Of course all of this is hypothetical but would you agree that such behaviour should be drawn to the public’s attention in the case of someone that stands for public office? I’m not sure what your view is but someone who really thinks god is talking to him on a daily basis and that he’s being told to ignore the normal channels of getting to know a girl before deciding that she should marry him and writing hundred of letters telling her and her family that they should bow to divine will and force her to marry him or risk eternal damnation isn’t really suited to preach to others on morality?

Lionheart

I don’t agree with arranged marriages. I don’t know if the majority of Muslims are in need of serious psychiatric treatment. Accepting the gospel would heal them.

As for Richard Carvath, the people of Salford and Eccles know what he stands for. Sadly the courts decide all sorts of mad things these days. The government (of any colour) has abandoned the pursuit of justice in favour of social engineering, so there is a genuine argument for people of good conscience to ignore certain new anti-British and generally spiteful legislation.

Personally I think that someone that thinks that (insert deity of choice) has decreed that someone that barely knows the other person despite them not being interested is in need of serious psychiatric treatment.

Also if the courts decide that someone need sectioning for insisting that (insert deity of choice) is in direct contact and is telling them to ignore the laws of the land and they then run for public office still maintaining that (insert deity of choice) is telling them what to do should that be disclosed to the voting public in your view?

Regards Lionheart

Aren’t food and water more important than healthcare? Does that mean that you want the state to take money and use to to provide food and water to people? That is getting towards Communism.

//in this new order we shall all be infused with full rights to free speech and will be free to approach all manner of strangers with our frank opinions of them//

Sounds pretty good to me.

// we shall be free to display our sexuality (it’s OURS!) to children in the park who wish only to make daisy chains//

One major reason to advocate private parks.

//all the while safe in the knowledge that the recipients of our opinions and outraged parents are not allowed to hit us/kick our foul heads in, etc.//

Pretty much. Of course, the recipients and parents could retaliate with verbal abuse and hateful speech.

However, I have to remark that you have a very pessimistic view of humanity. Do you really think people would do these things, if they were not illegal?

Yes, it is perfectly true that more can be achieved together, but that does not mean that people should be forced to pay for things, that they may not want to use, or do not agree with. So, the council should not pay for things like public baths, bus services and the like, these should all be the sole province of private business. I would even advocate the privatisation of the road networks – I doubt that they could do a worse job than the government.

I never asked you to pay for those things, so do not see why I should thank you – the money was extracted by threat of force. If you think it was a good expenditure, and did it gladly, than I thank you for the consideration, however, you did choose to do it voluntarily, and since I was too young to enter into an agreement with you, you ought not to hold an obligation on to me. It is rather like holding a debt over onto the offspring of the debter. It is not the childs fault that such debt has been incurred. As it is now, I drive, and pay road tax for the privilege of driving on the roads.

The essential ethical point is the same – why is it right for you to be forced to pay for something that you do not support? Be it a swimming bath, a church, a road, a power line, or an equality workshop?

The system of charity did work – it provided care for many many people.

//It is chronically underfunded, understaffed and they are too few in number to cope with the demand. Their charitable donations would plummet if the money that people have was needed to pay for education, healthcare, roads, Police, etc,//

But their money is already used to pay for all those things – it is just taken through taxation. And, if there was market competition for those services, the price would go down.

//The £130,000,000 required by the RNLI annually pales into insignificance when compared to the £102,000,000,000 required to (under)fund the NHS this year.//

And how much of that 102 billion is admin, hoop jumping, bureaucracy, over paid managers? How much is the expensive drug trials, that forbid people from voluntarily choosing to risk taking experimental drugs?

//We have largely abandoned our old people to fend for themselves. If they have money, they can have residential care (for around £800.00 per week).//

And, if they had not been taxed so much during their lives, allowed to make the choices about what they pay for, how much healthcare cover they want, they would probably not be in that situation. If they had jobs that pay pensions, or provide health care, they would not be those situations. If the government had not infected people with leftist tendencies, the chronic government centralising of private affairs, there would still be communities, to whom people voluntarily contributed, that could care for their own members. If the government had not offered money to those that wish to separate from their partners, and merely left well alone, than their would be stronger family ties, stronger family units, more inclined to care for their elderly.

And this has all happened while we have been taxed into the ground. And your answer is to continue taxing people? Give people their money, and they will spend it how they need, or want. How many elderly people are left in the dark, in the cold, because they, or their children, do not have the money to spend on care, because their money has been taken by the state to spend elsewhere? If they had that money, taken from them, would they not be able to spend it on paying for care?

The apparatus of the state is clumsy and ineffective. So to give the state money in expectation that they will care for you, seems absurd.

//People are not queuing up to make charitable donations to the people who built a better nation for them now, so why expect them to do so in the future, particularly people like yourself who exhibit a spiteful selfishness that is most disconcerting.//

I expect them to do so in the future, precisely because they will be taxed less, have more money to spend on what they want, or need, and will suffer the consequences if they fail.

I am being slefish, in that I want to use the money I earn, the way I want, and resent the state taking it to spend on what it thinks is needed. However, that does not mean that I would not choose to donate money, were I to have more of it, which I would have, were I not taxed so much.

//We could always deprive them of their house, and therefore their children of their inheritance, but once the money had gone, and it wouldn’t last long at £800.00 a week, they would be back to square one//

And tell me, where are the children? Are they grown up? Why have they not moved grandma in to live with them? Let us refocus this on the children. It is, presumably, their responsibility to look after their elderly parents? Why is she all alone, when she has children? Could they not look after her in their own home? Perhaps you will argue that she does not want to leave her home to live with them? In that case, she has made a choice – the choice to be cold and alone, rather than live with her children.

