Code increased from 3,000 in the early 1980s to 4,000 by 2000 to over 4,450 by 2008." Those laws, originally limited to obvious crimes, now touch on areas of life that most people would never guess to be of interest to prosecutors and law enforcement officers.Ĭivil liberties attorney Harvey Silverglate made a similar point in his 20 09 book, Three Felonies a Day. The conservative Heritage Foundation warns that "the number of criminal offenses in the U.S. Gostin cheers on former New York City mayor Michael Bloomberg's nanny-state meddling and writes, "the public health approach rejects the idea that there is such a thing as unfettered free will," he forgets (or doesn't care) that using the law to clamp fetters on us unhealthy saps creates more rules and regulations that we could ever possibly obey. When Georgetown University bioethicist Lawrence O. Fans of active government want the state to flex its muscles in ways that they think will benefit society, but they ignore that such activism can easily overwhelm the ability to comply.Ĭlick for larger image/Prison Policy Initiative So keeping any sort of government on a short leash is just good sense.īut ending up in a ditch with a few thousand other innocents to keep you company isn't the only way to experience an over-powerful state. Liberal democracies seem to be the least murderous type of regime, but there's no obvious magic cutoff in terms of authority below which governments stop slaughtering people. So, opposing accumulation of power by government-being antigovernment-may be inconvenient for some people's political plans, but it's also, literally, a life-saver. In short: to our realization that power impoverishes we must also add that power kills. Conversely, the more power governments have, the more human insecurity and violence. That is, the more freedom, the greater the human security and the less the violence. Hardly known, however, is that freedom also saves millions of lives from famine, disease, war, collective violence, and democide (genocide and mass murder). It is true that democratic freedom is an engine of national and individual wealth and prosperity. Rummel's 1997 book, Power Kills, stated his case most strongly, but he nicely summarized the argument on his website: Democracies were also responsible for unjustifiable deaths, especially in subduing resistance in their colonial possessions (think: Belgian Congo) and in indiscriminate bombing of civilian targets during wars (think: Hiroshima), but to a far lesser degree than Communists, Nazis, and overdecorated generalissimos. Unsurprisingly, the bloodiest body count was run up by totalitarian regimes, though authoritarians were busy stacking up the corpses, too, if in smaller piles. "This democide murdered 6 times more people than died in combat in all the foreign and internal wars of the century," he wrote. Rummel estimated governments murdered in mass killings he termed "democide" during the 20th century. That's the number of unarmed people the late Prof. The latest argument spouted by fans of a government potent enough to give you all you could want and give it to you good and hard is that any eyebrows raised at the prospect of such an expansive state are evidence of racism.ĭon't try to follow the logic you might trip over the twists and turns it takes.īut here's the honest truth: Not just skepticism toward state power, but a strong antigovernment sentiment, are natural and logical results of taking a close look at the state and its works-its bloody, heavy-handed works. People suspicious of coercive power have been on the defensive recently-or, more accurately, their opponents want them to be on the defensive.
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |