Wednesday, December 22, 2010

Why Our Economy Sucks – Congress Makes Highest Number of Laws Since 1960’s

Succinct, that’s how this Bloomberg article puts it. “The 111th Congress made more law affecting more Americans since the “Great Society” legislation of the 1960s.”

Thanks a lot.

In order for this story to have its full effect (that is, to pour yourself a stiff drink even if it is 9 a.m.), you only need to understand one principle; we are free to do anything unless there’s a law specifically preventing it. This simple concept is the heart and soul of American exceptionalism. Other countries need permission from their governments to do something, placing them in a far different position than us. They are restricted from the beginning whereas we start from the premise of freedom.

It’s also curious that this little nugget of information, as important as it is, isn’t as widely known as it should be. If it was, I’m certain that there would be much more discontent with the current political atmosphere in Washington. Not that there isn’t already, as demonstrated by the loss of the House to Republican control in the last election.

Still, this is terrible news for freedom-loving Americans. It also explains why our economy has ground to a halt. It’s clear that Congress is legislating us to death.

I should probably introduce another principle for to help you understand how this is bad for the country. This is the principle of cause and effect. Allow me to explain.

Things don’t just happen spontaneously; they have an origin, a cause. After the cause has occurred, the result is the effect. Also, understand that the effect can then become another cause.

In the engineering world, when there is a failure, you want to know what caused it in order to prevent another failure. This is known as Root Cause Analysis.

In our situation, we have legislators creating law, which, by definition, restrict our actions, resulting in less freedom. Is it any wonder that we find ourselves in an economic morass, with record high levels of unemployment and poverty? The cause is too many laws, the effect is economic devastation.

Again, thanks a lot, Nancy, Harry, and Barack. Heckuva job you’ve done there.

Now that we know what caused our problems, we can start to solve them. We can roll back the new laws by any means available to us in this new Congress, be it the filibuster, defunding or repeal. However, repeal of any new law will be highly unlikely with this president. But brace yourself, Effie, there will be howls from the Democrats and those on the left (but I repeat myself) who somehow think they’re doing the will of the people by passing laws at a record pace. What they’re really doing is reducing our freedom, just as hard and as fast as they can.

Let them howl. Let them scream until their voices give out, then, when we can no longer hear their bleating, tell them that their efforts to constrict our lives has failed and they can go back to wherever it is they came from and take their power-mad ways with them.

We will be free once more.

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