Alchemi's Political Survey Intermeme

[packbat]

alchemi posted this mid-last month.

Questions:

1. What is the appropriate tradeoff between liberty and security?
2. What does the Right to Bear Arms mean?
3. What does Free Speech mean?
4. What is your position on abortion?
5. What about consentual crimes such as drug use?
6. What do you think about the death penalty?

1. What is the appropriate tradeoff between liberty and security?

To as great an extent as possible, liberties should only be denied to persons known (or, in rare cases, believed with confidence) to be security threats, not to their potential victims. Reasonable exceptions to this rule arise when an individual is known to be in significant danger for a limited period of time (e.g. protective custody for witnesses) and when a target is so vulnerable that not running screenings for major hazards presents an unacceptable risk (e.g. x-raying carry-on luggage on a plane).


2. What does the Right to Bear Arms mean?

Guns are dangerous. So are cars. In both cases, it is (or should be) illegal to prevent someone from owning and operating one without strong evidence that the individual would present a significant danger to the lives of others. That said, it is important to prevent those who would present such a danger from using one.


3. What does Free Speech mean?

No speech is illegal that is not likely to or intended to cause significant harm to others.

Examples: to say "Osama Bin Laden was a good guy", to burn an American flag, to hold a rally demanding that President Bush be impeached, and to make claims about what is true and what is not are all examples of free speech, and to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater or to slander someone are not. Education is a big special case: teachers should be legally obliged to provide as accurate and fair a presentation of established truth as possible. This means, for example, that a science teacher who is creationists should still teach evolution, since that is the established scientific theory. [Edit: noneuklid has noted that these last two sentences contain some major flaws. See comments.]


4. What is your position on abortion?

At present, I believe the decision of Roe v. Wade is entirely reasonable, both in its argument and its conclusion. Beyond that, I have no solid opinion.


5. What about consentual crimes such as drug use?

See my statement above, about free speech. (Note that driving under the influence of the wrong kinds of drugs counts as 'likely to cause harm to others', for example.)


6. What do you think about the death penalty?

Morally, I oppose it. Pragmatically, I believe that the harm executions do to those who must carry them out, even if they do so voluntarily, outweighs the few demonstrated benefits capital punishment has over life imprisonment without parole.



Not bad questions, I think.

Comments

You speak 'Bunny'?

[noneuklid.livejournal.com]

Education is a big special case: teachers should be legally obliged to provide as accurate and fair a presentation of established truth as possible.

You realize that, depending on how one interprets this, evolution might have never originally been brought into classrooms at at all? It wasn't until it started getting taught at at least the university level that it started to spread beyond a fairly small group of naturalists...

A. to make claims about what is true and what is not [is free speech]
B. to slander someone [isn't]

A does not include B?