Two hundred fifty years ago, our nation began an experiment in democracy with a statement of equality among people and a list of charges against the King. Eighty-seven years later, Abraham Lincoln questioned “whether that nation, or any nation so conceived and so dedicated, can long endure.”
The American founders were well aware of the frailties of humans and how they affected governments. “If men were angels, no government would be necessary. If angels were to govern men, neither external nor internal controls on government would be necessary. In framing a government which is to be administered by men over men, the great difficulty lies in this: you must first enable the government to control the governed; and in the next place oblige it to control itself.” This bit of brilliance was written by James Madison in Federalist 51. Human governments have almost always been coercive institutions that allowed rich and powerful individuals to be in control and to set limits on the people, establish taxes, and define what rights, if any, would be tolerated for the governed. Rights were not “unalienable” but whimsical. There were no checks and balances unless enforced at the barrel of a gun.
Our great experiment has been mostly been able to keep that coercion in check. The United States gives its people the opportunity to control the government via the vote. Every two years we get to change a large portion of the governing people. We can, with some significant exertion, even modify the Constitution. We have been inconsistent over time in who gets our rights but have tried to manage those decisions through our laws and principles.
The United States was founded on a set of principles.Those principles define for us the desire and the objective of self rule. No king, no dictator, no authoritarian ruler, the people choose the rulers. The people choose the top of the governing structure and many elements of that structure such as Senators, Representatives, state government and local officials. They give the common man the same rights under the law as the rich and powerful. The government is chosen by the people and the people obey the laws the government passes as long as they are legally passed, consistent and give everyone a fair chance to pursue their “unalienable Rights, [to] Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness”.
These principles are clearly difficult to achieve. There are always powerful interests seeking to tilt the playing field to their advantage. In the principles laid out in our constitution, there are means to prevent complete domination by those interests over the rest of us as well as domination by one faction of the rich and powerful over others. The tension among those competing groups and interests is always present. Today that tension is at an extreme level. The Constitution only works if people of good will work together to find compromise and to act, even if grudgingly, within the rule of law. It is the rule of law that protects a balance of power within the country and prevents a dominant group from preying on those less powerful.
And the rule of law is under attack!
The erosion of the rule of law is not new, nor is it confined to any single administration or party. Our history is filled with moments when fear, ambition, or ideology tempted Americans to trade principle for expedience. The Alien and Sedition Acts punished speech critical of the government; during World War II, the internment of Japanese Americans showed how easily constitutional rights can yield to panic; in the 1950s, McCarthy’s hearings destroyed lives on suspicion alone. Even in more recent decades, episodes like Watergate, the Iran-Contra affair, and mass surveillance under the Patriot Act remind us that power continually tests its limits. Each generation faces its own version of this struggle. Up until today the limits have held up even when it took four years of civil war to make them stick.
Abroad, we have seen democracies such as Hungary and Turkey drift toward rule by decree while keeping the outward symbols of freedom. The lesson is the same in every case: when citizens stop demanding accountability, when laws are bent to serve the powerful or to punish dissent, the machinery of democracy begins to corrode long before it collapses.
However, in the current administration, we have seen many breaches of the norms that protect the rule of law and many breaches of laws by the administration. For example,
- deportations of suspected illegal immigrants have often been conducted without due process meaning some of the deportees were American citizens with a right to be here and no chance to clear their names;
- The President promising to prosecute his perceived enemies without first showing a crime had been committed;
- encouraging violence against political opponents and judges whose decisions may upset one group or another;
- Firing of federal employees whose job is to look for abuses of government including Inspectors General and IRS auditors.
This is not to say that the current administration has a monopoly on law breaking but its approach to law breaking is stunning in its brazen aggressiveness and speed.
Thousands of pages have been written about various violations or likely violations of the law under this administration. Believe them or don’t. But understand the consequences of a living in a country that is not acting under the rule of law from the very top! Even though countries push legal boundaries often, only rarely do real democracies push them to breaking.
So what is the “so what” of this? Why does the guy gaming in his parent’s basement need to worry about the rule of law? Why the nursing student? Or the grocer or plumber or engineer? Or the small business owner? The reason is that without it, no one is safe, no rights are guaranteed, no contract is enforceable, there is no property that cannot be stolen. The small business owner can find it impossible to expand because the laws that protect his ability to do so suddenly become restrictive for him but not for his competitor who is favored by someone in the state.Laws are enforced very tightly for one but not at all for another. Contracts seem to be let without regard for the mandated competitive bidding process. Corruption grows rampant. People are arrested or harassed for writing letters to the editor that are critical of the local government or politicians. Privacy laws are thwarted leading to unwanted disclosure of medical, genetic, internet and other activities we thought were private. Without the rule of law, none of those things can be prevented nor remedied and the people slowly succumb to a feeling of helplessness that pervades much of the world where there is no law or the law is directed to the support of the governing group.
In addition, all of our rights are at risk. The rights to express your opinion, vote, assemble, worship, be in and travel as you wish within the country. More abstractly, they affect your ability to get ahead – financially, educationally, to get time to raise families as you desire. Most importantly, they establish who can influence the government, operation and direction of the country.
The president is using the full power of the United States not to protect and strengthen the US but to persecute and prosecute his “enemies” and to enhance his own wealth and stature. In most cases, those enemies are not personal enemies that have threatened him with harm but people who stood up to him when they thought he was wrong. They are whistle blowers, members of Congress, the press, governors, university presidents.
Demand that laws be followed. Demand consequences. Don’t allow false outrage to persuade you that the other side is crazy.
From the Declaration of Independence:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.–That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, –That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness. Prudence, indeed, will dictate that Governments long established should not be changed for light and transient causes; and accordingly all experience hath shewn, that mankind are more disposed to suffer, while evils are sufferable, than to right themselves by abolishing the forms to which they are accustomed. But when a long train of abuses and usurpations, pursuing invariably the same Object evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, it is their duty, to throw off such Government, and to provide new Guards for their future security.
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