I’ve always thought that the worst aspect of life in a totalitarian country was the arbitrariness. If you find yourself living under a set of rules with which you disagree, you can adapt. Jews living in countries that banned Jews from public office, for instance, adapted and carved out lives that were fruitful and productive. Blacks in the American South did not like Jim Crow, but they could live with it.The fact that literacy rates, crime rates and illegitimacy rates were much better for blacks under Jim Crow speaks to the toughness of humans. As long as the rules are fixed and known, people can and will adapt.

Where things get ugly is when the rules are unknown and variable. Imagine driving on a highway where the speed limit is never posted and the cops get to set the limit according to their whim. Word would quickly get out and no one would drive that road. I suspect that’s ultimately why people flee totalitarian regimes. Cubans look at the sea as less of a threat than their own government because the former is predictable and the latter is not. It is this arbitrariness that makes for madhouse societies.

Anyway, this comes to mind reading stories like this one.

A federal appeals court ruled Monday that young adult illegal immigrants whom President Obama has given tentative permission to be in the country — so-called “dreamers” — are also entitled to driver’s licenses and ordered Arizona to issue them.

The ruling comes while the government is debating policy about a new wave of illegal immigrant children who are surging across the border in Texas, overwhelming federal authorities’ ability to handle them.

We now live in a land where the Head Lunatic In Charge can wave his hand and the people’s laws are mute. We live in a land where a Federal court can force a state to issue driver’s licenses to people who are not citizens.

Arizona Gov. Jan Brewer blasted the court’s ruling, saying it could end up meaning her state would have to grant driver’s licenses to some of those in the latest wave of illegal immigrants if Mr. Obama finds ways to avoid deporting them too.

But immigrant-rights advocates hailed the decision, saying it is a major step in helping the Dreamers, who were brought to the U.S. as minors by their parents, move toward some sort of normal life in the U.S.

“This is a huge victory for the young immigrants who want nothing more than to make meaningful contributions to communities in their home state of Arizona,” said Alessandra Soler, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Arizona.

A three-judge panel on the 9th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals ruled that the Dreamers — so-named because of pending federal legislation known as the Dream Act — are in the same situation as other illegal immigrants who have applied for legal status and to whom Arizona law grants driver’s licenses while they await a final ruling in their cases.

The judges said to treat the Dreamers differently violates the Equal Protection Clause of the Constitution.

Think about the madness baked into that last sentence. The US Constitution provides the structure of American political institutions. The people of France do not consider it binding on them. They have their own rules and structures. The people of Kenya have their rules. In other words, the US Constitution applies to Americans in America. These lunatic judges have just declared that all humans on earth are now covered by the US Constitution, thus making them Americans.

There used to be a time when I’d just roll my eyes at the stuff tumbling from the 9th Circuit. It is a well know holding pen for liberal fruitcakes. Sadly, they are no longer outliers. They are the norm. The super structure of the nation is falling apart around us and we are left with the whimsical, arbitrary decisions of these petty despots. These people hate us and enjoy rubbing our noses in the fact we no longer are a nation of laws. The contempt for Americans in the words and deeds of these immigration fanatics is stunning.

In a madhouse society, the rulers are perpetually at war with the ruled. That’s where we are today. Elected officials furiously work to discredit the offices they hold in the eyes of the people. The keepers of the law undermine the people’s faith in the law. The law abiding today are criminals tomorrow. There are no fixed points and there are no rules. Nothing is on the level and there’s no grift that is too small. Welcome to the madhouse.