Every day there is another asinine law passed, and every day there is another story of how some bureaucrat has abused a citizen because some rule buried in a regulation handbook says he can.
John Stossel has made a career out of exploring all of this stupidity, and his latest entry into the absurd is called “Illegal Everything.”
If you think you’ve seen every bureaucratic atrocity imaginable, think again. Stossel has found some even I had no idea were happening!
From criminalizing children for setting up a lemonade stand, to the Midway police chief’s absurd justification for attacking the children, to fining a man $2,000 per day for having the wrong type of tree on his property and demanding a couple holding a home bible study to have a Conditional Use Permit.
Then there’s the man who was sentenced to 8 years in prison for the crime of importing lobster tails in bags instead of boxes. Sound absurd? It is, but that doesn’t make it untrue.
As I’ve said many times before, Bureaucrat’s Rule #1 says “The Rules are more important than People.” When governments take that to an extreme, all of society suffers.
When bureaucrats believe they know what’s best for you and me and wish to impose their believes upon us, nothing good can come from it.
C.S. Lewis once wrote something very profound on this subject:
“One of the marks of a certain type of bad man is that he cannot give up a thing himself without wanting every one else to give it up. That is not the Christian way. An individual Christian may see fit to give up all sorts of things for special reasons—marriage, or meat, or beer, or the cinema; but the moment he starts saying the things are bad in themselves, or looking down his nose at other people who use them, he has taken the wrong turning.”
Indeed. Both America and Canada have definitely “taken the wrong turning.”
I was horrified by some of the examples John Stossel cites in this program. I’m sure you will be too.
i love cs lewis and consider him a brilliant guy, but on his exact word use here; i must take a little exception, as he seems to be suggesting a little too much political correctness.
however, perhaps if his comments are STRICTLY limited to Christians, then perhaps they might hold up to scrutiny.
my contention is that he says that people shouldnt say that things are bad in themselves and that one shouldnt look down on others for behaving in a certain way.
there is a difference between showing some compassion and withholding the truth.
therefore, i must digress and encourage people to have discriminating taste and to unhesitatingly make their positions known, whether they be against a person or persons taking a particular action, or whether they be moral problems with specific actions or things themselves.
let the debate rage, and let the truth rise to supremacy.
we need to be MORE vocal about our beliefs and to be MORE intense in applying GOOD peer pressure to those around us, if we dont; it is the type of foolish laws noted here that are 1 of the results… people must be held accountable, even by their peers frowning on them in some instances vocally.