Opus 2020-285: If We Can Keep It

Most are familiar with the response of Benjamin Franklin when asked what kind of government we have.  He did not say “A Democracy.”  He said, “A Republic,” and added “if you can keep it.”  We are on the verge, if not already over the edge of not keeping it.

Might I suggest that we need to come to a new understanding of the rule of law.  You have all heard the saying, stated many ways, that sometimes goes as “You don’t fight with the army you want, you fight with the army you have.”  I think it is time to start fighting with the laws we have.  By that I don’t mean the laws on the books but the laws actually being followed.  

My circle used to play a card game called Rook.  It is a real game with a commercially manufactured deck of cards.  The thing is we never played the game that was in the rule book.  I don’t know who made the changes but we called it Nazarene Rook.  Before you started the game you also had to agree on certain details.  Was the Rook high, low or worth 10 ½?  Did the cards in the kitty go with the most hands or the final hand?  We got to the point where we would call our brand “Point Loma Rules.”  As long as we agreed on the way we played we had a good time.

We need to do that with the law of the land.  The rules we play by need to be defined by what is actually allowed by law enforcement and the courts.  That means that elections are no longer based on a fair counting but on whom can be most creative in cheating.  It means that instead of expecting people to honor their duty we need to have teams of goons to threaten them and their children.  It also means that we are free to form gangs to attack people on the other side just because they need a reminder we are serious.

Those seem to be the rules.  

Can we keep our republic under that understanding of the rule of law?  Probably not but the way things are going we will soon substitute “banana” for “federal” as the adjective.  

homo unius libri