The "rule of law" is a joke when the President make laws by Executive Order, when Congress tries to outdo the President by making laws that are not within its power to make, and when the Supreme Court turns a blind eye to both forms of lawlessness.
Government today: a small minority of the populace which presumes to tell the vast majority how to live.
The Constitution's promise of a federal government with limited powers has been broken by extra-constitutional means. Congress and the President have asserted powers not granted by the Constitution; the courts have changed the meaning of the Constitution instead of applying its intended meaning.
Legislation: the usually misguided effort to deal with uncertainty by dictating to nature and human nature.
Most government programs are founded on two illusions: first, that the voluntary transactions of individuals and businesses often yield "bad results"; second, that the government can reverse those "bad results" without also undoing all the "good results" that seem to go unnoticed by the proponents of government action.
It is a short -- very short -- step from "hate crimes" to "thought crimes."
Laws against such instruments of abuse as alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, and guns arise from legislative pandering to moral zealots, closet dictators, and those who are frightened easily by media hype. Such laws undermine respect for the law by penalizing the vast majority for the anti-social acts of small minorities. The only laws we should have to rely on for our self-protection are those that hold each and every one of us -- young or old, sane or insane, non-white or white, female or male, heterosexual or homosexual -- individually responsible for the consequences of our actions. Acceptance of individual responsibility cannot be imposed by the law; it must be learned within the family circle.
The government that was formed to protect citizens from the tyranny of arbitrary power has become the embodiment of arbitrary power.
Old saying: Those who can, do; those who can't, teach. New saying: Those who "can't do" make laws so those who "can do" have to work harder to make less money.
Twentieth Century American statism -- the concentration of vast power in the hands of the federal government in the name of "good" -- is authoritarianism in a Santa Claus suit.
