A nation of criminals
The purpose of government is to create an environment in which the citizens can prosper and live in relative security. James Madison explained, in the Federalist Papers that governments exist because “men are not angels”. Governments make rules to protect the many from the few by taking a certain measure of rights from the many – everytime government makes a rule, someone losses rights and choices.
Until recently, the rules made sense, and were generally accepted by all except the sociopaths who pray on the unsuspecting innocent. But lately, our law makers reach has exceeded the grasp we intended for them to exercise. We can all remember the stories of Prohibition when our grandparents (well, my grandfather, anyway) decided that government had exceeded it’s authority when it banned alcohol and began brewing their own concoctions in their bathtubs until government realized it’s folly and repealed the faulty amendment.
But it continues on today. More recently, the most liberal Republican President ever, Richard Nixon, forced States to lower their speed limits to 55 miles per hour, ostensibly to lower fuel consumption. Hardly anyone obeyed the new speed limit. When I returned from four years in Germany, I took particular care to drive 55 on the New York State Thruway – with my German-built auto designed for the limit-free Autobahn. I was the slowest driver on the road – 80 year-old ladies were zipping by me in their ancient Buicks.Â
Now , cell phone bans, smoking-free areas and buildings, traffic cameras, even government-sponsored health care programs are reducing our choices and while creating an aura of safety and security, do not. We pay ghastly sums of money in taxes to pay for volumes of new legislation that pours out of our local, State and Federal legislatures at a staggering pace everyday that regulates everything from the width of theater seats (yes, there’s a Federal regulation for that) to the recent proposal in New York State to ban smoking in cars.
No one obeys these laws, and no one enforces these laws. The laws are written to make us feel good about ourselves and our willingness to do the right thing – even though we have no intention of actually doing the right thing. The law is there, it’s on the books and we approve of it, but we’re not going to restrict ourselves by complying with it.
Writing laws is a business, now. Government agencies, despite the fact that they each have a huge staff of lawyers and technical writers, hire contractors to write the laws for them. Legislators, with huge staffs, research and receive lobbyists on a given subject, churn out volumes of background and facts, and emotional appeals spend hours debating one side or the other. The end result is always someone losing their rights to a particular degree.
The actual result is a law that no one will obey because no one will enforce it. Writing laws is a big business – one we can do without. There are laws that restrict nearly everything we do – and it’s turned us into a nation of criminals, to varying degrees.
