Protecting the Vulnerable!

[bones]

Sorry, this rant needs some trimming.

Recently, while debating ethics and philosophy with my sister, she told me they had banned smoking in cars with kids, in NH or MA sometime around '99 I think? A friend of hers was pissed off (a smoker with kids and a car, would you believe?!), but my sis was all for it.

Now, realistically in the modern world it doesn't really bother me - it's obviously to protect kids, but it's just gonna add to the resentment that those like my sister's friend have for the world, and quite frankly I don't think it's worth it all. Police should be left to protect us from MALICIOUS dangers, not having to pull over stressed out mothers and fine them for being less considerate than they ought to.

If you want to protect my children from me then why not just declare me an unfit parent and take them away. We in Australia basically stole a whole generation of aboriginal children to raise them in white society - I imagine it was supposedly for the good of the children as much as for the good of the white country, but it seems heinously wrong to me either way.

The reason I can't quite justify the banning of smoking in a car full of kids is that our group consensus of the significance of maybe taking 20 years off some kid's life through lung cancer couldn't possibly be as serious as, say, the fundie-christians' group consensus of the significance of you raising your children without knowing jesus and thereby damning their souls to hell for eternity, so if I can say "THOU SHALT NOT SMOKE IN FRONT OF THY KIDS" I then cant really argue against a "THOU SHALT NOT DENY THY CHILDRENS SALVATION".

I don't like drawing arbitrary lines wherever they seem right down the middle of shades  of grey. I think we need to come to a decision about which extreme to go with, but remain open to the idea of swapping ends. The pointless complexity of modern law comes directly from constantly trying to tweak out perceived injustices that arise from this line between 'legal' and 'illegal'. *BAM*, whoops, suddenly we need an army of lawyers, accountants, judges who have more right to decide than me because they studied our mess of a legal system for god knows how many years. Let's face it, we only need help from the legal system when A) we're fucking cunts, or B) we're being fucked by cunts. If we could all just stop constantly screwing each other that would be just dandy.

I believe that all ethical questions can be equated to a black or white on some level, so I always try to find the extremities in any dilemma. In the question of whether or not a society should be able to - or need to - forcibly 'protect' those who cannot protect themselves (the children) the extreme case seems to be in the religions vs. atheism debate:

There are fundamentalists of islam, christianity, and atheism, and each believe that every child deserves - even needs - to know that their version of truth is true. The success of all is impossible unless every child embraces Discordia, but I digress. The two possible eventual outcomes I can foresee are TOTALITARIANISM: one group 'wins', and every child is forced by law to reject all teachings but the doctrine of whichever group has power, or SECULARISM: everyone gets over the necessity to rule the world, a truce is called, and you and I are left to raise our kids to believe whatever the fuck we think is right. I know which sounds better to me, I think diversity of culture is good, and I think if we don't legislate the protection of cabbages quite so much we might evolve into REAL species, instead of this mound of whinging bitches we have become.

I don't advocate violence or hate, but on the other hand I'm not going to put much effort into stopping idiots from being idiots. You can educate people, but you cant force them not to be ignorant. What I learned from Thelema is not that I can do what I will, but that I might as well let all the other sick bastards in the world do what they will too, and get over my disgust.

Lead by example, be your own definition of good, and let me choose mine,

Or Kill Me

[Richter]

Yeah, could be focused a bit more, but I like the idea, and where you're taking it.  I see a fairly common cycle in little legislative dingleberries like this.

If you know some things are a bad idea, DON'T DO THEM.
If you don't know any better.  Well good for you smiley.  You and your get to suffer.  I'll tell you to knock it off if you do it around me.
This seems fair to me.  Not having my day nitpicked by hundreds of little "Thou Shalt"'s. 
Fuckheads who want a life worth living ought to act like it, not expect some LAW to make it happen.