Residual Individual Sovereignty
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Christ said to give Caesar what is Caesar's and God what is God's. This assumes an area into which government has no valid relevance...from government's perspective, it is an area of Residual Individual Sovereignty.
The Declaration of Independence assumed certain freedoms valid if you were alive...since God created you, it followed that He gave you these freedoms "that among these are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness" (LLP). The Constitution designed a structure to protect those freedoms. So, the concept is you have the Divinely-appointed right to LLP, free from any restriction as long as you didn't negatively impact the LLP of another individual. Now we gave up some of our freedoms (not all) to be structured or managed by the Constitution...e.g., foreign policy, defense, types of political structures, etc.
So, as long as you don't violate the Constitution or harm another human being, you retain those Divine rights...LLP. This concept was known to the Founders, Locke, Mills, and others as the Harm Principle.
If my LLP means that I get to drink alcohol, w/o harming the LLP of another, I have that right. What if my LLP means that I want to smoke marijuana? Or take heroin or cocaine? As long as I don't harm another...
By the by, the Constiutional clause cited for support of the drug war and other vice laws is usually the "interstate commerce clause", which gives the federal government the right to regulate interstate commerce. It doesn't give it the right to terminate it, however...(and that's not a thorough legal opinion of the clause by any stretch...)
What about obscenity? Can I be obscene if my LLP requires that I do? Are you willing to let someone enjoy pornography? If you a person can indulge in pornography and obscenity w/o harming another in the process, then there really doesn't seem to be any Constitutional basis for its prohibition...no matter how distasteful you find it. (By the by, the same legal rationale used to support prohibition of obscenity is the same one used to define and prohibit "hate speech", e.g., homosexuality is evil, etc...it was only a matter of time until the gravity of the logic pulled it in...)
So, are you willing to allow other adults the same freedom you desire, knowing that they will do things that you find distasteful or perhaps immoral as long as they do not bring harm to the LLP of another? And if you're not willing to extend that freedom to them (to drink, smoke, toke, see pics of naked people, visit a prostitute, etc...) by what criteria do you justify those limits on their LLP?
Last edited by Open Mind; 02-22-2008 at 02:36 AM.
Reason: spelling
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