Tough On Crime

Conservative: We must be tough on crime! Lock up those criminals and throw away the key!

Brian: What is your definition of a crime?

Conservative: Something that is against the law of course.

Brian: I have heard, sir, that you are a devout Christian and a proud gun owner. Is this accurate?

Conservative: Absolutely.

Brian: What if the government passed a law banning gun ownership and banning Christian worship. Would you then consider yourself to be a criminal for carrying on those activities?

Conservative: Certainly not! Those are my fundamental rights that no government can possibly take away.

Brian: Why are those rights fundamental but rights to kill and rob are not?

Conservative: There are no rights to kill and rob! Such activities violate the fundamental rights of others, so they can legitimately be prohibited.

Brian: Alright. Well how about the right to ingest whatever substance, recreational drugs included, that you want? Or the right to hire a prostitute who is in the trade voluntarily? As far as I can tell, these don’t violate the rights of anyone else.

Conservative: Such activities undermine the moral fabric of society, and hence can legitimately be prohibited.

Brian: How do we determine whether an activity undermines the moral fabric of society or not?

Conservative: We see whether the activity offends most people’s sense of decency.

Brian: Christianity offends some people, and gun ownership offends quite a few people. Are you saying that if such people constituted ‘most people’ in a given geographical region, than your ‘fundamental right’ to engage in these activities could be taken away by the law in this region?

Conservative: Well no, of course not. Some freedoms constitute fundamental rights and some don’t.

Brian: The freedoms that you cherish are fundamental rights, while those that other people cherish are not?

Conservative: No, no, you’re obviously just too thick to understand the nuances of these subtle distinctions. Let’s move on. Surely you must agree that we should be tough on murderers, rapists, and thieves at least!

Brian: I agree fully. In fact, I would like us to be tougher on such people than you do!

Conservative: Really? You think we should use the death penalty more than I do, and you think that we should have longer minimum jail sentences than I do?

Brian: No, I suspect not. The toughness I would advocate comes in the form of wider apprehension of criminals, not harsher punishments once they are caught.

Conservative: Ah, so you want the police forces to be better funded? I could definitely get behind that.

Brian: I doubt that would help. The unapprehended criminals I have in mind commit their crimes in the open, and the police never bother them. 

Conservative: You’ve lost me; I have no idea what you’re talking about now.

Brian: What would you call someone who, in order to satisfy a personal vendetta, make some money, and stroke their ego, ended up killing thousands of innocent people? Would you call them a murderer?

Conservative: Of course, and a monstrous one at that.

Brian: What would you call someone who threw people that offended them, but who were doing no objective harm to others, into a locked room where there was a high probability of them being raped?

Conservative: A tyrant and an accessory to rape.

Brian: What would you call someone who took people’s hard-earned money against their will, threatening them with violence if they resisted?

Conservative: A thief and a mugger of course. What’s the point of this exercise?

Brian: These actions were all perpetrated by officials of the US Government. I described, in turn, the Iraq War of 2003, the US prison system as it relates to people charged with victimless ‘crimes’ such as drug possession, and the taxation system of the US Government (and of every other government). And yet, none of the people responsible for these actions were ever apprehended as criminals. I would like to stop such actions as much as possible, while you do not, hence why I say I am tougher on crime than you are.

Conservative: Whoa, hold on there! The US government had the right to do all of those things; hence the actions cannot be called criminal.

Brian: Who gave them such a right? Maybe the private murderers, rapists, and thieves on the street have the ‘right’ to engage in their activities too!

Conservative: There’s a world of difference! Democratic governments have the right to do anything that is in accord with the will of the majority of the people.

Brian: Ah, then lynch mobs are legitimate institutions too?

Conservative: I beg your pardon?

Brian: The actions of lynch mobs frequently accord with the will of the majority of the people in the small geographical area in which they operate. So by your logic, they should have the right to engage in those actions, just as democratic governments do.

Conservative: No, for every territorial region there is only one government with jurisdiction over a particular area of conduct. Lynch mobs are not a part of that government, and yet they assume some of what should be that government’s jurisdiction, hence they are illegitimate.

Brian: So as long as a lynch mob is able to become territorial monopolist and calls itself a democratic government, it can engage in any action that accords with the will of the majority of the people living under its rule?

Conservative: Your terminology is awfully provocative, but yes, essentially, unless the action violates people’s fundamental rights.

Brian: Ah, yes, the rights that we can’t consistently define. Forgive me for not feeling greatly reassured.

Conservative: (sigh) yeah, whatever. Why do you insist on calling the actions of the government that you don’t agree with criminal? Seems a bit childish to me.

Brian: I am simply using the terminology that you introduced at the beginning of this discussion. Why do you insist on calling the actions of private parties that you don’t agree with criminal? If my use of the term is childish, than so is yours.

Conservative: If you’ll recall, I initially defined criminal as something that is against the government’s law, not as actions that I don’t agree with.

Brian: And if you want to return to that definition then that’s fine, as long as you remain consistent. But I, for one, do not recognize the government’s prerogative to define actions as criminal. The government is not better or higher than me, so why should it have special prerogatives that I don’t? Either I should have the power to define what is criminal for me, or else the word is useless and should cease to be used. I have absolutely no problem with the latter option. In the first case, your exhortation for us to be ‘tough on crime’ amounts to an exhortation for me to be tough on things that I don’t agree with. In the second case, your exhortation is meaningless.

Conservative: (sigh) You libertarians muck everything up…