Liberal Road Blog Individual Freedom and Equality

Once upon a time there was a prohibition time about alcohol. Well, it failed. But nowadays there is still a prohibition on drugs. Prohibiting the use of drugs when the use doesn’t harm others is an unacceptable limitation of the individual freedom (because no one else is harmed).

I believe that as long as using drugs doesn’t harm others it should be legal. Everyone should be free to do whatever they want to as long as it doesn’t harm others. However if someone harms another as a result of using drugs, she or he should be sentenced to treatment and be forbidden to use drugs in the future. The same thing would be the case for the drugs that are already legal: tobacco and alcohol.

Instead of criminalizing drugs the state should rather regulate them. By regulating I mean taxing them, informing about the potential harms and offering help to drug users. The state could also have a monopol on the drug market and it would manufacture and sell drugs itself. This way we could ensure that the quality of drugs is controlled and thus avoid deaths and major health problems that are due to unclean drugs. Furthermore by having a state monopol on drugs the number of selling places could be regulated (thus limiting consumption).

Those opposing the legalization of drugs often argues that drug consumption almost always leads to other crimes. This is not the case just as it is not true that drinking alcohol always leads to crimes. Furthermore if the drugs were legal and sold in state owned stores consumers would no longer need to be in contact with dealers belonging criminal gangs. An exception to legalizing drugs could be made for those hard drugs that have a very high likehood of leading to harms on others.

It is probably true that legalizing drugs would lead to some increase in their use, but at the same time legalizing them offers better possibilities to control their damages.

Shortly: forbidding the use of drugs when it doesn’t harm others is a violation of the individual freedom and of individual rights.

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The problem with giving more powers to law enforcement to monitor people is that these powers are often abused. That’s why I’m not surprised that the FBI has been repeatedly abusing the law to get phone records and customer records (sources: Los Angeles Times, ACLU).

According to a published report, the FBI has sent letters requesting companies to give it personal information such as phone and email records and education information in cases it is not allowed to do so. The Patriotic Act passed after 9/11 gave the FBI more powers, powers that the FBI has been abusing.

Spying and illegally obtaining phone and other records is nothing new for law-enforcement authorities in different countries. Unfortunately often when they are given wider rights to monitor people, they abuse these rights. We should be very careful about what rights are given to the police and the intelligence agencies and there should be a much stronger control of these agencies.

Many countries have some kind of spying programs (on domestic or foreign citizens). The United States is also participating with some other English-speaking countries in the Echelon program which is listening to phone calls worldwide (probably by picking automatically the phone calls to be listened to based on keyword of the conversation). We may well wonder: are you too being spied upon?

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The United States. Lawsuit, courts, a justice system. Well, the United States has been considered long as a country with a justice system. The reality is different.

The pentagon has announced it will start the hearings of some detainees in Guantanamo to determine if they can be trailed as enemy combatants, thus depriving them of their rights (source: New York Times). No lawyers will be allowed in the procedure.

Enemy combatants are trailed in special courts and they don’t have the right to lawyers. The right to a lawyer is a basic necessity to a trial being fair and here the United States is violating human rights. Trials such are planned for those in Guantanamo Bay are more typical for countries like China or Russia than for the country pretending to stand for freedom (ie. the United States)

It is a pity that the Bush administration doesn’t seem to care about human rights and freedom. The worst thing is that Bush is limiting freedom in the name of freedom!

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One option that I think should be much more discussed is the world state. Of course it’s definitely not something that could be realized in a few years. It’s something to create on the long run.

Why a world state? Well, now that we have about 200 nations the world is very unequal and not coordinated. In a more and more globalized world, states lose power if they stand alone. It is also easier for international criminal organizations to take advantage of the fact that countries are not cooperating enough.

What would the world state do? Well, the world state could be a federation, without too much power, coordinating the states. It would have simple principles; it’s goal would be to guarantee the individual freedom and equality between people. Thus it would take care that no state takes measures violating individual freedom or equality.

The world state would also take hand of the taxes and it would redistribute the tax incomes so that the world would become more or less as wealthy overall. The local states could still decide to some extent about for example how they organize the services (health care), but the financement would come from the top. This is a way to ensure that poorer areas are equal toward richer areas.

The world state would also take measures so that the systems of all states are more or less compatible with each other. It means that people would be able to move anywhere without the natural limitations of having different systems (for example having 200 different education systems that are often NOT recognized abroad and so on).The world wouldn’t actually have borders like it has nowadays and everyone would be free to move anywhere he or she wants to.

As I know that these kind of proposals have a lot of critics it may be good to treat some of them. One common critic is that a world state is too utopist. Well, as said, it’s not something that would be realized in a short time. It’s something that could be realized with a lot of time and it also requires that rich countries help poorer countries much more than now. It’s also good to remember that only fifty years ago the European Union would have been something of an utopia.

Another critics is how could different cultures decide together about anything as different cultures and different religions have different perceptions about the society. Well, as long as we try to force other people live like we live we’ll have conflicts. But if we let each individual decide themself how she or he wants to live and don’t require others to live in the same way, we have much less conflicts. Actions hurting others or limiting their freedom need to be forbidden, but otherwise individuals should be allowed to do what they want to.

The world state wouldn’t thus decide how people should live (what religion they follow, if they follow traditions or not etc). The world state would guarantee that everyone can choose themselves their way of life.

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Earlier this week the Immigration court in Sweden decided that some Iraqi refugees can be deported to some parts (mainly north) of Iraq. According to the court there isn’t a military conflict in Iraq as defined juridically. That’s why some deportations are possible. This decision has been criticized and even the minister of foreign affairs has expressed some concerns over the issue (source: Svenska Dagbladet, in Swedish).

