The Idea of Law

One of the better attempts at a Statement of Intent and List of Demands anyone has put out there that I have seen - and I've known quite a few.

Realistic, pragmatic, not *excessively* utopian - I would have to say that I pretty close to being in 100% agreement with this.

Just one major caveat - a lot of people propose this and really mean it without thinking it through : Capital Punishment for elected leaders that pass or sign "un-CONsitutional laws".... Not cool. For one thing, you are attempting to impose and enforce your own morality through Law and Use of Violence (which is the very thing you are complaining about, thus keeping the Dæmon alive inside your own heart), but also because the CONstitution, nor any of the Laws of Man are suitable, correct or useful to apply as any benchmark for good or ethical behaviour, since they are always, at best, the thoroughly moderated end-product of consensus and compromise. Natural Law is the only standard applicable in every instance.

Besides, it wouldn’t work - Confucius once said that one should never write laws too precisely or have too many of them, but instead have leaders who know you (The People), and the history and culture of the land, because once you make anything rigid or precise, you have created a specific, fixed obstacle to someone's will and described its exact dimensions and scope, in terms of it's reach, application and power to effectively prevent, deter and punish the criminal behaviour it describes and the people of Free Will likely to commit those kinds of crimes if not discouraged or prevented from doing so by everyone else.

Putting up a solid wall in such a way also supplies the criminal with a perfect description for how high a ladder he will need to climb over it, or how many feet long a tunnel he will have to dig to go around it. By the act of creating a new law, you not only create a new crime (usually more than one), you also create a new loophole (again, often more than one) to avoid capture or punishment.

Sadly , you cannot achieve or encourage honesty or good moral behaviour in other people (yes, I include politicians and other elected leaders in that - they *are* also people, albeit venal, corrupt and depraved moral sell-outs and whores) by the threat or application of violent reprisals, up to and including public execution.

Laws are ideas, in the fullest sense in that, like any other kind of  Thought-Form, imagined fantasy or Tulpa, they are alive.

Once a law is created, it can be invoked, banished or ignored, but it cannot ever be truly destroyed for at least as long as there still remains any alive that can remember it, or any material, written record of it, and it's original nature still exists.

But once brought into being, like any person, a law is created with a Double-Aspect, it's Shaddow Self or Dark Heart, since in authoring the text of any law, you also create new and completely original crimes which had not up until that point existed, or were called into existence from bits and pieces of other, weaker parts of existing laws and made whole, focused and robustly strong ....

The moral, then...? Creating harsh and militant laws guarantee the ruthless depraved infamy of the criminals of the future - it's a mistake to raise the stakes so much and Ante Up on the deterrence and the danger factor of the punishment, since doing so likewise intensifies the thrill from the adrenaline-rush and the reward satisfaction  to the criminal if he in not getting caught, and on each successive occasion he does so. 

Lower the threshold of personal risk and that complicating factor largely goes away - you solve it simply by balancing both sides of the equation, and then the problems otherwise proceeding from that hardline tactic going in will never arise to trouble you.