Prophesy

I found a very interesting comment about legislation as it is written today and especially about Obamacare. It is: "It will be of little avail to the people that the laws are made by men of their own choice, if the laws be so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that they cannot be understood." (The Federalist Papers; Hamilton, Alexander; Madison, James; and Jay, John; Random House, 2003; p 380.) It sounds like these words were written about the thousands of pages of Obamacare. The problem is it was written by James Madison in the late 1700's.

How many times have we heard that even the members of Congress had not (and probably have not) read the legislation for Obamacare? Nancy Pelozi so smartly said that they had to pass it to find out what was in it. Talk about bold faced stupidity. No wonder our government is in so low esteem with the public. When the members of our government make such ridiculous statements, it makes them look like fools. And so James Madison wrote: "(T)he most deplorable effect of all is that the diminution of attachment and reverence which steals into the hearts of the people towards a political system which betrays so many marks of infirmity, and disappoints so many of their flattering hopes. No government any more than an individual will long be respected, without being truly respectable, nor be truly respectable without possessing a certain portion of order and stability." (ibid, p 381)

What is frightening about this is how it exposes us to our enemies in the world. "America...finds that she is held in no respect by her friends; that she is the derision of her enemies; and that she is a prey to every nation which has a interest in speculating on her fluctuating councils and embarrassed affairs." (ibid, p 380)

Another side effect of such foolishness is the suffering it causes the people, the ones watching from the sidelines by giving an advantage to the insiders. "Another effect of public instability is the unreasonable advantage it gives to the sagacious, the enterprising and the moneyed few, over the industrious and uninformed mass of the people. Every new regulation concerning commerce or revenue, or in any manner affecting the values of the different species of property, presents a new harvest to those who watch the change, and can trace its consequences; a harvest reared not by themselves but by the toils and cares of the great body of their fellow citizens. This is a state of things in which it may be said with some truth that laws are made for the few not for the many." (ibid, p 380-381; italics in original) No wonder George Soros, Mitch Romney, Rick Perry and others like them love this chaos. They have experts who can guess the "consequences" of these laws with much greater accuracy than the rest of us can. No wonder the law profession has done so well in this society. They like laws that are so complex and so susceptible to misinterpretation that they will have work for themselves and earn large bucks "defending" the "great body of their fellow citizens."

This is another side effect of large government. If government were so small that it could write its laws on pages that can be numbered in single digits, there would be little need for lawyers.

And please notice that James Madison wrote that these "laws are made for the few not for the many." These laws are not written to protect us, the populace, the many; they are written to benefit the few, the moneyed, the enterprising. They are not written to protect the industrious and uninformed, but for the moneyed and favored. Why do you think we have so many lobbyists?

James Madison was indeed a prophet.