Allowing Laws to be Broken: Increasing or Restricting Freedom?

Thesis: Relaxed enforcement of laws allows our government to restrict our freedom. By creating a rouse of leniency, it encourages the lackadaisical behavior in the populace's adherence to the laws and in its responsibility of checking the government's power. Unacceptable laws are thus enacted and kept on record through a governmental bribe to the populace of a low level of enforcement. Establishing the power to impinge upon rights allows for the expansion of governmental control of our everyday lives.

Introduction

Each law represents at least a slight infringement of our rights. We give power to our government to provide certain social benefits we deem necessary through the enactment of these laws. Bringing a beneficial and desired result to the nation is society's goal and ought to be the government's when enacting laws. In order to test the efficacy and desirability of a law, and therefore whether it should remain law, a law must be enforced. The population can only evaluate the acceptability of a law through the real-world experiment of common experience. Very few citizens read the laws of the country and only of a fraction of those, or the rest of the country, can understand the convoluted jargon constituting a law. If a law is only sparsely, or sometimes never, enforced, society is deprived of its only practical test of that law. The government has made a statement of power by enacting a law that society may or may not find acceptable, taken away the populace's ability to judge the law, and maintained it as an official policy held over the head of the nation with the omnipresent threat of enforcement.

Superficially, relaxed enforcement, i.e. an allowance of law breaking, appears to be a governmental grant of more individual freedom. However, it is much more insidious than that. It is the government that created the law, and any non-enforcement thereof is only a return to the right once possessed before the law's enactment. The returned right is not the same. It has been tarnished and used to entrench the government's claim of power to control and limit the rights of its citizens. The right is no longer as robust because it now contains a caveat that the government can excise the right where and when it deems appropriate. This result is unacceptable on its own, but the collateral effects are even more dangerous to the liberties of the citizenry.

A relaxed enforcement instills a false belief of governmental leniency in the populace. This results in and encourages lackadaisical behavior in the populace's adherence to the laws and a lazy populace regarding its responsibility of checking the government's infringement of individual rights. Providing some "leniency", the government diverts the population's attention away from other laws that impinge upon individual rights more substantially and eventually desensitize the population leaving them ambivalent to the new found restrictions upon freedom. Unacceptable laws are thus enacted and kept on record through a governmental bribe to the populace of a low level of enforcement. Establishing the power to impinge upon rights allows for the expansion of governmental control of our everyday lives.

Simple Real World Examples

Eg's:

1. 1. brown-bagging liquor to avoid open container laws
   2. breaking the speed limit (probably mostly due to impracticability, but still set at a level less than enforced. exception of small towns where income is derived from speeding tickets (Big Pine, Independence, Lone Pine))
   3. jaywalking (not true in CA)

Possible Solution

Enforce all of our laws. The primary purpose is to bring the ramifications of each law into the home of the average citizen. An informed populace is a necessary step to provide the balance of power a democracy ought to have. If the nation agrees with the purpose and the effect (in all likelihood only the effect will ultimately matter), then there is no need for civil unrest regarding that issue. Conversely, if there is public dissent, then it is up to the people to pressure the government into a change of policy. A democracy depends upon the consent of a nation, and the government ought to deserve the consent with open policy rather than assume the consent from a relatively silent ambivalent nation.

Practicality

When applying the above solution to our simple examples, opponents will indubitably argue impracticability. Conceding that perfect enforcement is impracticable - although with the advances of privacy infringing technology (e.g. cameras, satellites, biological scanning, etc.) it is an ever approaching reality - there is no argument that enforcement cannot be increased. We need not even go into covert methods of enforcement. Simply put, every time a law is broken in front of an officer of the law, it ought to be enforced. Violations, especially the low-penalty ones used above occur all of the time. Only through actual enforcement will the full power of the government's restrictions and ability to restrict register with the ordinary citizen.

placing traffic cameras on lights, and later in public areas like the cameras in Britain. The gov can enforce the law as strictly as it wants and just having the law there is a statement of power and control. does a complaint against the law make the gov enforce it more stringently?

Are these examples simply instances of no/partial enforcement where the police have better things to do? Does this confound any ulterior restrictive motive of the government or just correlate for these simple examples?

Are the mediums for public upheaval effective? will protest/rebellion work? should it be more of a referendum style? Populace should not be worried that complaint will cause the gov to enforce it more stringently if it is already enforcing it to the fullest extent practicable.

-- MattDavisRatner - 27 Mar 2008