The state in a free society is instituted amongst men to protect life & property. However, government has gone way too far, trying to justify preemptive measures in order to maintain peace & protect property. This is a bad idea because one, it punishes peaceful law-abiding citizens for conduct that does not directly harm anyone, two it steers away from the original goal of stopping crime by targeting the mere offenders who have done no direct harm, & three, it makes it less likely for police to apprehend dangerous criminals because more resources are being wasted on preemptive policies rather than investigating crime & apprehending criminals or persons who are conspiring to do harm.
I want to share the example of handling terrorism. Since the September 11, 2001 hijackings, the Bush & Obama regimes have radicalized government police powers with legislation & policies which target innocent civilians. During World War II on February 19, 1942, Dictator President Franklin D. Roosevelt signed an executive order interning Japanese-Americans. This mostly harmed American citizens of Japanese descent who were not even judged fairly as spies & provocateurs of the enemies. Japanese Americans were punished for the actions of the Japanese forces that attacked Pearl Harbor & those who America was at war with. The United States regime failed to prove that these internees were working for the enemies. FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover opposed the internment of Japanese-Americans not because of constitutional reasons but because the spies have been identified. American citizen Fred Korematsu who was of Japanese descent was arrested for refusing internment & took the challenge to the US Supreme Court. The high court ruled by 6-3 majority the internment was constitutional & refused Korematsu’s pleas. The U.S. failed to prove he was disloyal to the American land. The federal regime would continue to maintain that the internment of Japanese-Americans during World War II was the right thing to do during World War II until the 1980’s when in 1988; Congress passed a law condemning the internment, realizing it was a huge mistake based on hysteria, bad logic, & poor leadership. Fred Korematsu was vindicated by the courts five years earlier & continued to his dying day to condemn the hysteria launched by the federal regime in wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks.
Preemptive laws serve as feel good measures which use pre-crime measures less extremely portrayed in Phillip Dick’s story Minority Report as well as the 2002 movie. Fears of “unfit” children being born is used as justification for eugenics or forced sterilization. This practice violates the right to life because if humans were once fetuses & were made from contraception, then life must begin at contraception. The US Supreme Court rejected the definition of life in 1973 when it ruled in the infamous Roe v. Wade that a woman has the right to obtain an abortion in her first trimester, overruling 46 state laws that had some laws against some practices of abortion.
Another preemptive law is gun control. This simpleton argument is that if access to guns is not restricted, there would be violence & criminals would be able to more easily commit crimes. Regardless of if that is true or not, the real concern should be apprehending criminals, making it more likely for them to be caught without any law-abiding citizens being legally harmed. The criminal justice system often convicts the innocent & acquits the guilty, making us less safe from crime. Criminals can buy illegal guns in the black market, despite guns being regulated more strictly than alcohol & being legal for some as well. Guns in the hands of any law abiding citizen deter criminals because it makes criminals less likely to target armed persons. Police have no duty to individually protect you & will not protect you. Unarmed law abiding people are more likely to be harmed by violent criminals & tyrannical police forces than someone who is armed & that’s why tyrants fear the right to keep & bear arms because it would undermine their power, making chance of a successful resistance slim. The real goal should be apprehending criminals & not wasting resources on mere gun control violators who have done no direct harm. Regardless, all guilty criminals should be brought to justice & need to pay restitution to their victim & all apprehension & court costs.
The War on Drugs & Underage Drinking has also been considered preemptive. The problems concerning drug & alcohol abuse are crime & dangerous impaired driving but the goals have been changed to curb drunken driving, drug use, & underage drinking. Problem is they don’t directly address the problems of dangerous driving & crime itself. The drinking age of 21 has done nothing to stop crime & dangerous driving. Prohibition of 1920’s to 1933 was a failure made with increase of crime & substance abuse because it did not address crime & certainly could not stop substance abuse without totalitarian supervision of the populace 24/7 365 days a year. The War on Drugs & War on Underage Drinking equal prohibition. An effective way of stopping underage drinking would be to require 13 to 20 year olds to be fitted with electronic ankle bracelets tracking alcohol in their systems until their 21st birthday. However that would deprive youth of their due process rights putting them in the same status of criminals. The US Supreme Court ruled in 1967 (In Re Gault) that due process cannot be abridged on the basis of age, although it did make some distinctions between juvenile & adult courts, with juveniles having only some of the rights afforded in adult courts.
Conclusion being is that all policies must have the compelling state interest of protecting life & property & all measure to maintain peace must be done in the most least restrictive matter.
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