Can we discuss some core principles of justice and liberty? The following strike me as the most rational basis for measuring crime. I'm sure there are issues that are incredibly complicated, but this seems to me the best foundation for resolving them.
If there is no victim, there is no crime. I ask you, who owes restitution, and who is owed restitution? That is the fundamental question of justice, not whether some arbitrary political edict was violated.
If there is no crime, laws making an act or object "illegal" are criminal, as is their enforcement. As Lysander Spooner so clearly articulated about 150 years ago, vices are not crimes. Whether the subject at hand is guns, drugs, homosexuality, pornography, or subversive literature, when legislation creates victims, it is not worthy of the term, "law."
Do you disagree with these principles? Are you a legal positivist, or do you base your position on some deeper principle that is still different from that I attempted to articulate above? If you are in general agreement, but still favor some degree of prohibition or registration on something, what makes your exception to the rule unique? I am willing to acknowledge that something can be immoral without being criminal, and that "but it's not a crime" is not a good response to being chided for immorality, but we must make this distinction now more than ever as people get riled up into moral crusades. We face appeals to emotion, pseudoscientific nonsense, and yellow journalism clouding our minds. Let's take a moment and try to think clearly about matters this important.
We all have an internal authoritarian control freak instinct about something. Our job as rational, acting individuals is to restrain this urge. I suspect it is a corruption of our desire for justice and protection of the innocent, just as unrestrained lust is a corruption of our desire for intimacy or militant nationalism a corruption of our desire for community.
As always, I could be wrong about any or all of my points here. Please comment below if you would like to discuss or debate anything in this post.
I agree with your take on "law" and the concept of, if there is no victim there cannot be a crime.
Also, something can be totally immoral and "wrong" and not be illegal.
Laws created by governments which are not based upon this premise, are constructs which are based in discrimination by those in authority and for those with influence on that authority to the detriment of those which the law affects.
Morality is based on an intrinsic "law". We all understand moral law.
People of sound mind know right from wrong, they may justify their immoral behavior with irrational arguments, but they know what they are doing is wrong, they convince themselves that they have a reason or excuse for putting their selfish desire above morality.
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