Commentary: When push comes to shove, justice can prevail.
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Is it a world of walls, or a world of people? A world of laws or a world of men? Is there a happy medium? Our country’s present administration seems to contend that it’s people and men who should define their own betterment and that walls are made for suckers. In this regard the current administration goes beyond the medium: hot for opportunity, it denies and demolishes the rules. It dismantles the walls that level the playing field, maintain equilibrium, share the wealth and maintain the public good.
Walls can protect the little guy. Yet they can also protect the fat cat. Laws can protect opportunity, or foreclose it. They’re not all good. Walls can be destructive, built too tall and too thick, so as to constrain ingenuity, free spirit and creative genius. Mediocrity breeds contempt.
There are nations, there are schisms. There are sects, there are mobs. There is greed, there is compassion. There is kindness, there is grief. There are wars, there is peace.
But if we threw it all out we have mayhem, survival of the fittest. Dog eat dog and Hell to pay.
The rule of law is what distinguishes civilized societies from uncivilized ones. Today and in recent years, we’ve had few if any completely lawless societies. Instead, we’re more likely to see them in films and books like “Mad Max” and “Lord of the Flies.” However, in the 20th century and again now in the 21st we’ve experienced more subtle and insidious lawless societies. This takes the form of the “dual state,” as described by the eminent German political scientist Ernst Fraenkel in 1941. In his words, the dual state is the “concurrent existence of a ‘normative state’ that generally respects its own laws, and a ‘prerogative state’ that violates the very same laws.”
In a dual state, the government is essentially telling its citizens “Heads we win, tails you lose.” The reality is a cynical and corrupt system akin to the USSR (and Putin’s Russia), where the Communist Party or ruling oligarchy plays by its own rules (or lack of them) in a game from which its citizens are excluded. The result? The corruption of the state, such that policy-making is based on personal benefit and enrichment of the few rather than the public interest.
Law is only as good as society’s loyalty to it. As merely a scheme of authoritarian discipline, law can be abused and bring about societal malfunction/disfunction. Law facilitates creativity when working rhythmically in society, with everyone playing by the same rules. Societal rules permit predictability in business and personal relationships, and foster recovery in the event of failure, injury, or loss to person or property. Social/political/religious rules also guide large-scale social interaction.
Inter-social rules are built on consensus. But consensus is lost in an autocracy. Where consensus is lost, society is lost. A rules-based society becomes rudderless, as reasonable expectations may no longer be realized. Ultimately, chaos is possible. Authoritarianism may discipline chaos, but it curtails personal choice in order to accomplish social quiet. Surrender law and you surrender yourself.
Meanwhile, the “dual state” government that we’re now living under is dismantling long-standing guardrails, firing watchdogs, knee-capping oversight mechanisms and purging or intimidating those ready, willing and able to defend the rule of law. This clears the way for those currently in power to enrich themselves, bilk American taxpayers, and further tighten their grip on self-serving power. Instead of living in a society governed by the rule of law, the public suffers under a government that is the law.
We look to the courts to adjudicate conflict and we look to the laws as a means to win justice. But the courts are not kings, and never have been. Sitting beneath the kings, the courts have served historically to preserve royalty’s wealth. But American judges can be independent, reasonable and just. When push comes to shove justice can prevail. Judges do understand what it means to take an oath. Time will tell whether they are reasonable enough in their judgments about matters governmental to protect us from a lawless society while gaining the trust and respect of the American public.
So it’s a synthetic social fabric within which we live. The rules and the bosses are surely one factor. But peace of mind and critical thought are weapons of choice. So let’s choose them.
Let’s keep our powder dry, our awareness acute, our standards high and our moral compass on true north. Sanity should prevail. We need to choose our alternatives deliberately, not with partisan abandon, but with considered mutual respect. Americans who abide and respect our country’s rule of law must stand up, ask hard questions, and demand real answers.
— By James Davenport and Mike Morrow
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