It is the common framework within which a free people can take their own path to fulfillment. The addition of regulatory law, as law professor Edward Rubin has observed, has not arisen out of some lapse of moral vigilance. We want it to protect common resources and to advance common goals. Yet, increasingly, law makes us feel like its victims. We divert our energies into defensive measures designed solely to avoid tripping over rules that seem to exist only because someone put them there.
Rules preclude initiative.
Regimentation precludes evolution. We have deluded ourselves into thinking that government should only act through central, self-executing rules. We have cast aside our good sense to worship an icon made of abstract logic and arbitrary words. All this governmental process has spilled over into our daily lives and diverts us from doing our jobs. Indeed, a tidal wave of forms has engulfed the country.