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This essay I cannot support biblically, it is a Me-ism and
is just my opinion on things. So please do with this as you
wish. However, I have to say that as we move through time
we are fast becoming one of the most governed societies in
the history of the world. By this I mean that because of the
computer age that we live in big brother can see into the
most intimate aspects of our lives and litigate and legislate
everyone into one little cubbyhole. Personally, I think that
we have so many laws, ordinances, rules, and regulations that
no one is fully in compliance with every law, ordinance, rule
and regulation no matter how hard they try. It is sort of
like our laws have made us all criminals.
Here’s what I mean more precisely, if the law is to hard
for the common man to understand then the law is to hard understand.
Now I realize that our society is a little more complicated
than Israel at the time of Moses. And that along with the
Ten Commandments came another few hundred rules of conduct.
But still the laws where not to hard for the common man to
understand and deal with. That is one problem that we have
in our society in regards to the law.
Another problem is that we have turned prisons into an industry
in this country to our shame and detriment. Industries feed
on growth. One way to create growth in a prison industry is
to make lots and lots and lots of laws governing our personal
behaviors. Which you have to do if individuals won’t take
responsibility for their own actions and being.
Now I’m going to use drugs as an example because I have read
statistics that indicate that upwards to 60% of all people
in jail are in jail for some drug related charge. Drugs are
probably illegal because the alcohol industry and pharmaceutical
companies wanted a monopoly on how American get their buz.
Many of our elected officials have or do use drugs, including
Clinton and presidential candidate George Bush. I don’t know
how these men can allow people to go to jail for years and
years for what they themselves do or have done. Anyway, it
seems to me that for century’s marijuana and other drugs were
not illegal, but in this century they are. Perhaps to create
prisoners for an industry, I don’t know? However, why not
legalize the drugs, control them through a liquor store type
of business setup, tax the daylights out of it and then crack
down on the crime around it.
We need to put the money we spend on incarceration into education
instead. Teach our young that it is wrong and you have won.
However, the other side of the coin is we need to also teach
them that if they do choose to go that way that we will not
help with any medical costs, job lose or whatever. A hundred
year's ago opium, pot and cocaine were legal. You could buy
these things right across the counter. But here was the deal,
if you succumbed to the addiction you were on your own. Alcoholism,
drug addiction, it didn’t matter, if you lost control of your
life you lost control. If you committed an armed robbery because
of your addiction, no one looked at the addiction and gave
you special consideration, you went to jail and you dried
out in the jail if it didn't kill you. If you got 20 years
oh well, you got no medical treatment nothing. No one looked
at your addiction and gave you special treatment if you killed
someone while addicted. You got hung whether straight or sober.
If you went through withdrawal or got the DT’s while in jail,
oh well.
My point is that we should let adults do what they want to
do and we should let them pay their own way if they have problems.
Do you want to smoke tobacco? Smoke your brains out and understand
that the state and society at large will not assist you in
your illnesses. If you become an alcoholic, you are on your
own. If you choose drugs and become addicted then there is
no help for you that you can’t provide for yourself. Which
means you better have insurance and family that will stick
by you or you die in the gutter. Alcohol, drugs, tobacco,
it doesn't matter, "Therefore, to one who knows the right
thing to do, and does not do it, to him it is sin." James
4-17. Why should society as a whole pay for the deliberate
sin of your heart.
By doing this we have freed up 60% of our prison system,
cut cost and given ourselves the space we need to keep the
really serious criminals behind bars. This idea would of course
put one of the fastest growing industries in the country off
track. But we would have let adults make their own decisions
and take direct responsibility for their actions too. After
all, do we really care what a man or women do in their own
home. So let’s control the actions we do care about.
Distributing drugs or alcohol to children should bring life
in prison, but then so should child abuse, child rape, child
neglect, sexual molestation and other crimes against children.
We should also make sentencing of criminals a lot easier
to understand. Jeb Bush is advocating something I wrote to
the papers 10 years ago. His new 10-20-life thing. That is
a variation of an idea I had years ago. Actually, my idea
is that we only give out 5 sentences in this country for felonies.
I think they should be 5 years, 10 years, 15 years, life,
or death. For instance, your first burglary should get you
5 years, your second should get you 10 and the third should
be 15 years. So if you are convicted of 3 burglaries in your
life you will have served 30 years in jail. Then we can make
it interesting by saying that if you use a gun in a crime
you will get life and if the gun is discharged in the crime
you get death. If someone is hurt or killed in the commission
of a crime you get the death penalty no matter how they got
hurt or killed. Then lets define crimes for what they are.
Stealing is stealing is stealing, no matter whether you rob
a bank or embezzle from a bank it is stealing, first offense
5 years. Shoplifting as a first offense will get you 5 years
and so on. Second offense for stealing 10 years and so on.
Murder is murder is murder, death is the only sentence allowed.
God gave us Ten Commandments and if you think about it if
we stuck to those and called a spade a spade, we wouldn’t
need a whole lot of other laws to determine right from wrong.
I don’t think that we should try to control a person’s personal
life to much of a degree except where their behavior becomes
harmful to someone or someone’s property. We are all going
to answer to God and teaching children that they will stand
before The Judgement Seat of God and be held accountable to
the Lord God Almighty is far more important
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