Law and Disorder

Here are two related thoughts and quotations on lawlessness in governing.

Thought the first: Charles Krauthammer in the Washington Post (via Transterrial Musings):

We've now reached a point where a flailing president, desperate to deflect the opprobrium heaped upon him for the false promise that you could keep your health plan if you wanted to, calls a hasty news conference urging both insurers and the states to reinstate millions of such plans. 

Except that he is asking them to break the law. His own law. Under Obamacare, no insurer may issue a policy after 2013 that does not meet the law’s minimum coverage requirements. These plans were canceled because they do not. 

The law remains unchanged. The regulations governing that law remain unchanged. Nothing is changed except for a president proposing to unilaterally change his own law from the White House press room. 

That's banana republic stuff, except that there the dictator proclaims from the presidential balcony.

Thought the second: Daniel Hannan on the EU:

Shall I tell you the worst thing about the EU? It's not the waste or the corruption or the Michelin-starred lifestyles of its leaders. It's not the contempt for voters or the readiness to swat referendum results aside. It's not the way that multi-nationals and NGOs and all manner of corporate interests are privileged over consumers. It's not the pettifogging rules that plague small employers. It's not the Common Agricultural Policy or the Common Fisheries Policy. It's not the anti-Britishness or the anti-Americanism. It's not even the way in which the euro is inflicting preventable poverty on tens of millions of southern Europeans. 

No, it's something more objectionable than any of these things – and something which, bizarrely, doesn't exercise us nearly as much as it should. Put simply, it's this: the EU makes up the rules as it goes along. 

Just think, for a moment, about what that means. It means that any deal you've signed can be arbitrarily altered later. It means that any plans you've made, on the basis of what you took to be binding agreements, can be retrospectively destroyed. It means, in short, that there is no effective rule of law.

A world of arbitrary, whimsical fiat.  Laws are for the little people.