana, tobacco, pornography (of the pederast persuasion or not), carrying concealed weapons, eating red meat or skating without a helmet, and it worries them that a majority of their fellow citizens could enforce laws against any of these. Considering the wildly differing penalties for these practices, all dangerous and/or repulsive to some, the fear seems justified.
The standard line - that governments should not “legislate morality” at all - is excessive. A degree of regulation, even criminalization, is in order on many issues. A more serious problem, and the one that concerns us now, is that some groups use this anti-morality line to evade even the most sensible laws (for example against polygamy, cousin marriage, and forced marriage) and - in effect - institute their own much stricter and objectively vicious doctrines by force.
This threat - of groups imposing unlegislated laws on involuntary “members” in the absence of, or in winked-at violation of statute law - results directly from the no-legislated-morality line. If American liberty is to endure we must prune back bad and unenforceable laws, but also strictly enforce the remainder and accept no group resort to “enforcement” of anything further. The alternative is balkanization in the worst sense.
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