Opelousas, Louisiana Police Chief Donald Thompson has asked the city council to enact a law banning sagging pants. Councilman Tyrone Glover suggested that the ordinance extend to women who wear “Daisy Dukes,” shorts popularized by The Dukes of Hazzard in the early 1980s. The penalty for a violation of this law could include up to a $200 fine and 30 days in jail.
The ACLU has already written a letter to the city council board decrying the move, and calling it a “violation of the Constitutional rights of the people of Opelousas.” The ACLU’s critiques are likely to ring true due to the First Amendment protection of expression and the Fourteenth Amendment protection of liberty.
Beyond its likely Constitutional violations, such an ordinance in unnecessary and overreaching. Government has no right to legislate morality upon its citizenry. Even if the “culture” which is promoted by sagging pants and Daisy Dukes is one which we wish could be reformed, this is a task which should be left to individuals rather than bureaucrats.
Governments love prescribing “top-down” solutions, even though most societal problems are indeed changed from the “bottom-up.” If one feels a strong aversion to a looming societal tide, he or she should not feel inclined to ask government to “fix” the problem, as these solutions have been found again and again to be worse than the original problems.
Perhaps it may seem over-simplistic, but if individuals want to enforce a certain moral code throughout their neighborhood, they must do it by conversing with both like-minded and opposite-minded friends and family. Instead of mandating and jailing people for violating these social norms, we ought to have a teaching of how certain decisions can be destructive ones, like use and abuse of drugs.
This is perhaps where libertarians have the most work to do on their image. While we so often (rightly) promote individual freedoms, we must also propose a dual tenet of personal responsibility. It is only under these conditions that a truly libertarian and free society can function.
Too often, advocates of state action label libertarians as “anarchists” whose ideal world would be marked by chaos. Without so many rules dictating behavior, many think that society would divulge into an all-out war-zone.
However, we as libertarians know better. While there is plenty of variability among us as to how many laws (if any) that there ought to be, we can all agree and recognize that the world which we work toward is nowhere close to one which is devoid of responsibilities or morals. Simply because something is not punished by imprisonment or fines does not mean it is any less important in a just society.
Each of us has our own moral code that we follow. Some libertarians believe marriage is between a man and a woman. Others believe use of any drugs or alcohol is wrong. Our movement contains deeply religious people and militantly Atheist people. However, the reason such a diverse audience is able to agree on so many grounding principles is not because we are the same, but because we have the same ideals in regards to governance. While Democrats and Republicans wish to place cultural wedges into the citizenry, libertarians would rather discuss ideas that unite us. Our philosophy allows for you to have whatever beliefs you want, as long as they aren’t imposed on anyone else.
While this Louisiana law may be well-intentioned, it goes too far. Governments have no authority to dictate upon people what they wear. The attire we wear is one of the most obvious and normal ways in which we all express ourselves. It is for this reason that a world built upon liberty thus favors individuality over conformity. And, as benevolent as they may seem, we should never allow our own biases and moral leanings to be enforced with the iron fist of the law.
