Posted on 05/13/2015 9:01:10 AM PDT by Kaslin
Charles Murray, already controversial for writing books on how welfare hurts the poor, on ethnic differences in IQ and on (less controversial, but my favorite) happiness and good government, has written a new book that argues that it's time for civil disobedience. Government has become so oppressive, constantly restricting us with new regulations, that our only hope is for some of us to refuse to cooperate.
Murray's suggestion -- laid out in "By the People: Rebuilding Liberty Without Permission," will make some people nervous. He argues that citizens and companies should start openly defying all but the most useful regulations, essentially ones that forbid assault, theft and fraud.
He writes, "America is no longer the land of the free. We are still free in the sense that Norwegians, Germans and Italians are free. But that's not what Americans used to mean by freedom."
He quotes Thomas Jefferson's observation that a good government is one "which shall restrain men from injuring one another (and) shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits."
But our government today tries to do much more.
While we try to invent new things, government constantly seeks new ways to control us. The number of federal crimes on the books is now 50 percent larger than back in 1980 -- a time when many people mistakenly thought the U.S. would cut the size of government.
Murray says, correctly, that no ordinary human being -- not even a team of lawyers -- can ever be sure how to obey the 810 pages of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act, 1,024 pages of the Affordable Care Act or 2,300 pages of Dodd-Frank.
What if we all stopped trying? The government can't put everyone in jail. Maybe by disobeying enough stupid laws, we can persuade judges that only rules that prevent clear, real harm to individuals should be enforced: "no harm, no foul."
Law is not always the best indication of what is good behavior. Riots in places such as Ferguson and Baltimore remind us that even cops sometimes behave badly.
No one wants to see law break down so completely that people get hurt, but historian Thaddeus Russell reminds us that many freedoms we take for granted exist not because the government graciously granted liberties to us but because of lawbreakers.
Bootleggers, "robber barons" who did things like transporting ferry passengers in defiance of state-granted monopolies and tea-dumping American revolutionaries ignored laws they opposed. Sometimes these scofflaws loved liberty more than our revered Founders did. George Washington led troops against whiskey makers to enforce taxes.
More recently, Uber decided it would ignore some cab regulations. It's good that they did because Uber usually offers better and safer service. Today, Uber is probably too popular for government to stamp out.
Edward Snowden knew the legal consequences he'd face for revealing NSA spying on American citizens but did it anyway. I'm not yet sure if he did the right thing, but conservatives and leftists alike should admit that sometimes laws ought to be bent or broken.
Instead, each political party defends civil disobedience unless the people doing it are people that faction doesn't like. The right loves ranchers who resist federal land managers but doesn't like people who flout immigration laws. The left likes pot smokers but whines about corporations ignoring ridiculously complicated environmental regulations.
Maybe most of these laws should be ignored by most of us.
Politicians themselves don't always play by the rules. My last column was about how the Clintons get away with breaking rules. But I made a mistake that I must correct: I said the Clinton Foundation donated only 9 percent of its money to charity. Sorry, that was wrong. The Clintons and their flunkies were worse than that.
In 2013, the Foundation collected $144 million but spent only $8.8 million on charity. That's only 6 percent.
When Bill and Hillary say they want to "help people," they're talking about themselves. I don't want to be forced to obey such people.
It may take civil disobedence to bring about change.
Ben Carson got laughed at the other day by Alan Colmes for saying that we should only obey duly enacted legislative law and ignore judicialized law.
I think it made perfect sense.
Having Colmes ridicule you is no shame, but Colmes is the knee-jerk, read-the-talking-points kind of liberal, so it’s always nice to explain to them. They’re not real deep thinkers.
We started watching Boardwalk Empire recently. Although fiction, it portrays ordinary people ignoring Prohibition.
The ordinary people need to start ignoring Federal laws that are unconstitutional.
I think more of the Obamathings floating in an outhouse than I think of ANY government agency...military excepted.
The are slime.
Pure, liberal scum-slime.
Hopefully, our military will remember their oath to defend the Constitution and join us for Revolution II.
“Law is not always the best indication of what is good behavior. Riots in places such as Ferguson and Baltimore remind us that even cops sometimes behave badly.”
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Stossel - as always - is a freaking idiot.
The push back will be heavy, hard and draconian.
Civil disobedience works within civil societies and peoples.
It’s why I cancelled my health insurance as of Jan 1 2014 and will not pay a penny for it until the mandate is repealed.
"Governments...derive their just powers from the CONSENT of the governed"
What does this mean? It means that we
CONSENT to a corrupt IRS by filing taxes each year.
CONSENT to a crooked financial system every time we accept or spend a greenback FRN
CONSENT to the destruction of the 2nd Amendment every time we walk into a gun store and submit to a background check.
It's time we STOP CONSENTING.
PFL
Re: “...citizens and companies should start openly defying all but the most useful regulations...”
Great in theory.
Not so great if it’s your money or freedom that’s on the line.
The principled resistance of Christian bakers to gay marriage has resulted in closed businesses and civil lawsuits in several states.
Here in Washington state, state government is actually the lead plaintiff in one lawsuit.
If they do not follow the law, why should we?
Why shouldn’t the citizens ignore the laws?
Fraudulently documented foreigners do it daily and the government wants to reward them for it.
The government ignores the laws all the time.
It’s time for the citizens to do likewise.
GOT IT?
Freedom isn't free. The Founders had money, families, businesses, farms, etc. They sacrificed most of them willingly, in the name of liberty. We're obviously some kind of special cupcakes? Better in some way than the Founders?
In some form or another it usually does.
As a conservative, I am appalled by the idea that our civil society is disintegrating under our feet because elitists are passing laws from the top down which are hopelessly complex and which inevitably make criminalists of us all. Are we all pretending to obey the laws and are they pretending that we do (except when it suits them to drop the pretense)?
Rather than embrace the opening act of anarchy with widespread civil disobedience, conservatives ought first to have recourse to Article V.
If you noticed the article is actually about Charles Murray
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