You say “WE have largely abandoned OUR old people to fend for themselves//. It is thoughts like that that have contributed to the current situation. It allows people to pass the buck on to someone else. If we instead said my mother, my father, my brother, is old and needs care, what can I do, then there would be a far more personal and pressing impulse to do something for them. Which would mean that strangers would not have to support them, because the family would do it themselves. It would mean that state not getting involved, which would reduce taxation.

And none the less so for being all too familiar.

The theory though is fascinating, if you find pathological thinking fascinating (I don’t). Let’s try to summarise: in this new order we shall all be infused with full rights to free speech and will be free to approach all manner of strangers with our frank opinions of them; we shall be free to display our sexuality (it’s OURS!) to children in the park who wish only to make daisy chains, all the while safe in the knowledge that the recipients of our opinions and outraged parents are not allowed to hit us/kick our foul heads in, etc.

And people say that Stewart is deluded…

Ha ha ha.

‘I did not learn to swim at school. My parents paid for me to go to private lessons. So your money did not pay for my swimming lessons.’ – At a Municipal Baths? Did your father drive you there, on a public road? Maybe you caught a bus and paid half-fare, because (you thought) you were a child but (in reality) the fare was subsidised by the local Council. Were there street lights and road markings, speed limits and road regulations, along with persons who enforce those limits and regulations? Your parents must have paid an astronomical amount of tax to cover the expense of these things, or earned an even greater amount of cash to fund them privately. If you feel like countering by saying that my contributions, and those of my parents would not cover my expenses, you would correct and that is exactly my point. Far more can be achieved together, with the common good in mind, than alone, with nothing but self in mind.

We had a system of charity funded healthcare until 1948. St john’s, The Red Cross, local philanthropic societies, etc. They didn’t work, that’s why the great need for a better system was answered in the NHS. The idea behind the system and the shambles we have today is not a fault in the idea, rather the implementation of that idea. We still have (shamefully) charity based health care in the Hospice system. It is chronically underfunded, understaffed and they are too few in number to cope with the demand. Their charitable donations would plummet if the money that people have was needed to pay for education, healthcare, roads, Police, etc, etc. The £130,000,000 required by the RNLI annually pales into insignificance when compared to the £102,000,000,000 required to (under)fund the NHS this year.

We have largely abandoned our old people to fend for themselves. If they have money, they can have residential care (for around £800.00 per week). If not, they could be euthanised (murdered) or left to sit in their own faeces until they die of MRSA. We could always deprive them of their house, and therefore their children of their inheritance, but once the money had gone, and it wouldn’t last long at £800.00 a week, they would be back to square one. People are not queuing up to make charitable donations to the people who built a better nation for them now, so why expect them to do so in the future, particularly people like yourself who exhibit a spiteful selfishness that is most disconcerting.

//There’s no such word as ‘alright’.//

I beg to differ
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/alright
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/alright
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/ALRIGHT

//You still haven’t defined harm by the way, not that I’ve noticed anyway.//

Harm, as a principle of law, are those things which takes away someone’s freedom, something that violates someone’s negative rights. So, getting beaten up is a violation of your self-ownership, enslavement is a violation of your right to free action, theft is a violation of your property.

Of course, one can be harmed in a sense that is not relevant to the law. Stewart “harms” me by writing the things he writes, the scary, authoritarian ideology he espouses, however that is not a subject for law, because none of my rights have been infringed – none of my negative rights have been infringed on. Or the BNP saying racist things “harms”, or in Stewart’s words “affects”, me, because I have an emotional response of revulsion to that. So there is a difference between what we mean colloquially when we say “harm”, and what harm people should be protected from by the state. Even this shower of shite of a government recognise the difference between “harm” in the sense used in everyday speech, and “harm” in the sense used by the law. Not that has stopped them enacting Hate Speech legislation.

That is what the libertarian principle of law is all about – the use of violence against violence. Not the use of violence against people that are unpleasant, or to make people work together, or to make people decent, or to stop nasty things being said, or to stop children being educated with lies. Only to punish violence and people are violent towards other people. Note; “violence” is physical damage, or threat of imminent damage, contrary to express will – so a boxing match is violent, but it consenting, and therefore is not a breach of negative rights. Or, to use Stewart’s particular obsession, sodomy may be damaging to the fundament, however it is damage performed consentingly, and therefore is no business of the law.

//They’re not permitted, although sometimes extreme verbal provocation can count in mitigation. //

Yes, but Stewart wants the state to brutalise people for saying things. He wants to take away peoples freedom because they have said something he finds unpleasant. And I apply the same restrictions to the state as I do to individuals – that it should not aggress against people who have not aggressed against anyone else. Stewart wants to permit the state to use violence against people innocent of having done any violence to any other person.

//But with your desired removal of all forms of restraint on behaviour which doesn’t ‘harm’ others I think we’d see a whole lot more of it.//

I do not think so. I may really really want to smack someone in the face, but I do not because it is wrong, not because it is illegal. For those who a principle of morality is not convincing enough, the state should impose very harsh punishments for breach of the law. That is why I have hesitant support for the Death Penalty.

If people said things that others found offensive (Homosexuality is alright, Mohammed is burning in hell, Jesus was a lunatic, Yahweh doesn’t exist, Black people are inferior to white people, etc, etc), and reacted violently, they would be punished by the state. Robust criticism of that speech would be perfectly legitimate – as would mocking and vilification.

And, you still haven’t explained how your legal system based on “the right not to be offended”, would operate in reality.

There’s no such word as ‘alright’.