[Congressional Record Volume 143, Number 65 (Friday, May 16, 1997)]
[House]
[Pages H2864-H2865]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                              {time}  1330
                  COMMAND SOCIETY VERSUS FREE SOCIETY

  The SPEAKER pro tempore. Under a previous order of the House, the 
gentleman from Texas [Mr. Paul] is recognized for 5 minutes.
  Mr. PAUL. Mr. Speaker, it is safe to say that we now live in what we 
call a command society, we do not live in a free society where social 
and economic problems are solved through voluntary and free market 
solution. Whether it is food for the poor, homes for the homeless, 
medical care for the sick, we endlessly call on the Government to use 
force to redistribute wealth and distribute our production of welfare, 
with total disregard for the conditions required to produce the wealth.
  In this misdirected humanitarianism, great harm is done to the very 
people who are supposed to be helped, both the recipients, as they are 
forced into a degrading dependency, and the working poor, who bear the 
greatest tax and inflation burden. In a command society, the Government 
continuously says, do this, do that, and we obediently do it. But 
smoldering anger and resentment results, confusion arises, because all 
the Government does is supposed to be good and helpful.
  We are endlessly forced to get licenses for all that we do. Rules and 
regulations are all around us, from morning till night, cradle to 
grave. We tax life, we tax death, we tax success, and we tax savings. 
We suffer from double and triple taxation. Taxes are everywhere, as we 
work half the time for our Government.
  We meet Government regulations and rules and paperwork everywhere we 
go. We cannot walk, talk, pray, or own a gun without a Government 
permit. We cannot drive a car without bells and buzzers and horns and 
belts and bags, without being reminded that Big Brother is watching, 
just waiting for one misstep, while the rapists and murderers go 
unpunished. We are intimidated by political correctness to the point 
that an innocent joke is a crime and the laws are a joke.
  Our businesses are subject to invasion at will by Government 
bureaucracy without warning, pretending to save us from ourselves, 
while destroying our freedoms. As the bureaucracy thrives, the command 
society expands.
  I see no evidence, sadly, of a reversal of this trend. We continue to 
tinker with the bureaucracy through disbursement and talk of great 
benefits of block grants and local controls and never talk of the 
philosophic or moral principles that permit the command society; that 
is, the concession that the arbitrary use of force to mold personal 
behavior in the market in our entire society is permissible.
  Without change in our philosophic approach to government, we will 
find all the adjustments and revamping of the command society will not 
and cannot succeed. It cannot change the course upon which this Nation 
is set.
  Placing confidence in pseudo-reform does great harm by postponing the 
day we seriously consider the moral principles upon which a free 
society is built. I am anxiously waiting for that day.
  Mr. Speaker, at this time I enter into the Record this recent 
commentary by one of America's leading television newsmen, Hugh Downs. 
During his May 10, 1997, radio program ``Perspective,'' this commentary 
was broadcast, making many of the same points I have made today.

                          BATF's in the Belfry

                            (By Hugh Downs)

