The goal of the “liberalsâ€â€”as it emerges from the record of the past decades—was to smuggle this country into welfare statism by means of single, concrete, specific measures, enlarging the power of the government a step at a time, never permitting these steps to be summed up into principles, never permitting their direction to be identified or the basic issue to be named. Thus statism was to come, not by vote or by violence, but by slow rot—by a long process of evasion and epistemological corruption, leading to a fait accompli. (The goal of the “conservatives†was only to retard that process.)
Ayn Rand, “Extremism”, or the Art of Smearing
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Blogger Ann Althouse comments on the knee-jerk Leftist response by E.J. Dionne to yet another mass “gun-free zone” shooting incident:
I’m fascinated by this notion that we do sometimes pass laws and therefore that means that we should pass laws. The resistance to passing laws is some nasty dysfunction caused by a nefarious interest group — here, the NRA — but good people want to do something.
My comment to her post follows:
I’m fascinated by how the Left has so successfully and deeply entrenched everyone, even non-Lefties, into default “boxes” of thought without anyone noticing.
Well, anyone minus one, as I did notice it. EJ Dionne’s presumed range of options is to either pass more laws or to do nothing.
Completely left out is a third option: repeal laws.
Am I wrong? Not Althouse or anyone in this thread seems to have noticed; search “repeal” on this page and there’s one comment with that word in it, and it’s a reference to Prohibition.
Leftists’ entire political worldview rests on that unstated premise: laws only ever get passed. Government control only ever expands, and “at worst” it stops growing.
It throws William F Buckley’s slogan “Standing athwart history shouting Stop!” into a new light, doesn’t it?
It should be clear that we’ve reached a pass where conservatism’s professed goal, even if they adhered to it 100% (which, quite pathetically, they don’t) — to be a brake on history — has failed, as it must fail.
A brake only slows you down; it does not change your direction. We don’t need a brake anymore; we need an accelerator and a 180.
Let’s turn this bucket around.
Repeal, and put in place mandatory expiration dates on all legislation, ALL. If not renewed within a fixed period of time, then it becomes null and void with those imprisoned by it set free upon expiration (drug laws?).
There will be a noticeable reduction in new laws passed since repassing of old things will consume time. We, as a nation/state/locality will be forced to prioritize what is important on a recurring basis.
Good luck to us all as we strive to improve on something that is good, but can be far better.
It is a terrible sickness of our era that people assume for every problem and tragedy in life that a new law must be made. There are many things in life – I would say most things – that the law cannot fix. Furthermore, attempts to defy this fact can and do cause great harm to the innocent.
History has proven that this is how liberty is murdered.