Is it the responsibility of government to protect people from themselves?

Nobody is condoning irresponsibility, just respecting ones right to act in that manner if they so choose.

Sure he did!

"Sometimes it is said that man can not be trusted with the government of himself. Can he, then, be trusted with the government of others? Or have we found angels in the forms of kings to govern him? Let history answer this question.
A wise and frugal Government, which shall restrain men from injuring one another, shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government, and this is necessary to close the circle of our felicities." - Thomas Jefferson

Government already does restrain men from hurting one another, it just doesn't do it until someone has been hurt.

Driving with any distraction in the vehicle is the deliberate degradation of the ability to drive safely.

So I am to give up my ability to drive legally because of bad laws?

 

Yes, they have that right, up to the point where it begins to threaten the safety of others.

Come on. waiting until after the fact is not restraint. Handcuffs are a restraint. The cops don't wait to apply them until after the prisoner has attacked them or escaped.

No, not always deliberate, and some distractions are worse than others. Some are avoidable and some are not.

You are at liberty to try to have anything that you consider to be a bad law changed. But if you have agreed to abide by that law, you should obey it unless you are prepared to accept the punishment for flouting it.

 

I always laugh when people quote Jefferson as if he were some monumental life altering thinker. He was nothing more than a really good prose writer. He did not have the strength of his own convictions and he died leaving his own children in slavery.

 

Correct, but it has to be a direct threat...not some percieved threat that may or may not occur.

Sure it is restraint. It is the same restraint as any other law. "Don't do X, but if you do there will be consequences.". That is all the restraint any law provides for.

All of them are deliberate to suggest otherwise is to ignore personal responsiblity.

Of course you obey the law and work to get it changed. Where have I suggested otherwise?

 

Protecting the stupid people who should not exist is not good for evolution. By allowing more and more dumb people to exist only weakens the human species.

 

http://www.darwinawards.com/

A beautiful website.

 

It's quite a bit more than merely perceived. Look at the statistics posted earlier in the thread:

Ok.That is the reason why DUI laws exist. They are a restraint.

All? You will have to explain to me how some random distraction has anything at all to do with personal responsibility.

You didn't.

The idea that regulation cannot prevent injury and death on the road flies in the face of any statistical evidence that I have ever seen. Perhaps you have evidence to the contrary?
I will happily admit that I am not capable of protecting myself against any drunken lout that decides he wants to drive. It has nothing to do with being grown up. It is merely acknowledging reality.
Juvenile? It seems to me that stamping your foot and wailing that regulations infringe your 'liberty' is more like the temper tantrum of a frustrated five year old than ceding some responsibility to provide protection to a more powerful entity.

 

Freedom is not free. Freedom REQUIRES personal responsibility. So SOME laws are necessary, NOT to protect the stupid from themselves, but to protect the general public from the stupid.

 

Well said.

Although it's not just the stupid who are a problem. There's the malevolent and the selfish to contend with as well.

 

The first I agree with. The last two I disagree with. Laws requiring workers to wash hands aren't for that person's protection, but for the customer's protection. No phone calls while driving is not for the driver's protection, but the protection of the rest of the people driving. Now, if you used seat belt laws as an example, I agree that they should not be required (although I've worn seat belts religiously since BEFORE seat belt laws were passed).

 

Seatbelt law isn't unconstitutional. There is no right to drive, hence, you can be regulated while driving (I do agree that seatbelt laws shouldn't be passed, but that is a different issue).

Looking at phone while at redlight shouldn't be illegal. It endangers no one. Texting while driving is another matter.

(that said, I think the dangers of cell phones while driving are greatly overestimated. Despite the increase of cell phones and other distractions, the accident rate in the U.S. has gone down greatly in the last 50 yrs.)

 

Making drinking and driving illegal has reduced the problem of drinking and driving. Nothing can eliminate it.

In terms of cell phone use in cars, IMHO, they should not be banned, but accidents resulting from cell phone use should be harshly punished.

 

To a certain effect, yes it is. People who put themselves in danger may complain that it is their right, but often times their actions harm those around them.

For instance, if an adult male decides to live off of McDonald's, does he have that right? Yes. But there are consequences that effect people other than himself. When his habits catch up to him, what happens to the family he has to feed, or to the children he is supposed to raise.

By protecting people from themselves, the government can protect others.

(No, I'm not suggesting an authoritarian state, and no, being required to wear a seat belt doesn't mean that Big Brother is watching you.)

 

No it's not but it is when one's idiocy harms another.

 

Sometimes, yes. But it's a slippery slope — a very slippery slope.

 

I say that it is the responsibility of people, i.e., individuals to protect themselves and each other with the sharing of truthful knowledge, positive advice and positive encouragement for the better things in life.

 

I agree Anders, M-U-R-D-E-R is in fact M-U-R-D-E-R. I have been stating for a long time that abortion is nothing more than government sponsored G-E-N-O-C-I-D-E and that those in the general population who support such atrocious behavior are themselves nothing short of people with murderous designs and desires. It also stems from people's desire to view something as serious as sexual intercourse as a "plaything" which always ends in disaster.

 

Requiring workers to wash their hands is not an impediment to freedom, it's a public health concern. You do not have the freedom to spread disease. You do not have the freedom to crash into someone because you were not smart enought to realize that you were driving, not sitting in a restaurant or at home while you played with your telephone.

 

I really do not think it should be the responsibility of the government to protect adults from themselves.

As for the so-called "War on Drugs," reasonable people may disagree as to whether this is a good idea or not. Certainly, both progressives and libertarians think otherwise. Even the late William F. Buckley Jr.--surely, the very apothesosis of modern conservatism--believed that marijuana should be legalized.

But I remain unconvinced that it is a desire to protect American adults from themselves that is at the core of this matter.

The law has many functions; one of which is didactic. In short, the law against drugs is a learning tool: It teaches us that society, in general, considers drug usage inappropriate.

To remove that law would be, effectively, to make it uncertain just how society feels about drug usage...

 

No, no, a thousand times, no.

 

This question is way too open ended. If it was actually as simple as yes or no, you wouldn't need to ask it to begin with.

 

The question was:
" Is it the responsibility of government to protect people from themselves?"

That answer should be a resounding NO!

If the question was, "Does the govt have a responsibility to protect people from the stupidity of others?" Then we'd have a different answer.

 

I think that the government mostly protects you against yourself when you can also harm others. I think when government oversteps the line is when they bring in force-feeding rules in prisons, compulsory resussitation in emergency rooms, and anti-abortion legislation.

 

Not realy, but so far the government has been protecting the fools against their masters for decades.

 

Unless you are mentally unfit, either temporarily or permanently (in which case helping people via control of them is ok) then no way. However some forms of 'regulation' so to speak, may be misconstrued as 'protection' when in actual fact they are necessary for the same end of preserving the freedom to pursue individual interests. eg, government forces standards on food companies to make public and print the contents of the food they sell to ensure people know what they are buying seems acceptable and necessary to me.