This is the first of two articles dealing with law and government.  In this part, think about crime and two very different sets of laws.

What is a crime?

According to Black’s Law Dictionary, “A crime is an act committed or omitted, in violation of a public law, either forbidding or commanding it; a breach or violation of some public right or duty due to a whole community, considered as a community.

In its social aggregate capacity, as distinguished from a civil injury.”   Wilkins v. U.S.  This is a legal definition.  In order to commit a crime, you must violate a public law.

If there was no law against murder, it would not be a crime.  If there was a law against having two children, and you had two, it would be a crime.

Right or wrong makes no difference, only violation of the law as written.

Government laws, or statutes, are man-made edicts that a very small group of people have decided must be done, or not done, as the case may be.  Good law, bad law, or stupid law, it doesn’t matter.

The two examples given above are of a good and bad law.

An example of a stupid law is seat belts, which must be worn, even though more fatalities occur with people wearing seat belts.

Check the statistics.

Someone, probably a manufacturer of seat belts, convinced legislators that this was a good idea.

Maybe there were even some campaign contributions made to several influential legislators.

Add a few emotional pleas about public safety, and voila – a new law, and lots of crime, even though the criminals have done nothing wrong.

The vast majority of laws – local, State, and national – are statute laws, where the criminal has committed a crime because he/she did something that a few other people decided should not be done.

Many people may agree with the statute law, and many may not.

But people do not have the ability to make their own decisions, because statute law is government law, and once a law is passed, the government will enforce it.

Tens of thousands of statute laws are passed every year at the local, State, and national level.

There is, however, a more sensible and fundamental law that we are all born with.

It is called Natural Law – the law of nature – not to be confused with scientific laws such as gravity.

It is the moral standards that define human behavior.  You know it is wrong to steal and murder.

We all know that – it is in our core being.

Perhaps a few sociopaths or psychopaths  would disagree, but the vast majority of people on this earth know right from wrong and live their lives according to Natural Law whether there are statute laws or not.

There are only a few Natural Laws.  We will do stupid things, we will make mistakes.

But as humans, we if we don’t harm anyone else, we haven’t done anything wrong.  And we know it.

By: Donna Kenezevich