We Have Been Criminalized by an Overabundance of Laws

“Order may be nothing more than evidence of tyranny. Order may be nothing more than the prohibitions on freedom, the elimination of rights and the suppression of liberty. You are just as unsafe when things are too orderly as when they are disorderly.” — Jerry Day

Governments have learned that laws can be used as revenue and control measures by criminalizing more and more of human activity. Indeed, in many instances the term “criminal” is now meaningless as law enforcement has become a greater threat to ordinary people than actual criminals.

At an accelerating rate, western governments are criminalizing victimless trivialities for profit and control of the masses. In Denmark, the laws governing unemployment benefits are more than 36,000 pages and grow by almost seven pages daily on average. A massive 20,000 laws have been formulated to control ownership and use of guns in the US. The taxfoundation.org has shown that in order to understand and comply with US tax laws one must go through about 80,000 pages. Civil libertarians protest that prosecutors can charge any American with several crimes every day of the year because there are so many laws and regulations. See, for example, Harvey A. Silverglate, Three Felonies a Day: How the Feds Target the Innocent.

As it is impossible for a person to peruse all the required pages in order to comply with the laws, we are all probable criminals. Thus, the word “criminal” has effectively lost its meaning. Governments not only criminalize behavior for revenue purposes and in order to create a slave prison population to be exploited by private industries. Governments also legalize crimes, such as gambling for which government prosecuted private interests, and turn them into government sponsored lotteries. There is also evidence that the US government is actively involved in illegal drug trade.

San Jose Mercury investigative reporter Gary Webb found evidence of the CIA’s involvement in the drug trade. The Mercury published it. The CIA then used its media assets, such as the Washington Post, to carry on a campaign against Webb to discredit him. Investigative reporters got the message and have not looked into the CIA’s presence in the Afghan opium drug trade despite the massive growth under US occupation of Afghanistan’s opium share of the world market. The Taliban had suppressed the opium trade, but under US occupation the percentage of the world market supplied by Afghanistan rose from 6% in 2001 to 93% in 2007.