Some conversations are very quick, you say your piece, you listen to the other guy, you reach a conclusion, and that's it. Some conversations take a lifetime. A bonsai gardner talks to his tree with light and water and rope, telling it: "I would like you to grow in this direction, please." The plant talks back by growing, or not.

Legislation is a very slow conversation, too. Those who make the laws tell those who have to obey them: "I would like you to behave in this way, please, or else I am going to make you hurt." People talk back by behaving as they see fit.

In a democracy, where the rulers are no different from the ruled, the conversation is a bit like schizophrenic talking to himself: we the people as individuals talk with we the people as a community. For this conversation to work, it is vital that legislators take themselves and their conversation partners seriously. That means that they should not tell people: "Do this, or else." Unless they are actually willing and able to "or else them" each and every time.

There are formidable means to enforce a law: people can get held up, robbed, kidnapped, kept in a little room against their will, and killed, if they don't behave. If legislators don't take their own legislation seriously, if they don't insist on enforcement, they garble the conversation. Lately, there has been a lot of that going on.

• The majority of Utah lawmakers have said that people are people from the moment of conception. They earlier said that ending a human life is bad, so bad that someone who does that should get shot with a gun until they are dead themselves. The ACLU ran a page ad in the New York Times saying the same thing. The makers of the law said that was outrageous, they don't mean for a woman who had an abortion to be prosecuted for murder.
• A Utah state court has ruled that bigamists can not be excluded from adopting children. Lawmakers earlier said that being married to two people at the same time is bad, so bad that you can get punished as long as you do that.
• Federal lawmakers said driving fast is dangerous. They said that people who do drive faster than the speed limit will have money taken from them, and their license to drive. But they didn't say that there would be money available to check and see how fast people drive.
• Federal lawmakers said that someone who sells cocaine should be kept in a little room for a long time. But they did not tell the makers and keepers of little rooms to make enough little rooms to hold all the salesmen.

I am not saying that we should not make laws. I am not saying that we should have a police state, where everything that is not allowed is forbidden. But an unenforced or unenforcable law is a badly made one.

People may break it, becuase they think the lawmakers are only kidding. And enforcers, if not pushed to enforce everytime, will have the leeway to only punish those lawbreakers they personally dislike.