The new year sadly means new laws have taken hold.
Lawmaking is endemic to a lethargic population electing not local representatives but little tyrants, despots casting an ever-increasing intricate web of policies, regulations, restrictions, and licensures, dictating behavioral outcomes to a population whose those laws treat like animals in need of smaller cages.
The current American climate no longer views elected representatives as, well, representative, but as lawmakers.
The dearth of new bills Congress passed in 2023 is a sign of inefficiency.
Alexis De Tocqueville — who in his lifetime was a historian, political thinker, and a diplomat — studied and observed the American political system.
His famous work, "Democracy in America," was published in the late 1830s.
In it, he prophetically warned of our current hyper-legislative climate, one which would result in what he referred to as a "soft despotism." For example, New York State, with just a part-time legislature, introduces an average of 16,000 new laws every year.
With the ringing in of the new year, a ball of new state laws dropped across the country.
With each new law, comes new restrictions on constitutional freedoms, licensure of wickedness, restrictions on critical small business, and all tending to the centralization of power to a handful of elected politicians and their appointed administrative bureaucrats.
Every time a new law is passed there is an ongoing cost of enforcement, either by increasing the cost of business due to increased compliance concerns or by increased mandated fees or licensure to participate or practice.
As The Daily Caller neatly summarized, California is leading the charge on re-engineering society through legislation.
From banning the sale of gasoline-powered engines to mandating gender-neutral toy sales to forcing employers to hire druggies. And who do the social re-engineers (read lawmakers) think should be enforcing their new ideology?
Illinois law now says illegal aliens can be police officers.
Is this simply because the defund the police movement and attendant political browbeating of police officers resulted in a shortage of new applicants and a mass exodus of the old ones?
Rather than fix the problem created from the catastrophic politicking associated with political sympathizers to the Antifa/BLM movement, Illinois exacerbated the problem with their new law.
But then, re-engineering society requires deconstructing it which inevitably results in destabilization. Perhaps the actions of these left-leaning bad actors are intentional.
Gov. Ron DeSantis, R-Fla., said last July, "No illegal alien should have authority over any American citizen. It is a sad commentary on the state of America that this is even a debate."
What's even sadder is that "debate" is a charitable characterization of what is happening.
A debate engenders two or more differing parties that seek to convince the other parties of the value of their position. What's happening now can better be described as a power smash-and-grab, undermining the rule of law under cover of law.
Social re-engineering must touch all aspects of society.
And since Marxist-leaning states like California can always be counted on to legislate the free market out of existence, we see the recent impact of the state’s $20 mandated minimum wage with some 2,000 pizza delivery drivers losing their jobs.
Ass far as the Democratic Party agenda is concerned, nothing is sacred.
They even seek the destruction of the obvious binary nature of sex.
Michigan is finding new ways to give LGBTQ+ men and women superhuman status by expanding its civil rights act to prevent discrimination on the basis of "gender identity."
The Michigan Supreme Court has even ruled that judges must use the "preferred pronouns" of attorneys in their courtrooms.
This a problem in the making.
If you force judges to use someone’s preferred pronouns, it insinuates a new bias against this superclass that is legally actionable should some poor soul unwittingly fail to acknowledge the gender fiction as if it were reality.
And let’s not forget the ability of the citizenry to protect itself from legislative tyrants behaving like a pack of coyotes.
Both Michigan and Washington State have enacted new gun control laws that are almost certainly unconstitutional.
But because it will take years to work through the courts, the state can abuse citizens through enforcement in the meantime.
From plastic bag bans to sexually abusing children through porn in education curriculum and libraries, this new despotism goose-steps on, amassing more power every day until one day, any responsible citizen will be looking over his should every time he speaks wondering when and how America’s coup d’état happened.
Well, it is happening now and is permitted by our apathy.
These are hard truths.
The Rev. Jim Harden, CEO of CompassCare, an anti-abortion medical network based in Buffalo, New York, is married with 10 children. He passionately exposes unequal enforcement of the law and immoral public policy. Read more of the Rev. Jim Harden's Reports — Here.