The esteemed thinker and author Thomas Szasz believes that laws that protect an individual from their self, should be called “laws against freedom and dignity” -- which whenever enacted by legislators thereby creates victims without any real crime. While the government can legislate all sorts of laws on behalf of public safety and order, it has to be acknowledged, that if we are indeed sovereign within our own personhood, that we therefore should have the right to do with our personhood whatever that it is that we so desire, as long as it not harming other societal members. In other words, those who are inclined to recreational drug use, or are in possession of illicit drugs, or are gambling at unsanctioned venues, or have engaged with consensual sex with another individual for a monetary price or its equivalency, aren’t actually hurting the public by that behavior, and therefore should not be recognized as lawbreakers.
There are indeed lots of decisions that people make every day, that are not seemingly of benefit to that person, yet, these same people have or should have the volition to still make those decisions. Further to the point, things that certain people do, may not meet with our individual approval, but the freedom that each of us has to conduct our business in the way and manner that we best see fit, should and ought to be ours to own. That is to say, what we say and do, is our freedom; whereas, those who desire to conform to the prevailing norms of the day, are entitled to do so, but should not have the right to coerce others to conform to those societal norms.
To live in a “Nanny state” is to live in a state, in which it is the government’s business what we do in private, in addition to what we do in public, and the more laws that are legislated and pass, that infringe upon our individual sovereignty, the more freedom that we have sacrificed to the state. Those things that are currently classified as “victimless crimes,” which thereby means that those committing those crimes, will duly suffer the penalty for doing so, need to be revoked or overturned, because all crimes so classified against one’s self, or regarding voluntary actions between two or more adults, should not be seen as criminal behavior, whatsoever.
To believe that we need the state to protect us from possibly harming ourselves, may be in its intent, a good thing, but it should be admitted, that adults need to have the agency to make their own decisions, to which, they are entitled to make decisions that may or may not meet with orthodox societal approval. To believe somehow that this nation would be better off if we all thought and behaved the same is thereby a belief that conformity is the highest order and therefore the most desirable of things; whereas, the truth of the matter is that those that actually utilize their brains to think, recognize that free will is a gift to us by our Creator, and to exercise such, is our unalienable right.