do laws make you honest

the title says it in a nut shell: do laws make you honest , make you a good person. do laws have force , that is to say can a law make you do something you don't want to? it's a silly question but when you see some of the laws that are proposed and passed you have to believe that someone believes it. speed laws, gun laws, and drug laws have any of these really reduced the use of the laws subject, if not then are they really just control issues. if we pass this law and it does not work and things that were supposed to be better after the laws aren't then we need a more restrictive law and a more restrictive law ad infinitum till you have lots of laws and no rights and a bunch of criminals that are even more empowered by the restrictions on the honest citizens.

I honestly beleive laws do not make people honest. If people were honest there would be no need for laws

Laws garauntee dishonesty.

No law can be black and white. sometimes people just get into bad situations and make poor choices. wether that should be agianst the law is highly questionable, it sounds more like a learning experience.

Iv'e done a lot of things that the "law" might consider wrong, but iv'e also avoided a lot of situations that i knew were wrong weather it was lawful or not.

There should be laws that protect people from being purposely attacked by others for what ever reason, but that is it.

consumption should not be viewed by the law, i dont care about medical costs. i dont want to get into the arguement of alcohol vs marijuanna, but nuff said, its a joke.


And im sick of seing signs everywhere telling me how to go about my day.
everywhere i look, there is another sign telling me what to do next.


common curtiousy mixed with the courage to stand up for what is right, and that is all the law you need.

i guess what I'm getting at is that most people are basically good or at least not bad enough to do thing that will cause them a hassle. even if most laws did not exist then a lot of thing that are against the law would not be done anyway, so if that's the case ( and it may not be ) then what's the purpose of all the laws if not an effort to gain control step at a time, and yes i feel you need laws if only to keep a check on emotions in some situations , i just question the reasons behind some of the control laws speed, gun, drug, and ect...
note: I'm no expert on law or human behaviour even though that is the case i have been in law enforcement in the past. i got out because i disagree on a whole range of laws that are inflicted on the public that do little to increase safety and much to degrade the rights of the people.

I think that this really sums up the matter:

When men are pure, laws are useless; when men are corrupt, laws are broken.
- Benjamin Disraeli
British politician (1804 - 1881)

www.quotationspage.com...

Let us not forget our Founding Fathers:

Samuel Adams, “We may look up to Armies for our Defence, but Virtue is our best Security. It is not possible that any State should long remain free, where Virtue is not supremely honored.”

John Adams, “Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”

rightfaith.blogspot.com...

More:

Society requires both freedom and virtue to flourish, and neither cause will be helped by playing them off against each other. Ultimately neither is likely to survive without the other.

www.cato.org...

“...a democratic republic requires a citizenry capable of exercising the kind of self-restraint and public-mindedness that would permit freedom to flourish. One of the great contributions of the American Founders was to articulate a modern understanding of ‘virtue’ grounded in a realistic assessment of human nature, which recognized that certain primary institutions played an essential role in fostering and stimulating those ‘virtues.’ In so doing, the Founders neither deified nor degraded human beings, but concentrated on the notion that a broad spectrum of potential motivations drive human behavior, there being no simple ‘nature of man,’ either good or evil.

www.constitutionalfreedomfoundation.org

Google Search: Freedom Sustained by Virtue

[edit on 2007/3/16 by GradyPhilpott]