People are interesting. They have a total love/hate relationship with government. As long as there is a law that works for one's personal interests, it is great. But if it doesn't work in "my favor" it must be bad. We love to control, inspect, judge and punish behaviors as long as they are not things we like to do. But the minute we are in the regulations sights, we cry foul.
David Stern is not a popular guy in Phoenix these days. Being the "government" of the NBA his local image is in the toilet after his strict enforcement of the NBA rule that turned the worm against the Suns. Some say it cost them the series and the chance at the championship. But I would argue that poor David is a victim to be pitied, not an evil perpetrator of unfairness.
The June Arizona Attorney magazine features a brilliant "illustrated" article by Bob McWhirter that lays the genesis of the Constitution's Fourth Amendment protections against illegal search and seizure on a barrel of molasses. The article traced the English government's response to certain unfavorable trade and economic developments in the colonies to the concerns that Madison and the gang were addressing when they drafted the language that the people have the right to be free of unreasonable search and seizure. This really brought home the fact that all laws are situational.
Americans have a sort of detached reverence for the constitution and its appendices but fail to realize (or even teach) that rather than divine inspiration, most of the hard-fought compromises represented there are set forth by people who paid close attention to what was going on around them. Would that people had the fortitude to pay such close attention these days.
Democracy is supposed to work on behalf of the people. In my view, the divinely inspired part is the checks and balances system intended to curb the "tyranny of the majority." Just because most people agree on an issue doesn't make it right. The classic example is slavery.
More and more it seems that whenever and where ever we perceive an injustice we go running to our legislature or, lately because they can't make a move without alienating some political base, to the ballot box on our own initiative, to pass a law to fix it. There is rarely a day that goes by in city court when no one comes in seeking to limit the liberty of another with an order of protection because they just don't like that person.
Rushing our judgments into law, though, carries risk as it is often based upon shallow knowledge. And what's worse is our complete disregard for the doubled-headed serpent of unintended consequences and the slippery slope. I can guarantee you that for every new law we pass there is a Stoudemire/Diaw effect-maybe it won't show up for a while but very often it is immediately discernible.
And every time we come up with a grand justification for a broad based measure that seems to make nothing but common sense (like the statewide smoking ban for instance), it makes the next big rule seem that much more acceptable and/or tolerable. I have no doubt the NBA powers that be are currently drafting new rules to solve the problem created by enforcing this old rule.
One thing you never hear of is a movement to repeal a law. Oh sure, they get repealed but only in the context of being reenacted as the part of some other scheme. Today we have an enormous set of laws on the books that try to regulate illegal immigration (it could not be illegal if there wasn't a law). That law has never been enforced never having been given the proper resources. What is the point of enacting a law that is never properly funded? The politicians get the brownie points for passing it in the first place and some later generation gets the blame for its utter failure. This is the theater currently playing out in Congress: ad naseum debates about amnesty and circular discussions about how to stem the tide of those coming in. The horse is out of the barn-12 million people have traipsed across the undefended border, while we ration spots to foreign applicants seeking to learn and/or work at our institutions and industries and return to their homeland and apply that knowledge (and then gripe when they do and our jobs get outsourced).
At some point you so over-tax the government that it can't fairly or effectively perform ANY task. The result is a total loss of confidence. Stern knows about that at least in the Phoenix market-the bench infraction occurred earlier in the game on the Spurs side, but the resources were not allocated to pursuing that one. (They certainly don't sit around watching the tapes for infractions, big brother style after the games either). For principled fans this undermines the authority of the league president because it is patently unfair. No one at the NBA is paying attention and seeing the big picture (except those with a 65" liquid screen).
A law here and a law there form an ultimate aggregate in the quilt of the whole country. But when some of the quilt pieces are squares and some are octagons, the quilt can't be sewn together. And we end up with a pile of fluff. That is what happens when we don't pay attention. Madison was not a molasses trafficker, but he understood the big picture because he knew what was going on in the world. Today we merely pretend to know. Meanwhile we distract ourselves with sports, but even there the game has become the rules and the athletic beauty of just playing ball is secondary.
Now that we are out of the championship, maybe we will have some time to think about it.
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