THERE OUGHT TO BE A LAW?: Christopher Caldwell

...Britons have long managed to balance a need for order with a tendency toward eccentricity. With astonishing speed, the state has gone into the business of micromanaging morality.

But there is nothing particularly British about this reassessment. In the United States, and indeed all over the West, citizens are demanding that politicians consider imposing sanctions on behavior that has heretofore been considered annoying but not criminal. Rolled eyes and tut-tutting have proved insufficient to restrain spitters, swearers, talkers-in-class, bad neighbors, slobs, loud-music/players and wearers of skimpy clothing. Increasingly the police are called, and society has not figured out what it expects the cops to do when they get there. ...

Citizens support this awkward mix of "hard" law and "soft" community-building not because they are hypocrites but because they are of two minds. They seem to hope that government can give a "helping hand" to natural processes of community formation, and that once people have relearned neighborly habits, the straitjacket of law will fall away and leave us once more in the comfy old cardigan of custom. Until people do that relearning, though, there is a risk that such laws will grow unreasonably broad and unreasonably tough (to the point where you risk jail by lighting a cigarette or jumping in the Avon). Laws, after all, are created and enforced by individuals. And a society made up of individuals who are no longer restrained by families and communities and who have never learned to restrain themselves is unlikely to be any more judicious about administering laws than it is about turning that damn stereo down.

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posted by Eve at 10:05 PM VOTE

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