Just Because You Can Doesn’t Mean You Should

When society’s morals start to go, nations have to rely less and less on doing the right thing and more and more on legalism. It’s sort of a “We know you’re not good and trustworthy people, but as long as you don’t do X, Y, and Z, we won’t crack down on you,” way of dealing with your population.

Put another way, things move from “Is it right?” to “Is it legal?”

This is not a healthy thing for a variety of reasons.

Just as a starter, we all know that not all things that are legal are just. We live in a country where it was once legal to sell slaves. There are cultures where children were publicly sacrificed to the Gods with the full support and cooperation of the government. It used to not be unusual for conquering armies to rape and slaughter populations down to the last man after they took a besieged city.

Another problem with ONLY focusing on what’s legal is that it leads to everyone looking for loopholes and not adhering to the spirit of the law.

Anyone smart will tell you that they’d much rather have a handshake agreement with an honorable person they trust than an ironclad contract with a snake. That’s because the snake will always be trying to find a way to screw you over within the letter of the law, while the trustworthy person will be looking for ways to do the right thing.

Replacing morals with legalism leads to people who stop caring about right and wrong, vast, convoluted books of laws that try (but somehow, always fail) to account for every situation, weaponization of rules, and the infantilization of an entire society that needs 100 laws to do something well-meaning people could handle with none.

We see the negative impact of this all over the place in American society today.

What else would you call Congress passing gargantuan bills nobody has read with dozens or even hundreds of clauses hidden in them? How about government agencies that hand out billions of dollars to politically well-connected groups, with minimal controls and without most people even realizing it’s happening? How about politicians openly doing what’s called “insider trading” for the rest of us and funneling tax dollars to friends, relatives, and allies? Hell, if we forbade relatives of politicians from getting political jobs that essentially only exist as a form of legalized bribery, 3/4 of our politicians’ families would be out of jobs.

What about corporations silently funneling vast amounts of money to media sources that turn a blind eye to their excesses, or scientists, universities, and journals that fudge their research to make money? We have (left-wing) judges galore in America that embrace the idea of a “Living Constitution,” which essentially means they base every ruling on their political leaning and try to backwards justify it with legalese after the fact. How else should we refer to the very obvious politically motivated lawfare against Republicans we’ve seen in NYC over the last few years? Lobbyists in America spend billions to engage in favor trading, unfair legislation that benefits them, and legalized bribery of Congress, all of which are probably making poor Ayn Rand turn over in her grave as we speak.

Of course, in America, we should note that the rot starts at the bottom, not the top.

Contrary to what so many people believe, our media, corporations, and politicians are really FOLLOWING what they see the crowd doing, not leading it.

Don’t believe it? Well, look at what we’ve seen in this country over the last 15 years or so.

For example, how about what we just saw in Minnesota? We had people in the streets screaming threats and profanity at ICE, blowing whistles to try to alert criminals to get away from them, following them around in cars, throwing things at them, acting in a threatening manner, and smashing up hotels they thought ICE was staying in. That’s not peaceful protesting, and even if you can make an extremely dubious argument that all of that is legal, nobody should be doing that. Those aren’t things that a good American or even a good person would do.

We could say the same thing about the “mostly peaceful” George Floyd riots. If they were so peaceful, why were there buildings burning in the background?

We could ask similar questions about so many of the shootings by cops that liberals fixated on for years. There certainly have been instances when the police officer clearly, unambiguously did the wrong thing, but that usually wasn’t the case. Instead, we had some (almost always) black American acting like a lunatic or engaging in violence, and the debate would entirely be about whether the police should have shot them. Here’s an alternate idea: Instead of debating whether the crazy behavior they were engaged in went right to the edge of the line or over it, maybe they should have just not done that in the first place.

As a side note, this is why I particularly hate these videos from wackos and Libertarians encouraging people to learn the law as best they can so they can make life difficult for cops that pull them over. Rather than going that way, how about you just don’t be a smug @sshole, let the cops do their jobs, and fight the ticket in court if you have a problem with it?

We should also point out that if, for some reason, mean-spirited, untrue, or disgusting speech about politics were somehow not allowed in America, probably somewhere between 60% of what conservatives and 90% of what liberals say would immediately disappear into the ether. Just because the “terms of service” allow something to be said doesn’t mean it should be said.

We can go on and on with this.

* Just because you join a rage mob on social media full of hundreds of thousands of people hurling hate at some random stranger for dubious reasons doesn’t mean you should.

* Just because you can get away with saying something anonymously online that you would never say to someone’s face doesn’t mean that’s what you should do.

* Just because you can get away with sneaking into America or get away with breaking the law for a long time doesn’t mean that you should do it.

* If you’re an influencer, just because you can film someone having a bad day, make a nuisance of yourself, or show everyone the mental breakdown you’re having right now doesn’t mean you should.

* Just because you can build an audience on conspiracy theories, lies, or racial hatred doesn’t mean you should do that.

* Just because you can get people online to cheer for you by punching down or insulting someone who doesn’t deserve it, doesn’t mean that’s what you should do.

* Just because you can get away with protesting at someone’s house, storming a store, or blocking a road doesn’t mean you should.

At some point, for our society to work, people have to actually care about being good human beings instead of assuming they’re on the side of the angels by default. There are no Christians, Muslims, Jews, atheists, straights, gays, trans, liberals, conservatives, Libertarians, whites, blacks, Hispanics, or Asian people who are good or evil just by virtue of being part of that category.

Ultimately, it’s not what you claim to believe, what political policies you support, or what religion you belong to that determines if you have character or not. If you want to be a good person, you have to earn it with the principles you live by, how you behave, and how you treat other human beings.

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