.:aaron.helton:.

[note: this has been a work in progress for some time]

Those who know me well are aware of a few things about which I am incredibly passionate.

Among those (in no particular order) are:

1) Privacy
2) Things that are Free
3) Personal Liberty

While I could spend several posts addressing each one of these, right now I feel like sharing my opinions on personal liberty, and the ways that the United States prevents its citizenry from freely exercising the liberty we are granted by the US Constitution.

http://www.mcwilliams.com/books/books/aint/toc.htm

If you aren’t inclined to read the book or really look into it, I will provide a synopsis in the form of my official stance on crimes against self.

For the record, and I am only going to say this once, I do not necessarily condone or encourage, nor would I engage in any of the following activities: gambling, prostitution, drug use, polygamy, and solicitation of services from non-licensed medical professionals (or the converse, offering such services). That said, I do not think it is prudent to outlaw your ability to engage in such activities. That’s what the book is about.

Let’s take these as a group first and then address each singly. In all normal, reasonable exercise of the above activities, there exists no victim. By victim, I am referring to someone whose life, liberty, or property have been threatened or taken away. These activities are crimes because they are against the law in most places, and not because there is a victim.

Before we can really engage in a discussion as to why any of the above should be decriminalized, let’s take a look at what laws are intended to do. Lao Tzu, in the Tao Te Ching, suggested that simply making more laws creates more criminals. Therefore we should approach lawmaking with a bit more caution. Laws in the US are supposed to protect legal entities (read: people and companies; this includes law-breakers) from becoming victims of other legal entities. But what if the perpetrator of a (legally defined) crime is in fact the only victim of said crime? Why does it make any sense whatsoever to criminalize behavior that only impacts the person committing the behavior? Also, when there is clear evidence that some activity includes only consenting adults, why should society care what that behavior is, as long as no unwilling participants are never brought in, and it threatens nobody’s life, liberty, or property?

Point by point:

1. Gambling: What you do with your own money is your business. If you feel the need to spend your entire paycheck on the Texas Lottery, be my guest. There are certain crimes related to this behavior that should remain crimes, such as stealing from others to go play the lottery.
2. Prostitution: Assuming both the buyer and seller are both fully aware of the consequences of their actions and fully consenting of the behavior, we are wasting our time prosecuting people who engage in this behavior. “John” stakeouts cost taxpayers money (that’s the real crime here) and keep law enforcement agents busy enough that they may not be able to respond to real crimes.
3. Drug use: We can probably all agree that washed up meth junkies probably don’t help any society, but despite numerous local, state, and federal laws prohibiting drug use, it remains relatively stable. The fact is, people who use the more destructive types of drugs already have some proclivity for self destruction. The drugs are simply one method that can accomplish it. If drugs ceased to exist all of a sudden, rest assured these same people would engage in some other behavior with the same destructive potential. Instead of throwing tax dollars (not to mention the lives of law enforcement agents) at the ill-advised and (by most accounts) utter failure that is the drug war, we should instead treat this as a public health issue. Recreational drug use should be decriminalized; it is a hypocrisy anyway, since alcohol, which has the same effect of many illegal drugs, can be bought and sold with only a few restrictions. We should still punish people for committing crimes (real crimes that affect someone’s life, liberty or property), regardless of what they smoked or drank, and stop cluttering our prisons and court systems with the numerous possession offenders. People talk about overcrowding in prisons; this is one way to alleviate that.
4. Marriage Preferences: I had originally only included polygamy, but decided to include all marriage preferences and situations, since it makes as much sense to criminalize polygamy as it does to criminalize same-sex unions. For matters of contracts between consenting adults, there should be no regulatory burden beyond what is necessary to administer the recognition of such contracts. In marriage terms, this means that anyone should be able to enter into a marriage contract with whomever he/she pleases, in any configuration therein. This still precludes the possibility of minors entering into such contracts, but allows for pretty much anything else.
5. Unlicensed Medicine: First, I feel I must reiterate the fact that I probably would not consider letting someone perform surgery on me out of their garage. The use of unlicensed medicine may be dangerous. Consider this, however. Since medicine is not really a science, and the risk of deadly infections picked up at hospitals is large, then this concept is more about managing and understanding your risks. If health care were in any way affordable for most of us without insurance, perhaps we wouldn’t find ourselves flying to India or driving to Mexico to have procedures done. It is no surprise, then, that we now have the term “medical tourist” in our vocabulary. Allowing unlicensed and essentially unregulated practice of medicine in this country is more about the whole contract between consenting parties idea than it is about breaking the backs of the insurance companies or the licensed medical practitioners. It is about providing options, especially for the uninsurable or indigent.

This is by no means a complete list. Basically, if it is an activity performed exclusively by informed, consenting parties, then I believe that prosecution of anyone involved in these activities is not only a waste of time and money, but also undermines the spirit of the Bill of Rights.