Freedom, liberty are messy, like life

How is it that more things are illegal today than a year ago, and why has this been the trend for a couple of hundred years?

It’s because there is an imbalance in how laws are imposed and eliminated. The scales of legislation are tipped in the wrong direction.

link Kent McManigal

Even if only one out of every 100 proposed liberty-violating law is passed, liberty still shrinks, gradually, but inexorably. Because those laws almost never go away.

Even when they seem to get abolished, in truth another law was probably passed to counter the first law, rather than the first law being struck from the books.

But the biggest culprit is all the new laws that get proposed to pander to the folks crying, “There ought to be a law,” over every little thing that upsets their delicate sensibilities.

Of course, not every one of those bad laws — and they are all bad laws — gets passed the first time it is dreamed up. However, every time one of those laws fails to come to life it keeps getting proposed repeatedly until it eventually becomes law.

The political climate is always in flux, and even the most ridiculous or draconian law will eventually find a time and place to take root. The proposed laws never die and a no is never allowed to be final.

Laws are held to be sacred, and liberty is an inconvenience to be sacrificed on a whim.

This leads to the condition I call law pollution, where laws come to cover the world like so many tumblebags and burrito wrappers drifting against every fence and wall.

Everything not forbidden is mandatory.

That needs to change.

It is never valid to impose a law that violates individual liberty or property — no matter how many people want that law.

Freedom, like life, is messy. Only the dead are predictable and stable.

If the liberty of your neighbor scares you, that is your malfunction, not his. You are the one who needs to adapt.

No new laws.

Farwell’s Kent McManigal champions liberty. Contact him at:

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