I don't feel any fear with the girls, indeed, I couldn't care less about their boyfriends. Why? I KNOW that if I had a fear it would be irrational and I don't have all the facts.
I consider that both foolish and irresponsible at best; negligent at worst.
If your child
was molested by the VCP-reading boyfriend (and I'm by no means suggesting that that's certain, and I'm also clarifying that the molestation could have absolutely nothing in reality to do with his reading VCP (of course, we'll never know for sure!)) and the Authorities discovered that you'd consciously elected to allow him to co-babysit your child, what would your response be if challenged? Would it be:
I couldn't care less about their boyfriends. Why? I KNOW that if I had a fear it would be irrational and I don't have all the facts. [emphasis added - particularly note the first: care less - meaning you don't care at all]
If so, you would deserve to be indicted for failing to adequately
care for a minor in your charge, and rightly so. You clearly haven't thought this through properly, preferring to defend an untennable principle through sheer dogmatism. Not to worry, though - we all KNOW what the real answer is, if push came to shove!
RandFan's point, which you seem to be dodging, is that although humans may have an irrational fear, it should no way be the way a government should decide a law.
I'm dodging it because it's irrelevant. Why? When you write about "government" what and who do you think you're referring to? You're referring to
people. People who, in all likelihood, are no different from RandFan, in principle. What makes you think that lawmakers do, or should, think differently from everybody else? Are they some form of special breed? I have no doubt that many lawmakers would offer exactly the same ill-considered response as RandFan has if faced with the same "dilemma". Do you think that it's reasonable to expect that they should somehow divorce their humanistic thoughts from their decision-making process? Hell - why don't we just develop some appropriately complex algorithms and have a couple of laptops write laws for us?
Do you feel that a government should decide laws simply because people get fear from something?
Laws are designed to protect society. If society is fearful of something that can be assuaged by law, then hell, yes, of course it should be addressed by law. Why on earth do you think murder is illegal?
Is it good to rule people by fear?
I don't think you mean how this literally reads. If you're equating introducing laws to assuage society's fear (irrational or otherwise) with positively inciting fear in society (clearly not irrational!) as a means to introduce an otherwise unjustified law, I think you've confused yourself slightly. If not, perhaps you could contextualize your question.
In Korea (I think), people are afraid that a fan in a room can suck out all the air and cause asphyxiation. The idea is utter nonsense but enough people fear it so that there are warnings on their fans there. Should the government step in and make fans illegal because most of the people there fear that this is true?
Notwithstanding that I'm intrigued to learn what such warnings actually say(!), as I wrote above, laws are designed to protect society. If there's a net benefit to society in having perspiring people instead of scared people and a law would achieve that then yes, fans
should be made illegal. It's no different, in principle, to recognizing the net benefit to society in having an educated populace, hence making schooling compulsory (hey - perhaps I should suggest that to strengthen my argument - compulsory schooling for children? No - I'll just get shot down in flames -it's surely a breach of the fundamental right
not to educate your kids!). I would, however, ascribe to the idea of exhausting all other appropriate means to address the issue first, though, like education, for example!
