Posted on 01/29/2012 9:45:19 AM PST by pinochet
One of America's Founding Fathers, John Adams, wanted to create "a government of laws, not of men". This statement is one of the most misunderstood in American history. The communist governments of Cuba, China, and North Korea, are nations with many laws in their books, but they are not what John Adams had in mind.
America's founding fathers created a constitution that was deliberately designed to starve the federal government of revenue. This is why they refused to impose a federal income tax on the American people, and the federal government had to survive on revenues raised from import duties.
In the 19th century, the US Congress passed many laws. However, because the constitution outlawed the income tax, the federal government was unable to raise enough revenue to employ government bureaucrats to enforce those laws. The federal government was forced by its limited budget to enforce only the important laws - those protecting the lives, liberty, and property of the American people. Today, the federal government has the revenues to employ numerous bureaucrats to enforce even minor and unconstitutional laws, that limit the rights of Americans to their liberty and property.
The late Barry Goldwater understood that you cannot cut the size of government, unless you are willing to get rid of the many irrelevant laws in the books, in order to justify the firing of the numerous government bureaucrats who enforce those laws. In "The Conscience of a Conservative", published in 1960, Goldwater said that:
"...I have little interest in streamlining government or in making it more efficient, for I mean to reduce its size. I do not undertake to promote welfare, for I propose to extend freedom. My aim is not to pass laws, but to repeal them. It is not to inaugurate new programs, but to cancel old ones that do violence to the Constitution, or that have failed their purpose, or that impose on the people an unwarranted financial burden. I will not attempt to discover whether legislation is "needed" before I have first determined whether it is constitutionally permissible. And if I should later be attacked for neglecting my constituents' "interests," I shall reply that I was informed that their main interest is liberty and that in that cause I am doing the very best I can..."
Yes.
I feel the same way.
Yes, and more so at the Federal level than in the states; even though some states too need to cull the useless and redundant, and splintered dead wood out of their criminal and civil law code registers.
Imagine if we actually still even had a Republican Party. We don’t. The current spawn are as evel, corrupt, and owned by China as the DEMs.
““The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws.”
There is a reason old sayings are old sayings; their truth.
Does anyone have an idea about how many laws and regulation with the force of law have been enacted by our Federal government since 1789? Broken down by year or Congress would be even more interesting.
Without early American morality (Puritan, early American Presbyterian, Huguenot, all), we’ll soon have nothing.
I have read that when Dolly Madison fled the WH in the war of 1812, she took the entire collection of Federal Laws on the books consisting of three volumes.
How many carriages would be needed to remove the books of Federal laws today!
"The more corrupt the state, the more numerous the laws." Tacitus, Roman Senator and Historian (A.D. c.56 - c. 115)
Tacitus (c. 56/57-ca. 125) was a Roman orator and historian. In a life that spanned the reigns of the Flavian emperors and of Trajan and Hadrian, he played a part in the public life of Rome and became its greatest historian.
How many citizens have read any law?
When the bills and laws passed in one day have to be brought in by boxes I doubt many. How many of our elected to the houses read any law before voting? ZERO!
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.