Quote (Plaguefear @ 29 May 2021 21:21)
"Freedom" Choice"
No one knows how many laws there are in the United States. Apparently, no one can count that high.
They’ve been accumulating, of course, for more than 200 years. When federal laws were first codified in 1927, they fit into a single volume. By the 1980s, there were 50 volumes of more than 23,000 pages.
And today? Online sources say that no one knows. The Internal Revenue Code alone, first codified in 1874, contains more than 3.4 million words and, if printed 60 lines to the page, is more than 7,500 pages long. There are about 20,000 laws just governing the use and ownership of guns.
New laws mean new crimes. From the start of 2000 through 2007, Congress had created at least 452 new crimes, so that at that time the total number of Federal crimes exceeded 4,450.
Of course, times change and laws need to be updated. But many laws detract from, rather than contribute to, our quality of life and overall well-being. It is impossible for anyone to know all of the laws that affect them and it is, therefore, impossible to not break any laws. How many of the 4,450 crimes have you broken?
The role of Congress, unfortunately, is to create new laws, not to do away with old laws that don’t work. Members of Congress running for re-election want to be able to say that they sponsored and passed new laws – regardless of how harmful the laws may be.
In a typical year, Congress passes at least 125 new laws, but Congress has fortunately slowed the pace of late. In 2011, after Republicans took control of the U.S. House of Representatives, Congress passed just 90 bills into law. As of last August, only 61 of the 3,914 bills that had been introduced in 2012 as of that date had been passed into law.
This is a very solid post and goes a long way to highlighting the myth of American Liberty. While Americans do enjoy many freedoms that people elsewhere do not necessarily have, we also face restrictions that people elsewhere do not have. It's a very mixed bag.
I would take exception to one point, however: You claim that it is not Congress's job to do away with old laws. This is false. It IS the duty of Congress to repeal laws, not just write them. Here are a list of Federally Repealed Statutes:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:United_States_repealed_legislationOne of the major differences between the two parties today highlights on the other inaccuracy in your post. While you claim that politicians wish to be able to say they sponsored and passed new laws, that's primarily a Democrat selling point. One of the greatest Republican selling points is sponsoring repeal efforts, standing against bad legislation, etc. In many ways, the Democratic party has become the party of, "We must do something, anything, regardless of whether it's needed or will be helpful." The Republican party, on the other hand, has largely become the party of, "We must delay any action unless it can be proven that action is necessary." This has led to the classification of Democrats as the "doers" and Republicans as the "speed bumps" and is a rather apt description.
It gets even more convoluted, however, when you take your points to the next level. On top of the federal constitution, federal statutes, federal precedent, and federal regulation, all of these things exist as well at the level of the state, county, city, and in some cases, even district of a city. There are so many laws from so many legislative branches that I don't believe it's possible to know more than the barest fraction of them. However, for your viewing pleasure, here's a list of some of the more stupid laws still on the books:
https://www.mentalfloss.com/article/50041/50-weird-laws-still-books