Make Crime Illegal – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

Make Crime Illegal – FUNNY POLITICAL BUTTON

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This design plays on the absurdities of logic and the confusion of means and ends.  It makes sense to oppose crime in the vast majority of cases.  This is a reasonable foundation for civilization: the rule of law. Of course, there are notable exceptions, namely, unjust laws and the unjust enforcement of laws that cry out for civil disobedience.  No set of laws, no matter how comprehensive or well-thought-out, can fully capture moral or ethical behavior, let alone enforce it.  With a simple proposition of making crime illegal, a simple tautology, being that which crime is commonly understood to be is,in fact, that which is illegal.  The first of my desired effects with this design is to see the foolishness of applying ever-increasing illegality to address crime.  This could be called the fascist solution.  And I want to speak to anti-fascists solutions.  As alluded to earlier with the case of civil disobedience to disobey an unjust law or an unjust application of law, morality and ethics are not equivalent to legality.  Certainly, there are many actions that are legal that are not moral or ethical.  Similarly, there are actions that are moral or ethical which are illegal.  The ultimate difficulty of enforcing moral or ethical behavior through coercion, i.e., law enforcement, forces us to look beyond brute force or even social norms to gain moral or ethical behavior amongst any group of people.  Thus, like many of my designs, the message poses both an answer that may jar some people’s current thinking, as well as a question, a more difficult question, regarding the nature of right behavior and how to create more of it.  One of my favorite quotes along these lines is from Albert Schweitzer: “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”  In the end, law enforcement reaches a natural limit in controlling others through physical force, coercion, violence.  If we want moral and ethical behavior then we need to model moral and ethical behavior.  Like Gandhi proposed, “Be the change you want to see in the world.” And as he lived, “My life is my message.”