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To: Publius Valerius

Only laws that are in favor of starving people to death. If Hitler were in power here, would you still favor the rule of law? Sometimes there is a higher law. It's called "right".


47 posted on 03/21/2005 12:05:51 PM PST by mlc9852
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To: mlc9852

Someone posed this to me the other day, and I dismissed it then as easily as I will now:

I agree that individuals have a duty to disobey immoral laws. For instance, in this case, if the doctor (or whomever) who was ordered to actually, physically, remove the tube from Terri's throat were to object on moral grounds, I wouldn't have a problem with that and I wouldn't expect him to be punished for disregarding the order.

However, when you are dealing with governments, that rationale no longer holds true, because governments, which draft and enforce the laws, aren't free to simply disregard the laws they don't like, because the laws are all we have to hold together society. Without law, there is no civilization. What is the point of having a constitution or laws if government is not bound? It is an exercise in fiction--nothing more than an illusion of security and civilization.

As I said on another thread, only God is perfect. We just have the law.


62 posted on 03/21/2005 12:11:44 PM PST by Publius Valerius
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