“There is no crueler tyranny than that which is perpetuated under the shield of law and in the name of justice.” ~ Montesquieu, French Judge and Political Philosopher, (1689 – 1755)
You think you are a law-abiding citizen, don’t you? Think again! You have been, you are now, and you will continue to break the law for the rest of your life, because there are too many laws, with millions more laws to follow. Many of these laws are totally unconstitutional but have never been challenged in the courts. Sometimes you break the law without any knowledge of it, even though ignorance of the law is not an excuse, if you are caught. But worse, millions are breaking the law because they are convinced the laws are illegal, or just plain stupid. With more people intentionally breaking the law, eventually the rule of law breaks down, as does our Republic.
The examples of stupid laws would fill volumes. Examples of conflicting laws would fill even more volumes. Some (or is it most) lawmakers just aren’t very smart. This nightmare of too many laws is a lawyer’s perpetual job security, which results in too many lawyers. Lawyers become politicians, judges and bureaucrats. (Have you seen the numerous ambulance-chasing lawyer ads on TV these days?)
Since the final draft of the U. S. Constitution became the Supreme Law of the Land, legislators have been legislating, that is they have been passing law ….. after law ….. after law. Do you want to know why you are a criminal? Here is why. “The U.S. Code, which contains all federal statutes, occupies 56,009 single-spaced pages. Its 47 volumes take up nine feet of shelf space. An annotated version, which attempts to bring order out of chaos, is three feet long and has 230 hardcover volumes and 36 paperback supplements. Administrative lawmaking under statutes fill up the 207-volume Code of Federal Regulations, which spans 21 feet of shelf space and contains more than 134,488 pages of regulatory law. … Federal law is further augmented by more than 2,756 volumes of judicial precedent, taking up 160 yards (almost twice as long as a football field) of law-library shelving.”
This is just federal law and it is growing almost by the second. You can’t move sideways without bumping into a law. All of this federal law does not include the millions of state, county and city laws that have been passed since we won our freedom in our first revolution. State and local laws are also growing by the second.
The Obama/Pelosi/Reid $787 Billion Stimulus package (2009) was over 1,000 pages of more law that no one read and it included more taxes and much more socialism. It bailed out the banks but not much else. Obama Care legislation (2010) another socialism law, consisted of 2,300 pages, with an additional 16,000 pages of regulations.
Too many laws create competing special interests who then lobby the system to entrench their own little worlds, while the un-represented (that’s millions of Americans) are left out in the cold. We have become a government of cronies, in a world run by cronyism, in an atmosphere of corruption, Hell bent on driving America and Americans into unabashed socialism and the one-world-order.
Too many laws create victims who inadvertently violate one or more laws and spend their life’s savings trying to defend themselves against an intransigent, all-powerful and abusive government. Too many laws lead to powerful, entitled special interests and the innocent victims are left with no political or judicial power at all.
Interestingly, America contains an almost ghostly, silent majority …. mostly silent and heard from rarely, but it does exist. Most of this group is trying to live out their lives as best they can, earn a living and raise their children in a country they thought was the land of the free. You know, a government they could trust, a government that protects the unalienable, individual rights as granted to us by our creator and codified into law by our constitution, a government that operates within the enumerated powers allowed them by that very same constitution and a government of trusty worthy men and women. Americans weren’t expecting that their government would provide more rights and legal protection to illegal aliens, over the rights of legal citizens, illegal aliens that blatantly break our laws.
Unfortunately, in the silent majority’s silence, their government, without the silent majority’s consent, assumed powers that far exceeded the government’s constitutional powers. They passed laws to pander to (or buy off) special interest groups for votes, or to increase their political powers and then levied ever-increasing taxes to pay for it all. Even as the regulations rose exponentially and as taxes became more burdensome, the silent majority, to their discredit, still remained silent. Their silence, their apathy and their disinterest in what government has been and is doing, has unknowingly turned each and everyone of them into criminals ….. law breakers, who can be subject to fines and imprisonment for violating laws they know nothing about.
America was founded on the basics of natural law and the principles of a Constitutional Republic. That is, a system of government by the rule of law, with the Constitution as the foundation of all law. What the Founders failed to realize, or maybe they did but didn’t account for it, was that lawmakers have but one goal in life, that is the passing of laws. The lawmakers very rarely consider repealing laws, or remove conflicting laws, upon which clever attorneys can twist to fit a particular case, which they do all too often. The net result is we have become enslaved by the passage of too many laws and we became unintentional law breakers of those laws ….. thus perpetual criminals whom have yet to be caught. “You can hide from government, but not for very long.”
As the silent majority watches our government use our tax money and our children’s tax money to increase their pandering and buying off of special interest groups, as government pours our hard-earned money into banks and businesses, as they prop up people who have acted irresponsibly with more of our money that we earned responsibly, they are increasing their power over us and increasing the laws that control us ….. laws eliminating our individual rights, gun rights, property rights, freedom of speech, freedom of religion, the sovereignty of states and the people under the 9th and 10th Amendments and equal protection under the law contained in the 14th Amendment. The 5th Amendment is all but null and void through the passing of draconian environmental regulation, along with government abuse of eminent domain.
However, the days of the silent majority being silent, must be over. Once we realize that, if the silent majority suddenly united as one in defiance of more laws and more of our money and our children’s money being stolen by the government, at the point of a gun, (just try not paying your taxes) to buy off banks, businesses and irresponsible individuals, we could turn America around in months. If the Consent of the Governed, that Silent Majority, “esplained” it to government to get out of the way, our economy would improve naturally, in a shorter period of time, based on sound economic and capitalistic principles, not government manipulated insanity. President Trump has made some significant strides in this direction.
So how does the American silent majority unite as one? It rallies around one simple idea or symbol and uses that idea or symbol as the rallying cry for freedom and liberty and the reduction of government power. One such way is for the people on a grand scale to issue a general ULTIMATUM to the government with a list of demands and dire consequences if the government doesn’t respond to the Ultimatum. We need to flood America with this Ultimatum. If you are looking for a simple, virtually free way to make a difference, this is it. All you will have to give is a tiny bit of your time.
No, the war is hardly lost, it is just getting interesting, as more Americans of the silent majority, wake up to what their government has perpetrated upon them, over the last 80 to 100 years. They grow weary of too many laws that make them unintended criminals and angry with a government, at all levels, that has become hopelessly out of control. It is way past time for the Silent Majority to cease being silent and return control to where it belongs ….. to the Consent of the Governed. They either do something now, or wait for that knock on the door from the government you were trying hide from, in the form of a fully armed FBI SWAT team, all because of too many laws.
October 31, 2019
© 2019 Ron Ewart – All Rights Reserved
~ The Author ~
Ron Ewart, a nationally known author and speaker on freedom and property issues and author of his weekly column, “In Defense of Rural America“, is the President of the The National Association of Rural Landowners (NARLO), a non-profit corporation headquartered in Washington State and dedicated to restoring, maintaining and defending property rights for urban and rural landowners. Mr. Ewart can be reached for comment at info@narlo.org.
Mr. Ewart has been a continuing contributor to the Kettle Moraine family of publications since May of 2007.