Laws and Lawbreakers

I could call myself a pretty law-abiding guy, with proper respect for the law.  It could legitimately be debated.

Crimes against persons and property?   Hells yes.  I'm on board.  Law against dumping your used oil on your property where it is going to leach into the soil, the water table, and spread?  Yeah.  Laws against changing your oil on your own property?  Not so much.  You want to build a house?  Okay - codes exist for a reason, yes there is a gas main running through the area you intend to dig a basement. There is a reason.  Your house catches fire because you used cheap kindling?  Chicago fire, anyone?  There is a reason. A clothesline?  A permit?  Seriously?


And don't get me started on victimless crimes.  I do care if you're driving coked to th gills.  If you're wasting your life in the privacy of your own home, and not bothering anyone, my giveadamnometer doesn't even twitch.  Put me on a jury, and I will vote "not guilty" sheerly because it hasn't been demonstrated that someone was actually hurt - well, beyond the sensibilities of some Puritan nanny-stater.   Hell, for that, I'd give a medal to somone who could figure a way to make them wail and gnash their teeth 24-7.  Their sensibilities should be offended as often as possible.

But I'm not an anarchist.  Some things are illegal for genuinely good reasons.  People are tangibly and indisputeably harmed.  Property is destroyed.  Freedoms encroached.  National security threatened. Fraud. Theft. Hell yes, bring the hammer down.

But I just don't care how someone conducts their private life - so long as it is private.  Believe in no gods or twenty gods, until it breaks someone's leg or picks their pocket, live your life according to your own morality - or lack thereof - and good luck with that.   If someone goes into business, the only thing I care about is fraud.  If you don't want to accomodate wheelchairs or have handicapped parking, and are willing to write off that segment of public business - and the people your unconcern will piss off - your business.  To succeed or fail at.  Piss off enough people, and you will fail.  We don't need "A Law." To quote a wise man of my acquaintance "Stupidity is generally self correcting."

Harm.  And hurt feewings aren't harm, they are a call to suck it up and get therapy.  Same thing with some pissy sense of outrage that someone is living a life contrary to your personal moral compass, and prospering.  Wah, wah, wah.  Cry me a goddamn river.  And get a life.  If that is your biggest cconcern, find the nearest church, get down on your knees, and thank The Good Lord you have it so well.  I will trade you worries, believe me, because then I will have none.

And, in the words of my grandpappy, then you'll have something real to be a crybaby about.

There's the foundation.  So, if we have something illegal - FOR A GOOD AND STATED, TANGIBLE, REASON - enforce the law.  It is not that hard.  Your county asks, before you put up a building, to make sure it is placed where it won't damage utilities, that it is constructed soundly so it won't burn down and get the fire department called if someone lights a match when a mouse farts, that your sewage is actualy going to the sewer, and so on - DO IT.  If they say you can't paint it green, I will be on your side.  I'll eve help you paint it green in hopes that your defiance gives some asshat a coronary.  But saying to you, "no, you can't build it two feet away from your neighbor's house because if yours catches fire the whole neighborhood goes up" is not out of line.

My neighbor is annoyed with me because I asked them to move their trampoline.  It's not the balls landing in my yard that bothers me - it's the kids landing in my yard.  If you don't care if your kids break their necks, I don't either.  I just don't want, when it happens, for the coroner to be trampling my begonias.  Nor to have to deal with the inevitable ambulance chaser who is going to want to sue me because your kid's friends launched themselves into my yard, are now vegetables, and since your are dirt poor, renting, white trailer trash you have no money to take and I do.  Screw that.