Monday, April 16, 2012

We need to get rid of laws

I like John Stossel's column about why Complex Societies Need Simple Laws. He starts with:

----------
“If you have 10,000 regulations,” Winston Churchill said, “you destroy all respect for law.”


He was right. But Churchill never imagined a government that would add 10,000 year after year. That’s what we have in America. We have 160,000 pages of rules from the feds alone. States and localities have probably doubled that. We have so many rules that legal specialists can’t keep up. Criminal lawyers call the rules “incomprehensible.” They are. They are also “uncountable.” Congress has created so many criminal offenses that the American Bar Association says it would be futile to even attempt to estimate the total.


So what do the politicians and bureaucrats of the permanent government do? They pass more rules.
----------

Clearly part of the answer to fixing the public school mess is not more laws, but less.  Getting rid of the Federal Department of Education, and all their rules, would allow state and local governments more options for fixing their problems.

Hat-tip: Instapundit

2 comments:

Dual Role Grandma said...

Agree and concur on this one!!!!!

Henry Cate said...

I wish politicians would run on a platform of the laws they would get rid of. I'd vote for them.