This 4 page paper is an argumentative paper against excessive legislation of personal rights. Issues exampled include seatbelt laws and helmet laws. Bibliography lists 2 sources.
Name of Research Paper File: D0_MBleglaw.rtf
Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
dried as it might sound. Both state and federal governments have made a practice of legislating citizens rights in regard to harmful practices. But thats just the problem: the ambiguous
wording of harmful practices. What exactly is a harmful practice and to what extent should governments regulate them? What principles should guide the formulation of these regulations? The question that
seems to arise time and again around this question is whether or not a person should be free to make up their own mind about placing themselves in dangerous situations.
John Stuart Mills, whose ideas on personal freedoms and definitions of liberty are still used and studied world wide, would seem to believe that it is not the communitys
responsibility to save mankind from himself. In fact, if a persons personal habits are interfering with their ability to work or think, then that person is, indeed, in crisis and
needs to seek help. Oddly enough, there are enough examples of how excessive legislation of harmful practices has failed, and failed miserably. The United States has already seen what
prohibition does to the citizens of a country and how ineffectual a war on drugs (alcohol) can be. Mankind, moreso than any other animal in the world, has the right
to reason for himself. Therefore no one person or group of people (via the government) should have the right to use force, directly or indirectly, to prevent a fellow man
from committing suicide, let alone from drinking alcohol or taking drugs. The prohibition act on alcohol was the attempt to put a Bandaid on a more serious problem. It only
served to make matters worse and prompted an escalation that claimed many lives, both civilian and governmental, guilty and innocent. Also, it would seem that the government is being