Combating Lawlessness In America

America is becoming a lawless nation. While the number of individual law-breakers has been increasing, it is not just criminals who are lawless. It is also those we elect to uphold the law.

The words of President Obama while visiting my home town of Charlottesville last month sum up the thinking of many of our government leaders: “That’s a good thing about being President. I can do whatever I want.”

While the context was breaking protocol while visiting Monticello, he nonetheless has displayed this thinking in many ways: he has unilaterally changed the Affordable Care Act (Obamacare) at least 24 times, his administration has threatened businesses that speak out against Obamacare, and he has made judicial appointments without Congress being in recess. In addition, he has allowed the IRS to target certain political groups without taking any action to rectify this abusive and unlawful act.

And it is not just the President. Many other leaders ignore the law (even those they approved) and the Constitution, and have become a law unto themselves. Judges regularly make law — like the U.S. District Judge in Texas who toppled a marriage amendment upholding the traditional and Biblical view of marriage that had been approved by more than 75% of the voters in that state. Similar federal rulings have discarded marriage laws in Oklahoma, Virginia, California, Utah, New Mexico, Nevada, and Kentucky.

Twelve days after Virginia’s Attorney General Mark Herring took an oath to uphold the Constitution of Virginia, he said he would not enforce the marriage definition provision in the Constitution and would, in fact, work against it. He, in essence, declared he would be the source of the law. Other Attorneys General have done likewise, and in February 2014 the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder declared that state AGs are not obligated to defend laws with which they disagree.

Regarding discussion on immigration reform Thomas Sowell writes: “Immigration laws are the only laws that are discussed in terms of how to help people who break them. One of the big problems that those who are pushing ‘comprehensive immigration reform’ want solved is how to help people who came here illegally and are now ‘living in the shadows’ as a result.”

Add to this, government agencies that run rough-shod over the rights of individual citizens and the failure of Congress to perform its legal duties, and we can see we have a serious problem.


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