Quote:
Originally Posted by KiteRider
Hmmm, I thought the four points were practically true by definition.
The price of protecting our rights is the cost of law enforcement, judges, public defenders, courts, prisons, maintaining CPS, parole officers, educating all of these players, and the million other things that as a non-lawyer, non-political player I am likely to overlook.
If a community doesn't pay for these things, it is unreasonable to expect the citizen's rights will be protected. Think of High Noon. If a community only hires one sheriff with the courage (another resource) to stand up against a clan of gangsters, it goes without saying that the gangsters will get away with gangster activity a lot of the time.
Gangsters, Mafia, and child-raping polygamists understand this and set up shop accordingly.
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I reject that spending too little on infrastructure to protect rights means that we shouldn't reasonably expect rights to be protected. You are arguing from two different perspectives, I think. On the one hand, society makes a determination as to how to allocate resources. To an extent (though there isn't the 100% correlation you want there to be), a lack of funding can have an effect on rights. However, that is a societal determination. The right that is subsequently not protected is an individual right, not a societal right. Why should the individual not reasonably expect his/her rights to be protected? That is the purpose of government. If the government fails to perform its job, is the citizen whose rights are deprived to simply accept it and then revise his/her expectations to meet increasingly lower standards? Should society as a whole accept the lower standards because the system didn't operate well once? Or should it give us pause and inspire us to do better and to ensure the rights of the individual are satisfied?
This is an entirely different conversation than the topic started by Mike, though there is a bit of overlap.
On the one hand, a society may say that it isn't worth the price to