The true rulers

"Enter the bureaucrats... the true rulers of the Republic..."
- Senator (later Emperor) Palpatine, Star Wars, Episode 1

Finally, a member of Congress raises a good point:

“I love these members, they get up and say, ‘Read the bill,’” said Conyers.

“What good is reading the bill if it’s a thousand pages and you don’t have two days and two lawyers to find out what it means after you read the bill?”

Conyers sees this merely as a procedural matter -- that it's a waste of time to have members read the bills they vote on, since they require convoluted explanation by legal counsel. And he's not wrong on that point. But if it's OK for Congress to vote on legislation they haven't read and don't understand, how on earth can they then expect the American people to abide by that legislation? What moral authority can such such legislation really claim? (Hint: none)

People can't take any significant action anymore without getting "lawyered up" to ensure they don't violate some obscure provision buried by bureaucrats in the U.S. Code. Even those who want to comply with their federal taxes (unlike, say, most federal officials) end up fearing audits, which might uncover some unsound advice they were given in the past. This isn't freedom... it's rule through fear of the unknown.

Frederick Bastiat said "Government is the great fiction through which everybody endeavors to live at the expense of everybody else." That's the real purpose behind complex legislation... getting something while passing the burden on to someone else. Housing, healthcare -- our form of government wasn't designed to provide such things. It was designed to enforce certain core principles that would allow everyone to pursue such happiness as their talents and discipline could achieve. There is a vast different between these two views of governance. We've nearly completed our journey from one side of that chasm to the other.

And I'm pretty sure we're not going to like what we find there.