Disregard for the Law Is America’s Greatest Threat
Barbarians
at the gate usually don't bring down once-successful civilizations. Nor
does climate change. Even mass epidemics like the plague that decimated
sixth-century Byzantium do not necessarily destroy a culture.
Far
more dangerous are institutionalized corruption, a lack of transparency
and creeping neglect of existing laws. All the German euros in the
world will not save Greece if Greeks continue to dodge taxes, featherbed
government and see corruption as a business model.
Even
obeying so-called minor laws counts. It is no coincidence that a
country where drivers routinely flout traffic laws and throw trash out
the window is also a country that cooks its books and lies to its
creditors. Everything from littering to speeding seems negotiable in
Athens in a way not true of Munich, Zurich or London.
Mexico
is a much naturally richer country than Greece. It is blessed with oil,
precious minerals, fertile soils, long coastlines and warm weather.
Hundreds of thousands of Mexican citizens should not be voting with
their feet to reject their homeland for the U.S.
But
Mexico also continues to be a mess because police expect bribes,
property rights are iffy, and government works only for those who pay
kickbacks. The result is that only north, not south, of the U.S.-Mexico
border can people expect upward mobility, clean water, adequate public
safety and reliable power.
In
much of the Middle East and Africa, tribalism and bribery, not
meritocracy, determine who gets hired and fired, wins or loses a
contract, or receives or goes without public services.
Americans, too, should worry about these age-old symptoms of internal decay.
The
frightening thing about disgraced IRS bureaucrat Lois Lerner's
knowledge of selective audits of groups on the basis of their politics
is not just that she seemed to ignore it, but that she seemingly assumed
no one would find out, or perhaps even mind. And she may well have been
right. So far, no one at the IRS has shown any remorse for corrupting
an honor-based system of tax compliance.
Illegal
immigration has been a prominent subject in the news lately, between
Donald Trump's politically incorrect, imprecise and crass stereotyping
of illegal immigrants and the shocking murder of a young San Francisco
woman gratuitously gunned down in public by a Mexican citizen who had
been convicted of seven felonies in the United States and had been
deported five times. But the subject of illegal immigration is, above all, a matter of law enforcement.
Ultimately,
no nation can continue to thrive if its government refuses to enforce
its own laws. Liberal "sanctuary cities" such as San Francisco choose to
ignore immigration laws. Imagine the outcry if a town in Utah or
Montana arbitrarily declared that federal affirmative action or gay
marriage laws were null and void within its municipal borders.
Once
an immigrant has successfully broken the law by entering and residing
in the U.S. illegally, there is little incentive for him to obey other
laws. Increasing percentages of unnaturalized immigrants are not showing
up for their immigration hearings -- and those percentages are higher
still for foreign nationals who have been charged with crimes.
The
general public wonders why some are selectively exempt from following
the law, but others are not. If federal immigration law does not apply
to foreign nationals, why should building codes, zoning laws or traffic
statutes apply to U.S. citizens?
Consider
the immigration activists' argument that immigration authorities should
focus only on known felons and not those who only broke immigration
law. This is akin to arguing that the IRS shouldn't worry about whether
everyday Americans pay their income taxes and should enforce the tax
laws only against those with past instances of tax avoidance.
But
why single out the poor and foreign-born? Presidential hopeful Hillary
Clinton once pocketed a $100,000 cattle-futures profit from a $1,000
investment, with help from an insider crony. A group of economists
calculated the odds of such an unlikely return at one in 31 trillion. Clinton
then trumped that windfall by failing to fully pay taxes on her
commodities profits, only addressing that oversight years later.
Why
did Clinton, during her tenure as secretary of state, snub government
protocols by using a private email account and a private server, and
then permanently deleting any emails she felt were not
government-related? Clinton long ago concluded that laws in her case were to be negotiated, not obeyed.
President
Obama called for higher taxes on the wealthy. But before doing so,
could he at least have asked his frequent advisor on racial matters, Al
Sharpton, to pay millions in back taxes and penalties?
Might
the government ask that its own employees pay the more than $3 billion
in collective federal back taxes that they owe, since they expect other
taxpayers to keep paying their salaries?
Civilizations unwind insidiously not with a loud, explosive bang, but with a lawless whimper.
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