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To: tpaine
"....The full scope of the liberty guaranteed by the Due Process Clause `cannot be found in or limited by the precise terms of the specific guarantees elsewhere provided in the Constitution.
This `liberty´ is not a series of isolated points pricked out in terms of the taking of property; the freedom of speech, press, and religion; the right to keep and bear arms; the freedom from unreasonable searches and seizures; and so on.
It is a rational continuum which, broadly speaking, includes a freedom from all substantial arbitrary impositions and purposeless restraints...."

You've staked out an "extreme" libertarian position here. The rational continuum that you speak of leads directly to legalized drug use, prostitution, gambling, suicide, polygamy, incest, beastiality, adultery, any private consensual behavior.

Believe me. I am not fundamentally opposed to a body of laws that does not criminalize personal private behavior that does no third party bodily harm nor deprives them of their property.

You recognize, however, that this is not a widely held position in this country. Most people in America favor laws that limit personal behavior relating specifically to sex, drugs, suicide, child porn, et al. They hold this view because they think that the foregoing activities are damaging to our society, its children and to important civic institutions like marriage and the family. Whether you like it or not, this view is equally valid to your own.

You would not achieve the changes in the law that you seek through typical democratic means. You would have to ram these changes down the throats of most Americans through the arbitrary actions of an imperious Supreme Court.

I'm not against personal liberty. I'm just for Federalism. Let Texas be Texas and California be California. There is no one size-fits-all set of moral laws (or lack of them) that will satisfy everyone. Therefore, let every state work out the issues in its own way, subject to judicial review by a SCOTUS that strictly abides by the plain meaning of the Constitution and the written intentions of the Founders, not the mutable political/cultural biases of its sitting members.


241 posted on 07/02/2003 9:44:28 AM PDT by irish_links
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To: irish_links
Most people in America favor laws that limit personal behavior relating specifically to sex, drugs, suicide, child porn, et al. They hold this view because they think that the foregoing activities are damaging to our society, its children and to important civic institutions like marriage and the family.

You admit that:

"I am not fundamentally opposed to a body of laws that does not criminalize personal private behavior that does no third party bodily harm nor deprives them of their property."

- I am also fundamentaly opposed, as is our constitution.
Thus, what "most people favor" are laws that violate this fundamental principle of our constitution.

Whether you like it or not, this view is equally valid to your own.

You are contradicting your own statement just above.
What these people "think" are damaging acts must be shown to be valid dangers. There has to be a compelling state interest proven, or due process is violated in the drafting of the law, and it becomes an 'arbitrary imposition and purposeless restraint'; -- a decree by majority rule.

243 posted on 07/02/2003 1:43:05 PM PDT by tpaine (Really, I'm trying to be a 'decent human being', but me flesh is weak)
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