By Doug Newman

If “ignorance of the law is no defense” then you, reader, are responsible for knowing all the laws contained within these tomes and complying with them to the letter.

Library at Yale Law School

If “ignorance of the law is no defense”, then you, reader, are responsible for knowing all 2 million laws on the books in this country, including all 11 million words of the Internal Revenue Code.

Also, if “ignorance of the law is no defense” why do we even bother having lawyers? After all, if we all know all the laws, we can handle all our own legal matters ourselves and don’t need to shell out all that dinero for attorney fees.

Finally, if “ignorance of the law is no defense”, you, reader, had just better hope and pray that you are never prosecuted for breaking some law that you did not know existed, especially if no one else was harmed. Will you, in  that moment, still cling to your belief that “ignorance of the law is no defense”?

One of my guiding maxims is as follows: It is always easy to say that the government should “do something”, as long as they do it to someone else.
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On a related topic, if you think that “if you are doing nothing wrong you have nothing to fear”, how do you know you are doing nothing that someone somewhere in a position of power thinks is wrong?

Do you still think you are not a lawbreaker? Think again.
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