“Did you really think we want those laws observed?” said Dr. Ferris. “We want them to be broken. You’d better get it straight that it’s not a bunch of boy scouts you’re up against... We’re after power and we mean it... There’s no way to rule innocent men. The only power any government has is the power to crack down on criminals. Well, when there aren’t enough criminals one makes them. One declares so many things to be a crime that it becomes impossible for men to live without breaking laws. Who wants a nation of law-abiding citizens? What’s there in that for anyone? But just pass the kind of laws that can neither be observed nor enforced or objectively interpreted – and you create a nation of law-breakers – and then you cash in on guilt. Now that’s the system, Mr. Reardon, that’s the game, and once you understand it, you’ll be much easier to deal with.”The answer to this is widespread non-compliance and armed resistance.
--Ayn Rand Atlas Shrugged, 1957
You beat me to it.
After Friday's dueling Narcissist presser I really am fearful of where our country's headed.
Thanks for the quote from Ayn Rand. Limited gov't being one of the primary aims of the Tea Party movement, I'd like the Tea Party movement to take up the issue of sunset laws and repealing a lot of the nonsense before we have to water the tree of liberty, IMHO.
You go first. 0.5 / s
Excellent op-ed and an excellent quote from Atlas Shrugged. I would have liked to see lawyer author embrace at least the spirit of Paul Ryan’s Roadmap. This guy’s idea of sunsetting combined with Ryan’s Roadmap are both required for getting this country back on a path to sanity, liberty and growth.
Thomas Jefferson put a similar question as follows:
"It is not only vain, but wicked in a legislator to frame laws in opposition to the laws of nature, and to arm them with the terrors of death. This is truly creating crimes in order to punish them." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Crimes Bill, 1779. Papers 2:502
Three Felonies a Day:
The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague. In Three Felonies a Day, Harvey A. Silverglate reveals how federal criminal laws have become dangerously disconnected from the English common law tradition and how prosecutors can pin arguable federal crimes on any one of us, for even the most seemingly innocuous behavior. The volume of federal crimes in recent decades has increased well beyond the statute books and into the morass of the Code of Federal Regulations, handing federal prosecutors an additional trove of vague and exceedingly complex and technical prohibitions to stick on their hapless targets. The dangers spelled out in Three Felonies a Day do not apply solely to “white collar criminals,” state and local politicians, and professionals. No social class or profession is safe from this troubling form of social control by the executive branch, and nothing less than the integrity of our constitutional democracy hangs in the balance.