       Not too long ago, the California State Legislature passed a 
     law permitting women to breast feed their children in public. 
     Legislators felt obliged to pass a law about this despite the 
     fact that courts have already upheld the practice. Also 
     breast feeding has long been recommended to women by their 
     physicians as the feeding method of choice. And quite aside 
     from the legal precedent and the medical advantage, breast 
     feeding is the natural way to feed infants; obviously women 
     are equipped to serve sustenance to their offspring this way 
     and it is the safest way to nourish an infant. So why would 
     we need a law to state the obvious?
       A law permitting public breast feeding is part of a 
     tradition of inane legal redundancies generated by America's 
     criminal justice empire. I say empire because legislators, by 
     nature, think they possess, like Roman Caesars, the imperium, 
     as if the laws they pass somehow wield supreme power over the 
     universe. For example, in the past, legislators in Arkansas 
     prohibited the river in Little Rock to swell any higher than 
     the bridge. That's right, the river, by law, was 
     ``commanded'' not to flood. Wasn't that wonderful? This inane 
     and redundant bit of arrogance reminds me of Canute, the 
     ancient Danish King of England. Canute put his throne on the 
     beach and commanded the sea to retreat. You will not be 
     surprised to hear that the sea dragged Canute, throne and 
     all, to a watery embarrassment. Legislators, from Canute to 
     Congress, can imagine themselves as imperium, because the 
     power to create law seems as if it should include the laws of 
     nature, or the laws of the universe, or let's be honest about 
     it, the laws of the Almighty.
       I've also heard that, in the past, legislators once passed 
     a law that forbade chickens to lay eggs before 8 o'clock in 
     the morning and no later than 4 o'clock in the afternoon. I'm 
     told this law is, or at least was, on the books in Norfolk, 
     Virginia. Legislators commanded chickens, under penalty of 
     law, only to lay eggs between the daylight hours of 8 and 4. 
     (If you're looking for ``bird brains'' here, you could have 
     trouble figuring out which species had more of them.) I 
     wonder what the penalty was for laying eggs after 4 o'clock? 
     Maybe criminal chickens were threatened with being ``cooped 
     up.''
       To be fair, a lot of stupid laws are just old laws that may 
     have seemed liked a good idea at the time but now seem 
     quaint. When automobiles first appeared around the turn of 
     the century, legislators rushed laws to regulate them. Since 
     early automobiles made enough noise to spook a horse, several 
     states passed laws that required runners to precede 
     automobiles so that horse riders and buggy drivers could be 
     forewarned of the approaching menace. I can only imagine what 
     modern Interstate highways would look like if such laws were 
     enforced today. I heard that in Pennsylvania somewhere, there 
     is still a law requiring motorists to pull over at the 
     sight of a team of horses and cover the vehicle with a 
     cloth that has been painted to match the local foliage. I 
     looked in my trunk the other day and noticed that I don't 
     carry a camouflage cover. I hope I never need one in 
     Pennsylvania.
       Many old laws seem dumb and dumber today, and are 
     innocently amusing. Who cares if it's against the law in 
     Grand Haven, Michigan to toss an abandoned hoop skirt in the 
     street? It may have happened in the 1860's but it'll never 
     happen today because women don't wear hoop skirts anymore. In 
     addition to antiquated laws, some laws can be ludicrous 
     prohibitions that deal with situations that are patently 
     obvious. Is it really true that someone passed a law in 
     Alabama prohibiting motorists from operating a motor vehicle 
     while blind folded? What was in their beverages? And what 
     about that Florida law prohibiting sex with a porcupine? I'm 
     not kidding. This is supposed to be a real law. What were 
     these lawmakers thinking? At least sex with a porcupine must 
     be one crime with a very low rate of recidivism.
       Obviously, hubris can propel legislators well beyond the 
     asinine to the really dangerous. America's burgeoning 
     criminal justice empire doesn't just churn out useless laws, 
     it also creates unnecessary law enforcement agencies--whole 
     police forces that we don't need. We don't need them because 
     we already have local police departments. The DEA, or Drug 
     Enforcement Agency is anything but local. The DEA performs a 
     job that used to be done by the War Department during World 
     War II. The DEA sends American GI's into foreign countries 
     and wages war. Prosecution of a drug war sounds like a policy 
     hatched by Dumb and Dumber. Without a war there would be no 
     need for the DEA, or its staggering budget.
       Of course, the DEA does not police alcohol and tobacco. We 
     have a completely separate police force (the Dumber half of 
     this duo) just to deal with cigarettes and liquor. The BATF, 
     or Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, is what you might 
     call an ``offbeat'' police force. The name itself is off the 
     wall?
       You might wonder why we need a completely separate 
     organization to police things that are all legal, especially 
     when local police already do that. Local police have been 
     doing it for centuries in America. But lawmakers, anxious to 
     serve in the drug war, decided that extra federal agencies 
     were needed too. We may have too many laws and too many 
     agencies. After the catastrophes at Waco and Ruby Ridge, the 
     BATF came under Congressional scrutiny as an unnecessary 
     organization that sometimes over-steps its bounds.
       When they're not being investigated by Congress, the BATF 
     is tracking down dangerous criminals and keeping America 
     safe. For example, America was recently threatened by a naked 
     angel--that's right a naked angel--and the BATF fought 
     valiantly to repel her. They lost. Kermit Lynch, a wine 
     merchant in northern California, reports that he tried to 
     import some Chianti wine

[[Page H2865]]

     that had a naked angel on the label. The BATF pounced. Agents 
     told Lynch that pictures of naked ladies on containers of 
     alcohol are forbidden. So Kermit Lynch looked up the law. He 
     discovered that pictures of women in the all together are 
     permissible on containers of alcohol if the pictures are art. 
     The BATF had to backtrack when Mr. Lynch demonstrated that 
     the picture wasn't really a naked woman, it was really an 
     artistic nude from a 13th century tapestry.
       A stunned Kermit Lynch says ``The BATF is in the business 
     of judging art. Can you believe it?'' In an interview, Mr. 
     Lynch told reporter Paul Kilduff that the Kenwood winery in 
     Sonoma County, California hired artist David Goines to do a 
     label. When Mr. Goines came up with a naked woman standing in 
     a vineyard, the BATF pounced again. So, a now angry Mr. 
     Goines submitted a new label with the skeleton of a woman 
     standing in a vineyard. You guessed it. The BATF approved 
     that one.
       How many useless laws and useless police agencies do we 
     really need? Surely, we should throw out what we don't need 
     and keep what we do. Like the law that I'm told exists in 
     Tennessee, that prohibits shooting game animals from moving 
     vehicles. The law has one exception: whales. It's legal to 
     shoot whales in Tennessee from a moving vehicle. Now there's 
     a law that we need.

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