To Regulate Or Not Too Regulate – That Is The Question

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The news this week is filled — some might say “overflowing” — with stories about government regulations and efforts to dismantle them. We all dislike regulations. When I was in the Army, everything we did every day was prescribed by regulations. How long our hair could be, how long our sideburns could be (not lower than the tragus, that little bump at the beginning of the ear canal), or how wide a mustache could be (not behind the corner of the mouth where the upper and lower lips come together). Soldiers liked to say there was the right way, the wrong way, and the Army way.

Some people make it their mission to work around regulations. By regulation, the Army requires a black necktie as part of the standard Class A uniform — no purple or puce for Uncle Sam. A friend of mine found a tie that was made from a brocaded material. It was all black, so it met the letter, if not the spirit, of the regulation. My commanding officer despised that tie but was powerless to do anything about it because it complied with the regulation in every respect. We are awash in rules and regulations. Perhaps the best representation of how we are surrounded by these petty pronouncements that hem us in, hold us down, and tie our hands is a scene from the Coen Brothers movie The Hudsucker Proxy, a film that few people have ever seen.

Referees & Umpires

That scene is a perfect example of regulations taken to the extreme. No wonder people want to get rid of them! But there is another aspect of regulations. They are the rules we rely on to bring order out of chaos. There are 8 billion people sharing the planet today. If they all are allowed to blither about dong whatever feels good at the moment, we would have chaos. Some think life is a game, but every game needs rules. Imagine if during the Stupor Bowl next Sunday, there were no referees on the field. Think of baseball without umpires. Civilization requires structure. What if we were all free to choose which side of the road we drive on? What if there were no traffic signals, sidewalks, or speed limits? What if there were no rules telling airlines how often to service their jet engines or standards for building bridges?

Doing away with rules and regulations seems like such a good idea. We could all be free to do our own thing, unfettered by restrictions. Everyone cheers when they hear someone proclaim an end to all rules and regulations, but they don’t stop to think what that really means. Freedom without responsibility is anarchy. In her Letters From An American blog post for February 4, 2025, Heather Cox Richardson wrote;

After World War II, members of both political parties agreed that the government should regulate business, provide a basic social safety net, promote infrastructure, and protect civil rights. The idea was to use tax dollars to create national wealth. The government would hold the economic playing field level by protecting every American’s access to education, healthcare, transportation and communication, employment, and resources so that anyone could work hard and rise to prosperity.

Businessmen who opposed regulation and taxes tried to convince voters to abandon this system but had no luck. The liberal consensus — “liberal” because it used the government to protect individual freedom, and “consensus” because it enjoyed wide support — won the votes of members of both major political parties.

But those opposed to the liberal consensus gained traction after the Supreme Court’s 1954 Brown v. Board of Education of Topeka, Kansas, decision declared segregation in the public schools unconstitutional. Three years later, in 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower, a Republican, sent troops to help desegregate Central High School in Little Rock, Arkansas. Those trying to tear apart the liberal consensus used the crisis to warn voters that the programs in place to help all Americans build the nation as they rose to prosperity were really an attempt to redistribute cash from white taxpayers to undeserving racial minorities, especially Black Americans. Such programs were, opponents insisted, a form of socialism, or even communism.

That argument worked to undermine white support for the liberal consensus. Over the years, Republican voters increasingly abandoned the idea of using tax money to help Americans build wealth.When majorities continued to support the liberal consensus, Republicans responded by suppressing the vote, rigging the system through gerrymandering, and flooding our political system with dark money and using right wing media to push propaganda. Republicans came to believe that they were the only legitimate lawmakers in the nation; when Democrats won, the election must have been rigged. Even so, they were unable to destroy the post–World War II government completely because policies like the destruction of Social Security and Medicaid, or the elimination of the Department of Education, remained unpopular.

Let’s Stick It To The Man!

Everybody likes to “stick it to the man,” to rebel against the welter of rules that surround us and restrict our freedom. We delight in our small victories, thinking they will liberate us to realize our full potential and avoid being beaten down by the system. Too many of us feel like the character Terry Malloy played by Marlon Brando in the 1954 movie On The Waterfront, who bemoans his fate after his chance at boxing fame is derailed by those who control the sport. “I coulda been a contender,” he says.

Sticking it to the man gives us a sense of satisfaction. Remember that black brocade tie I mentioned earlier? On his last day in uniform, my friend gave it to me and I wore it every day, knowing I was striking a small blow for freedom when I did. It was my way of asserting my individuality, despite the regimentation of Army life. So I understand the allure of smashing the administrative state, the joy of saying “No, I will not obey your stupid, petty, dehumanizing rules.”

And yet, there is a process for amending rules, a process the current administration has abandoned in its quest to tear down that which has taken generations to build. To those who celebrate such things, I suggest thinking back to the wild financial manipulations like junk bonds and leveraged debt obligations that resulted when controls on financial institutions were relaxed. Millions of Americans lost their homes and their life savings as a result, while the banks and insurance companies got government handouts. When the FAA decided to allow Boeing to become its own safety regulator, hundreds of people died. We should reflect on those past events as we celebrate the fall of the administrative state today. Janis Joplin warned us, “Freedom’s just another word for nothing left to lose.” The proof of that statement may soon become self evident.