Gnawed restraints

Up to here I tell you. >hand in a near salute position near receding hairline.<

In another life, I enjoy debate. I actually learn by being proven wrong. That's PROVEN, not simply be told I'm wrong. The latter happens with alarming frequency, the former? Not so much.

Where it began? I can't begin to knowing. Back to BBS days, off-line mail readers and .QWK packets. I cut my teeth during the infancy of the information superhighway.
I've bandied words with a spectrum of both thinking and non-thinking representatives.
Arriving here in a more one-sided medium is a little strange.

I genuinely prefer more of a multi-nodal platform. Where ideas and statements are made, supported, shot down in full public view. A virtual Bughouse Square

An example posted in response to my position that making more things illegal and making the punitives confiscatory and absolute is flat wrong:

"BS BS BS BS BS

ALL laws and ordinances are aimed at "subgroups", as you put it. Such subgroups include drug dealers, murderers, rapists, pedophiles, people who ignore traffic signals, AND driving while drunk, DUI, etc. We are LUCKY that these morons are subgroups, and not indicative of society as a whole. If they did not engage in these behaviors, they would not BE in a subgroup, and would not be in trouble.

Police are permitted to use their discretion and judgement when writing someone up or pulling them over. There will always be times when that system is inperfect due to the human element. But do we then just say its OK to violate the laws?

Watcher likes to think that he/she is an anarchist and that no laws are good. Easy to say until you or yours gets affected by some loser in a "subgroup" who thinks the law is a joke.

This is why people hate liberals. You have your heads so far up your asses that you cant even see what is plainly obvious."

Equating muderers with traffic signal scofflaws?
Contending that my objections to seat-belt laws and other purely hegemonious edicts mean that I, by extension, do not object to murder?
Assuming, in the face of all the piled anecdotal evidence, that your inclusion into tomorrow's sub-group won't happen? That when traffic violators are revenue enhancers while murders are not, that we might not be taking the best approach, just the more profitable one?

Supposing that it's possible -under our current, exponentially expanding, definition of legal/illegal to get out of bed in the morning without transgressing some edict, or having done so while you slept, finding yourself, if the "system" so chooses, defending yourself against charges for which common sense does not apply?

And then to s t r e t c h the reasoning for official edict against basic freedoms as necessary for public safety? And then to put the blame on my lack of understanding of how evil we are for these being necessary in the first place?

As Ron White so succinctly put it; "You can't fix stupid".

Identifying with the wide range of sub-groups being marginalized, obviated, discriminated against and otherwise restrained, denied and increasingly incarcerated makes me as evil as a serial killer?

OY!

Because I'd like a rational approach to sharing space? That it's inane to use public funds to provide parking for a commercial strip that caters mainly to serving and ingesting alcohol and to then pass confiscatory laws for patrons who get overserved?