America has a vast system of laws at all government levels. Recent decades have seen a perversion of our Founders’ intent to create a constitution deliberately crafted to restrict the size and reach of the federal government. Over the last century, Congress went on a rampage and passed hordes of laws. Early in the 1900s, the federal government imposed an income tax (initially banned by the Constitution) to generate the revenues needed to employ hundreds of thousands of bureaucrats to enforce the massive number of new rules and laws.
Most of us can agree with Ray Crowley, who wrote in 1976, “Certainly we need laws to protect the weak from the strong, to aid the sick and the helpless, to discourage crime…. But there’s a limit.” Following five decades of grossly profligate laws created by Congress, we are far beyond the limits envisioned by the founding framers.
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However, the perpetrators are not only in Congress. When Barack Obama came to power, the Orwellian laws he imposed by administrative fiat and decree, from his perch in the executive branch, added $5 trillion to the taxpayer’s tab: health care reform, new energy rules, environmental and “global warming” reform, bank reform and stifling economic regulations, to name a few. Florida has been more reasonable in flooding us with laws.
And don’t forget the flood of new laws poured into the Floridian and American civil and economic systems by activist judges in the judicial branch. These are judges acting on their personal views, imposing new laws. As broadcaster Mark Levin reminds us, rulings by judges based on individual or political considerations rather than on existing law have permitted the judiciary to take over private-sector firing and hiring practices, prisons, school systems, farm policies, and quotas. Activist judges have ordered state and county governments to raise taxes and hand over benefits to illegal, non-citizen immigrants.
Judges have made laws that allowed flag burnings, protected racial discrimination in the nation’s law schools, permitted the seizure of private property without just compensation, and protected child pornography. Levin says courts have even second-guessed the commander-in-chief in times of war and granted foreign enemy combatants the right of due process. In short, some courts have plowed through the separation of powers constructed by the Founders, firewalls designed to balance the power of the three branches of government.
“Bad laws are the worst sort of tyranny,” said Irish statesman and philosopher Edmund Burke. Tyrannical and unfair tax laws push businesses to spend huge sums on CPA firms to draft complicated tax strategies to avoid unfair taxes. A single thief commits robbery, but when 535 members of Congress do it, it’s taxation—deep State “justice” at work.
Winston Churchill captured the problem perfectly: “If you have ten thousand regulations, you destroy all respect for the law.” Congress has passed between 200-300 statutes during each of its 120 biennial terms, resulting in more than 30,000 statutes being enacted since 1789. The U.S. Code fills 54 volumes and over 60,000 pages as of 2018.
Governments love laws because laws speed the government’s growth and reach. But too many laws smother initiative. Would-be business owners don’t spend their own capital to create new enterprises if they must wade through impassable legal briar patches. Too often, entrepreneurs don’t start new businesses if the thickets become too entangled to navigate. There are far many more ways for business people to accidentally break laws than there are paths to success.
When the government declares so many actions to be a crime, it becomes impossible for businesses and citizens to function without breaking laws. The more laws there are, the more offenders they produce. Author Harry Silverglate says the average citizen commits three felonies a day. There is little wonder that one adult in every 31 is in jail or on parole or probation. The net result: Jobs and wealth don’t get created, communities don’t flourish, and citizens’ liberty gets choked.
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- John R. Smith: U.S. and Florida Flooded With Unneeded Laws - September 26, 2024
- John R. Smith: Florida’s Economy and Education Systems Ranked Best In U.S. - September 4, 2024
- John R. Smith: The Road to Complete Destruction - August 30, 2024