personal freedom or public safety?

[vikki_tics]

Discussion post for the poll over on vikki.

Okay, I know what you're thinking: these two things aren't mutually exclusive. I believe you're wrong. Mostly. (slave_to_anime points out that public safety specifically isn't always mutually exclusive to freedom

Comments

[slave_to_anime]

Um, they aren't mutually exclusive. There are things that the government can do to restrict or benefit personal freedom that has no bearing on public safety whatsoever, and vice versa. You've provided one such example: allowing/disallowing certain religious symbols or such isn't a public safety issue by any real means, but it's definitely a personal freedom issue. While I agree most of them make the two mutually exclusive, it's certainly not applicable in every case

[vikki]

Of course, you're right: there can be legislation for each subject that isn't directly related to the other.

while one should definitely have the right to not have to walk into a restaurant and hit a wall of smoke, it doesn't mean the government needs to put up a rule saying people shouldn't be allowed to smoke in restaurants.
See, I don't think people have the right to expect anything other than lawfulness (obedience to the law) once they leave public property.

What actually brought this on in particular is a law in consideration regulating - well, I think it was sugar content in foods. I realize that weight is considered a major health issue, but here's the thing: why don't people have the right to be overweight? I mean, most people aren't happy in that state, but why is this a public safety/health issue, precisely? The fact that the person next to me is overweight doesn't hurt me, unless we're trying to share a plane seat. The issue to be heavily regulated and attacked previous to weight was smoking (to great success), but at

[slave_to_anime]

Just to show a case going the other way, by the way: the maintenance of a voluntary army is a public safety issue, but there is no necessity that the maintenance of an army is a personal freedom issue, except in fairly ticky-tacky ways (an army means I don't have the freedom to occupy the space where an army base is, or such

[slave_to_anime]

Actually, talking about fast food stuff, we've got a nice little burner issue going on in the northern part of our state, where a county is restricting the ability of fast food restaurants to include toys in their meals unless they meet certain nutritional requirements, arguing that the toys give incentives for kids to eat unhealthy. Or to put it more bluntly: THEY'RE TAKING OUR GOODIES FROM OUR HAPPY MEALS!! DX

Thankfully, it only affects something like a dozen restaurants because it's a county law and can only be enforced on restaurants in unincorporated parts of their county, but it's still taking nanny state a little bit far even for me.

[emerald_embers]

I believe that unless you're talking about *complete* personal freedom then the two aren't mutually exclusive

[rosalui]

*pops up shyly* I can't answer one or the other, because the two are only mutually exclusive in their far extremes. I think anything, in far extremes, is bad. Should people have the 'freedom' to smoke indoors in a kitty play-pen? No, but neither is 'public safety' a reason to strip-search someone because they look, say, like an Arab. I wouldn't give a crap if they banned smoking but that's not what we're talking about here XD

I believe a government has the moral/legal obligation to protect its people from harm. To make sure we are not, to use an extreme example, eating poisoned baby meat instead of chicken, etc. But that is clear quality control of goods, which are passive, inanimate objects. It's different from forcing restrictive laws on people to combat a theoretical (hypothetical? ;_;) 'threat', which could in its extreme turn into a witch hunt.

This is apart from the fact that I kind of don't care if someone is legal or not; I wouldn't use that as an argument even if I thought it would work. XD

[killyoudead]

While I do agree on many of your points-that "complete" freedom is essentially government-sanctioned anarchy (which doesn't necessarily mean chaos, of course), that it's not necessarily the state/national government's duty to limit this-or-that product in this-or-that setting, and so forth-the final point is that the government of the people and the people themselves are not entirely separate entities. The government is made up of the people, directed by and for them, and while ours in particular carries a mantle of protecting certain freedoms, that is nowhere near the whole of the law

[killyoudead]

So, hitting your examples: do you have a right to never see a religious symbol that violates your sensibilities? No, you do not; doing so would be infringing upon the rights of those to whom those religious symbols hold meaning; however, as our nation does have what is meant to be a divide between its religious institutions and those of its various levels of government, valuing or representing any one religion or religions over any/all others (such as in the case of Biblical verses in federal buildings, which seems to crop up a lot) would go against those principles.

For immigration: while illegal immigration is a problem, yes, is this solution the most just? The way it's been framed, as far as I've seen, is that police can request identification from anyone they deem "suspicious" of possibly being illegal immigrants. Considering the location, the primary target of this law will be the Hispanic/Latino community, which makes sense. However, is this just? It seems highly unlikely that a proportionate number of Caucasians would be