I've been following this for a bit, and hesitated to chime in, but here's the thing. there's two kinds of crimes:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_in_se
Malum in se - Evil in itself. Murder, rape, assault, etc., need no proving as to the wrongness. they are evil because they are evil, and to others especially.
the other is
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Malum_prohibitum
malum prohibitum - evil because it's prohibited by law. everything from building code violations to prostituion are evil only because it's said so by law.
now, where do i draw the line? were the "violators" malum in se or malum prohibitum? obviously the latter. thus, they committed no wrong, but that proscribed by law.
I'm going to back further than Jefferson, to one of his main inspirations, John Locke:
Quote:
for wherever the power, that is put in any hands for the government of the people, and the preservation of their properties, is applied to other ends, and made use of to impoverish, harass, or subdue them to the arbitrary and irregular commands of those that have it; there it presently becomes tyranny, whether those that thus use it are one or many.
...
May the commands then of a prince be opposed?
...
To this I answer, that force is to be opposed to nothing, but to unjust and unlawful force;
|
Hamilton wrote in the Federalist Papers #78 (
http://www.constitution.org/fed/federa78.htm):
Quote:
Limitations of this kind can be preserved in practice no other way than through the medium of courts of justice, whose duty it must be to declare all acts contrary to the manifest tenor of the Constitution void. Without this, all the reservations of particular rights or privileges would amount to nothing.
...
There is no position which depends on clearer principles, than that every act of a delegated authority, contrary to the tenor of the commission under which it is exercised, is void. No legislative act, therefore, contrary to the Constitution, can be valid. To deny this, would be to affirm, that the deputy is greater than his principal; that the servant is above his master; that the representatives of the people are superior to the people themselves; that men acting by virtue of powers, may do not only what their powers do not authorize, but what they forbid.
|
Ok, what's that all mean. Well, laws such as the MLPA are malum prohibitum. There is nothing evil as for fishing, so much the silliness and sheer stupidity of this act that fishing 10 feet from the boundary is perfectly legal, 1 foot inside illegal. A simple legal designation, an invisible boundary, which is most difficult to ascertain and indeterminant as well (being that modern commercial GPS units will provide within 15-20 feet accuracy) is all that separates legal from otherwise.
It is in the words of John Locke (who is the philosophical forebear of the Dec. of Ind.) an act of tyranny, and thus must be opposed, with force if necessary.
As for the law itself, it runs counter to the greater laws, both constitutional and common. There is no malum in se, no harm to others, no crime being committed, yet rights clearly abridged. The law is clearly null and void. Now, the state has the guns and the wherewithal to make our lives hell, and no, I can't ask anyone here to risk theirs and their family's health and well being, despite being morally and legally justified. Even if you win, the state has rendered your life a tragedy. As Albert Jay Nock so aptly put it, "Our enemy, the state".
However, respect for the law and those who would enforce I have not. Help I will not. I will fight it as much as I can.
Let me simplify this, those who would help "enforce" the MLPA are aiding and abetting tyranny and evil.
I am sorry if you are offended by this, but there is no amelioration available, as in "I respect but...". Ain't gonna cut it. If you saw all that they did to us, and how they did it, it is a knife in our backs, and I can't lessen my feelings or moderate my words.