Former Congressman Lt Col Allen West has an important warning is his article, see link below. It has to do with the danger of vague language being used in our laws. Objective law is a requirement of a free society. Subjective law is used by dictatorships to control its people.
I would add that the sheer volume of laws is also a tool of dictatorships. In the U.S. thousands of new laws are passed each year. No one person can keep up with this. Even lawyers do not know all the laws in the hundreds and thousands of volumes. How can the layman on the street be expected to know what is and is not legal? You could violate dozens of laws every day and not even realize it. If you become a “squeaky wheel”, then the “Gestapo” will assign an agent to watch you for a day or two to record your violations. You will then be picked up, convicted, sent off to a labor camp in Siberia, and never be heard from again.
The solution to excessive volume is to write laws in the form of principles. One example is: “No person or group may initiate the use of physical force against any other person or group.” This one principle subsumes all of our legitimate “malum in se” laws. Why? Because the only way anyone can violate the individual rights of another is to initiate the use of physical force (or fraud) against him. Some elaboration is necessary, but not much. As an example I contend that all tort (criminal) law should be reduced to one or two pages (normal font, of course).
Malum in se: Latin referring to an act that is “wrong in itself,” in its very nature being illegal because it violates the natural, moral, or public principles of a civilized society. Examples are murder, robbery, and rape.
Malum prohibitum: Latin meaning “wrong due to being prohibited,” which refers to crimes made so by statute. An example is a traffic stoplight where red means stop and green means go.
A current example of destroying the specific meaning of a word is “gay marriage”. A traditional marriage has the potential for creating new life. Gay marriage obviously does not. Therefore, gays can call it a civil union, a significant other love contract, or anything else, but they cannot properly call it a “marriage”. That word already has a specific meaning which should not be changed.
Specific meanings are necessary for accurate communication which is necessary for intellectual precision. An example of intellectual precision is the Declaration of Independence. It says that you have the right to the pursuit of happiness, not to happiness. The difference is huge. For example, it is the difference between whether or not it is proper to have a welfare state. The specific meaning of words are important and must be defended. Vague or fuzzy meanings puts our society on the road to dictatorship.
What Congress is About to Pass Could Shut Down My Website
http://allenbwest.com/2015/07/what-congress-is-about-to-pass-could-shut-down-my-website/
Here is my email to my representative in Congress:
Vote No on HB 2899
We do not need another agency in the DHS. Moreover, we certainly don’t need to give the government carte blanche to declare “ideological” enemies in such a nebulous manner. Subjective law written in vague language is a tool of dictatorship used to subjugate its people. Our laws need to be written in clear and objective language. This proposed bill is dangerous to our individual rights and freedom!
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