Pathetic.
Vices are those acts by which a man harms himself or his property.
Crimes are those acts by which one man harms the person or property of another.
Vices are simply the errors which a man makes in his search after his own happiness. Unlike crimes, they imply no malice toward others, and no interference with their persons or property.
In vices, the very essence of crime - that is, the design to injure the person or property of another - is wanting.
It is a maxim of the law that there can be no crime without a criminal intent; that is, without the intent to invade the person or property of another.
But no one ever practises a vice with any such criminal intent. He practices his vice for his own happiness solely, and not from any malice toward others.
Unless this clear distinction between vices and crimes be made and recognized by the laws, there can be on earth no such thing as individual right, liberty, or property, and the corresponding and coequal rights of another man to the control of his own person and property.
For a government to declare a vice to be a crime, and to punish it as such, is an attempt to falsify the very nature of things. It is as absurd as it would be to declare truth to be falsehood, or falsehood truth.
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As you can see this debate has raged for quite sometime.
With the exception of the short-lived prohibition experiment, our government has tended to agree with the above, recently however that has not been the case.
Could it be that the prevalent vision of what life is about has changed in America?
Let me clarify my question;
If a man chooses to {insert vice here} after a long day of plowing behind his mule in the middle of the 100 acre farm that he owns, under what veil of morality can he be labeled a criminal?
He can't.
In order to make that leap we have to change the scenario, we must bring that man into a closer relationship to other individuals. We must bring him into the village.
Perhaps Hillery was right .... it takes a village.
So much depends on our perception of who we are. Are we free and independent men or are we members of the village?
As for me, I stand free.