I’d like to point attention here to one thing that hasn’t been debated that much. The critics have been about whether or not Iraq is safe enough, but not about why in the first place we are deporting people.

I believe that deporting people is very discriminating: if you are a citizen you can stay, but if you are not you don’t have this right. This puts people in different situations based on where they were born or who their parents are.

Moreover when the deportation is due to crimes committed in the country, it is actually a second punishment you get because you are a foreigner. First you are punished for the crime and if you are a foreigner you get this second punishment: deportation.

Some people argue that the deportation of criminals are right because it protects the country from further crimes. But this is only a way to move the problem to foreign countries, not to solve it. And if we are deporting non-citizen criminals, shouldn’t we actually deport ALL criminals, even citizens, to be consequent? I believe that no: we shouldn’t deport anyone at all.

Basically everyone should be free to go to whatever country they want to and even settle there. Country borders and immigration laws are artificial boundaries violating our individual freedom.

Any opinions about the subject?

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The Swedish government is going on with plans of a new law allowing the wiretapping and monitoring of all phone and data traffic in Sweden (Source:Svenska Dagbladet, in Swedish. See also my old post about this proposition). The law proposition will be voted in the parliament later.

It is a pity the government isn’t listening enough to critics. Although the proposition has slightly been changed, the spying for the need of the government will not require any approval by a controlling authority.

Allowing the listening of phone calls and the monitoring of all data traffic is a violation of the privacy. I understand that to solve crimes phone listening is sometimes necessary, but in that case there should be some evidence that the persons in question may have committed a serious crime. Secondly the listening should be submitted to a court.

But in this law proposition the listening would be more based on keywords. For example if a phone call contains some keywords it would be listened to. This means non suspects would be listened to.

This law proposition shows that the government clearly doesn’t care about the rights to privacy of people and this is a dangerous step toward a Big Brother state.

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Animal rights are not accepted as widely as human rights. I believe animals should have equal rights as people. Animals should for example have the right to life, freedom and so on. Using them for medical research, food and other is completely unacceptable. I’m going to explain why.

Most of us agree that individuals have rights. Most of us agree that people shouldn’t for example be killed, assaulted and that everyone should have basic freedom (and the list could go on). Most of us also agree that all of us have these rights - not only some. For examples not only the rich or the intelligent have the right to life and not to be beaten or imprisoned for no reason.

However most people think that these rights don’t apply to animals. Why? One of the most common arguments used is that animals wouldn’t be able to think and therefore inferior. This is a very controversial issue in scientific research and many scientists believe that animals think (link).

And even if it was the case that animals didn’t think it still wouldn’t be acceptable to violate their rights. I give an example: There are some very seriously mentally retarded people that can’t actually really think very much. If it was all right to kill and eat animals because they couldn’t think, then it should be all right to kill and eat these seriously mentally retarded persons. However there is a large consensus that allowing to kill and eat the seriously mentally retarded people in question is totally unacceptable.

Another argument used to argue that animals shouldn’t have rights is that animals “are naturally inferior” because they are not civilized. Here again we have the same situation. What about the persons that don’t live in “civilized” and have no idea of the industrial world? Should it be all right to kill and eat them? No, it shouldn’t; they have rights too is what almost anyone asked will answer. So why wouldn’t animals not living in “civilization” have these rights?

As a conclusion and for all these reasons animals should have the same rights as human beings. A crime against an animal should bring the same punishment as the same crime against a person. Killing animals, using them as food or using them in medical experiments is totally unacceptable and can actually be compared to concentration camps in Nazi Germany.

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A court of appeal has ruled that foreign terrorist suspects (foreign enemy combatants) don’t have the right to challenge their detention in civil courts (source: Times). This is a serious violation of human rights.

The court decision means that detainees in Guantanamo won’t be able to challenge their detention in US courts. The rule in question is a part of the Military Commission Act passed after the US Supreme court declared unconstitutional that detainees in Guantanamo didn’t have the right to challenge their detention. Now the court’s decision keeps in force this part of the Military Commission Act.

One question the media and public opinion hasn’t been discussing that much is the extent to which non-citizens have different rights than citizens. Some countries make little distinction between citizens’ and non-citizens’ rights, while others have bigger differences. The rights of non-citizens’ in the United states have been continuously weakened (Patriotic Act, Military Commission Act, indefinite arrest without trial of foreign terrorist suspects and so on) in the war on terrorism.

But why non-citizens’ shouldn’t have the same rights? After all we are all individuals and it is therefore unfair that your origin determines what rights you have.

In the middle age it was current in many countries that laws had smaller punishments for people from the rich classes than from the poor classes for exactly the same crime. Nowadays this is seen as unacceptable. So why are we still making a similar distinction in practice? Now the distinction is between citizens and non-citizens instead of rich and poor classes.

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I run into this article today. A school in New Zealand has found an inventive way to bypass laws forbidding teachers from hitting students: it asks parents to do the hitting instead (it’s not illegal for parents to use corporal punishment).

I believe corporal punishment is an unacceptable way to try to teach children. Corporal punishment by parents should be illegal as well. Allowing corporal punishment of children is the same as saying children don’t have basic human rights.

Unfortunately corporal punishment is forbidden in only a few countries as I’ve written in an earlier post.

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Finally a court has ordered a trial of CIA agents for kidnapping terrorist suspects (source:BBC). The case in question is about the kidnapping of a terrorist suspect in Italy to send him to Egypt. He was allegedly tortured in Egypt.

However it is quite likely that the CIA agents won’t attend the court and as they are most likely in the United States. The Italian police won’t be able to arrest them. Unless, of course, if Italy uses the same methods as the United States and kidnaps the suspected CIA agents on US ground:-) My guess is that the United States wouldn’t tolerate that at all.

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