The Demise of The Virtuous Citizen

James Madison once argued that when laws become so voluminous that they cannot be read, or so incoherent that the cannot be understood by the people, it will poison the blessings of liberty itself. Over the past few years, I find myself leaning more and more into the general position of the Anti-Federalists of the 1788 era. while I love the Constitution and its history with a passion that came to me late in life, I am also beginning to realize that the Framers and the writers of the Federalist Papers had a much more optimistic view of the nature of men and the spirit of liberty. I get that they did their best, but they made some assumptions about their descendents that turned out to not only be inaccurate, but wildly sanguine. Now we find that our government, consisting of men and women of our own choice, has literally stopped even making voluminous laws. Nowadays it’s become a series of laws, regulations, directives, recommendations and mandates. All of which carry the force of law and have become so voluminous, complex and shifting that there is no way that the people can ever read them, let alone understand them. Why? To destroy the virtuous citizen.