[sipior]

Well, cletus, perhaps I can shed some light on this troubling question for you. Generally speaking (and there are naturally many exceptions, humans being the delightfully-flawed creatures that we are), the American government prefers to treat its citizens like competent adults who would rather not die if a suitable alternative presents itself. And so we don't generally have laws that require us to look both ways before crossing a street, or laws against poking angry bears with sticks and such like. America would rather you were smart enough not to do that sort of thing.

Of course, we have laws that all children must be suitably restrained in a motor vehicle because, hey, they're not adults. And we have laws that drivers must wear a seat belt because...well, I blame the insurance companies for that one. But America hopes you'll wear one anyway, because it's the smart thing to do.

The corollary, if you'll forgive my noticing, is that your government doesn't think you're smart enough to wear one on your own.

And so it's not really a "moral stance", but rather a general preference that our government not treat us like a bunch of ignorant monkeys. America wants you to live a long, happy life, but hey, you take your chances. Because you're an adult. And America will be sad if you fuck up and don't wear a seat belt, but life goes on. Mostly.

And now you may point out all the places where this convenant breaks down. The Drug War. The "Broken Windows" model of policing. The (up and coming!) Surveillance War. Well, fair point. Sure, we're flawed, remember? And so we try to make it better, over the long slog of decades. Sometimes it even works.

But the key idea, I think, is that by letting people fail, by letting them do stupid things, by treating them as fallible but sovereign citizens rather than a bunch of ape-men that need to be continually managed, they might become better, all on their own.

We'll let you know how it goes.

I hope this helps.

[DanBC]

> And so we don't generally have laws that require us to look both ways before crossing a street,

You do have laws telling you where abouts you can cross a road, right? Laws about jay walking?

(Your tone is sub-optimal. I guess that's why your getting downvotes.)

[sipior]

Well, that's a fair point, DanBC, but I generally regard laws about jaywalking to be a bit silly, and one of those things that I mentioned we'll need to fix at some point. If you're interested, I encourage you to Google "invention of jaywalking" for some insight into how that became a "crime".

And my thanks for your concern about downvotes, but I'm not very much bothered about them. What's the point of writing for the approval of a largely anonymous group of others? My only concern might be that my words would be construed as disrespectful to the late Dr Nash, but on a second reading I don't really see that. If some folks choose to disagree using some arbitrary points system instead of arguing properly, I guess that's their own affair.