A government of laws

"A government of laws and not of men."
---John Adams

This is one of the ideals to which our government was designed to fulfill, that is, to be a nation that adheres to the law and not the whims of its leaders.  This was a somewhat radical idea for the time---until then, kings and other unelected leaders usually had the final (and sometimes only) say about everything.  However, we are now passing laws that no one has read (i.e. health care, financial reform), and even worse, the government is passing some laws (or parts of laws) seemingly to mollify certain critics without any intention of seriously following them.  For example, the 1986 amnesty bill was supposed to end illegal border crossings by beefing up security, make it nearly impossible for companies to hire illegal immigrants, and eliminate the abuse of social welfare systems by non-citizens.  None of these things happened.  There are scores of other more recent examples.  What does this mean for us?  Are we still a nation of laws and not of men?  To me, laws like these are proof that the federal government must limit itself to its core Constitutional roles and pass as few laws as are necessary for a civil society to function.  However, whenever I brought up this idea during the 2008 election, my friends dismissed it as "throwing the baby out with the bathwater," that we just needed to write better laws.  I maintain that the last year and a half has been chock full of more proof that if we do not impose these limits, we will go back to being a nation of men and not of laws.