A
The problem lies in that denotation itself: "law enforcement" makes people servants of the law, rather than law being a servant of the people. If the law is about public safety, then so long as everyone is safe, there's no crime -- so if Joe Stoner is buzzed on alcohol and herb and driving 95 on a straight, dry highway, with no traffic closer than a quarter mile, there isn't, given the purpose of the law, a crime. Or if Bob Sixpack is passed out from Jack Daniels under a picnic table in the park, snoring peacefully, there's no crime.
That we consider things to be crimes when no one is getting hurt reveals what our thinking about law is -- that it's for controlling people, treating them like sheep or slaves or children. And inevitably that is a sickness that leads to totalitarianism, as people are discouraged from being mature and responsible, so they need shepherds and nannies and masters.
This premise is absurd. How can you guarantee that Joe Stoner's highway will be straight and dry, with no other vehicles for a quarter mile? How can you be sure that Bob Sixpack's bourbon-fuelled nap won't disrupt a family planning to use the picnic table for something like... say, a picnic?
The truth is, you can't. Enforcing law after the fact is too late, especially for the victim.
Sure there have been a few absurd laws here and there over time, but the vast majority of laws are clearly and logically targetted at the protection of the majority of the community.
The premise is not absurd.
The only proper reason for a law is to protect the rights of the individual. If the rights of an individual have not been bothered, there can be no crime. What you're arguing for is treading on the rights of the individual just on the off chance that his behavior might potentially infringe on the rights of others.
By that premise, not only should we have laws against drinking and driving, but against driving with your shoes untied, or even driving with passengers -- after all, untied shoe laces might get tangled on the pedals and make the vehicle hard to control in a crisis, and passengers might be distracting to the driver. We ought, then, also have laws forbidding the sale of five-gallon buckets, since infants might drown in one (it happens), and of bathtubs, since individuals might slip and hit their heads and become paraplegics (also happens), and furthermore we ought to ban electric fences, because someone not knowing what one is might grab a wire and, unable to release it, die of a heart attack (it happens).
You argue that "Enforcing law after the fact is too late, especially for the victim", and in context thus assert
that any time there might be a victim, the behavior should be against the law -- that's the logical foundation for your argument. And of course today's neoliberals do just that, advocating laws against anything that might hurt not just someone else, but one's self. The irony is that "liberal" used to mean totally defending individual freedom, but now it means curtailing individual freedom on the off chance that someone else's freedom might possibly be touched on in some potential state of affairs.
But you're inconsistent: what you should have argued for, in the case of drinking in the park, is a law against sleeping under picnic tables, since using one for a picnic is, in your argument, paramount. In fact, the law should forbid using one for anything but a picnic -- not for reading at, not for leaning a bicycle against, but only for picnics. Further, you're ignoring the reality of a situation in order to cling to your anti-freedom view -- bourbon Bob's nap isn't "disrupting" anything; he's sleeping peacefully -- or do you want to ban naps on public property, on the chance that someone else might want to use that property in a different way?
The trouble is that you don't want the public to use public property except for "respectable" reasons, and that's the foundation of a worse tyranny than anything the Founding Fathers rebelled against, because it sidesteps the question of what is respectable. Yours is the same argument that the Fred Phelps of the world use: if it doesn't seem "proper", it should be outlawed; it's the
de facto foundation of anti-sodomy laws and their companions forbidding any sexual activity between persons of the same sex; namely, that such things are "disgusting" (however much people may appeal to the Bible or something, the
only argument against oral sex between two men is that their sensibilities are offended).
Your final statement is quite revealing, as it shows a view that human rights should be subject to the wishes of the majority, any time something might possibly hold out the chance that someone could conceivably be harmed. That's the very tyranny Thomas Jefferson feared -- the tyranny of the majority, the tyranny of the mob.
