An interesting thought stuck in my head after a visit with my friend Will Worsham—whose practice of law is mostly in the area of criminal defense. Will defined stealing as “depriving someone from the rightful use of what is his, even if for a short time” and to illustrate he picked up a paperclip from my desk. He said “When I hold this paperclip I am stealing, because you can’t use what is rightfully yours while I am holding onto it.” Fair enough.

Those of us who work in regulated industries are perpetual victims of thievery. The thief is usually our government. When the government or its agencies hand down a new edict or regulation with which we must comply, they’ve taken our time away from us. We could hire someone to fill out the forms—much like most of us do with our tax returns—but then they’ve taken our money from us. So government regulation effectively results in stealing by the government from its citizens, often the most productive citizens, because of the time and money it takes to comply with the regulation.

I understand that we have to have some regulation to stave off anarchy, and the willingness to accept it blesses official kleptomania. I don’t fully know what the solutions are. I often wonder at what point our republic will crumple under the sheer weight of its own regulatory bureaucracy. I think part of the solution is less emphasis on regulation and more emphasis on personal accountability and the personal embodiment of morality and values. That’s effectively the problem Jesus had with the Pharisees who were big on regulations while Jesus was big on doing what was right. Often, the two were different. So there He was, violating the regulations by healing sick people on prohibited days. I wonder how many pages of government forms it would have taken to have gotten permission? Or to have documented why it happened and the steps that had been put into place to assure that it didn’t happen again. Lord knows the ultimate fine He paid was expensive.

This week I saw a guy standing in line at the copy shop inside an office supply store. He owns a bulldozer, was covered in mud on his boots and jeans. He was photocopying a thick report of some sort that had his company name emblazoned on the cover along with a very government sounding gobbldy-gooky title with words like “ameliorations, proliferation and remediation.” I said to him “Boy, I bet you dig dirt alot better when you are working on a job that has one of those reports on file.” He just sighed and shook his head. What idiot drawing a check from the taxpayers really thinks that the water-table is safer because we have a ream of paper in the construction superintendent’s office/trailer on the bulldozer operator’s plan to keep the silt from running down hill?

It occurs to me that a part of the problem is that in America we have taken away values and morality and tried to replace them with regulation. Should the excavator care about silting, and the water table, and the wildlife downstream? Absolutely! But we indoctrinated him in an educational process devoid of values because “there is no absolute truth” and turned him loose in a lawyer-saturated culture where personal accountability for behavior is replaced with codes and regulations promulgated to the extent that it is virtually impossible for anyone to fully comply. We call it the American dream.

The American dream was a glint in the eye of pilgrims who came here in pursuit of freedom to do as they pleased without onerous governmental burden, fully cognizant of their accountability to God for their actions. But in a land where God is dead or has palsy—if He exists at all, we aren’t really sure—there’s no fear of accountability to God. It’s those government bureaucrats with clip boards that you’ve gotta watch out for.

It all takes me back Jefferson’s words oft quoted by another Barrister friend, Jillian Ivy Sidoti: a government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.

Meanwhile, Atlas shrugs.