What is vastly unrealistic is your baseball analogy. The rules of baseball are not at all analogous to the current laws of big government. The game might be analogous if it had recently been overtaken by criminals and the number of rules had increased by thousands of times, making it virtually impossible to play. The issue is not about natural rules of competence and competition which apply to all players; it is about abusive rules made up by criminal rule makers.
------------------------ Most people who use a subject line like this one have vastly unrealistic expectations of laws, constitutions, government, and probably human nature. That is discussed in a good book, /A Machine That Would Go of Itself/ <http://www.amazon.com/Machine-that-Would-Itself-Constitution/dp/ 141280583X/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1254002653&sr=1-1-spell >, by Michael Kammen. I sometimes explain it with sports metaphors, and ask a question like, "If someone breaks a rule of baseball, such as by sliding into first base, is that a failure of the Rules of Baseball?" "No", they will usually admit, "breaking a rule is not a fault of the rules, but of the offender." "And if the other players let the offender get away with breaking the rule, is that the fault of the rules?" "No," they admit. "It is the fault of the other players. They should know the rules and insist everyone follow them." "So who's fault is it if the people let officials get away with violating the Constitution?" "The Constitution's too difficult to understand. Even the lawyers can't agree on what it means." "Can't, or won't", I reply. "After all, they are working for clients, trying to win cases for them. They are not acting as historians, linguists, or philosophers. Is there as much disagreement among those?" "I don't know. The lawyers control the courts, where the decisions are made. Historians, philosophers, and linguists don't have much to do with that." "Grasshopper, you are beginning to catch on." -- Jon ----------------------------------------------------------------- -- Constitution Society 2900 W Anderson Ln C-200-322, Austin, TX 78757 512/299-5001 www.constitution.org [email protected] ----------------------------------------------------------------- --
