All societies exist on a "law" to "rule" spectrum, what determines whether you have law or rule is who the final arbiters of justice are.
If citizens themselves are the final arbiters of justice, you ironically live in a law based society. If those with power are the final arbiters of justice, then you live in a society with rules, not laws.
The absence of law is rule by those who are most powerful. The explicit purpose of law is to prevent arbitrary wielding of power.
With this understanding he's correct, because law is an entirely self fulfilling prophecy. If GP does not wish to enforce the rule of law himself, then there is no law.
The preamble of the declaration of independence states this idea more eloquently. The person you are responding to doesn't feel any personal responsibility for protecting a law based government, and if everyone feels that way, whoever has the most power gets their way, because who is going to stop them, who will provide consequences when the legal system is a weapon of the powerful, rather than a check on power?
No, this is mob rule.
> who will provide consequences when the legal system is a weapon of the powerful, rather than a check on power?
This is a bad case for making this claim. While at record lows, the sympathy gap for Israel over Palestine among American voters remains in the double digits [1].
The argument you’re looking for is the judiciary’s role in protecting minority rights [2]. In overruling popular will.
[1] https://www.newsweek.com/american-support-israel-hits-record...
[2] https://pennstatelaw.psu.edu/_file/Ross/Chapter_Five.pdf
I understand why you would say that, but I don't think you've thought it through, understood the point I'm making, and tried to disarm the strongest version of it possible.
Go and read the preamble to the declaration of independence, seriously. America was founded by citizens of Great Britain stating that they are the final arbiters of justice, not British courts. The British courts would have said the founding fathers are violating the law. They would have found them participating in mob rule, and they did try to put down that mob with an army.
You should answer a few questions:
(1) What is a right, and what is the relationship between law and rights. Does law grant rights, or does law protect rights?
(2) How does a government go from absolute monarchy (king is able to make all the laws and enforce them arbitrarily) to a law based society?
(3) How do you bootstrap a law based society? Can you make a law based society without breaking the law?
(4) Was the civil rights movement under MLK a form of mob rule?
That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law.
That’s an uncommon reading of that line. Citizens can throw off the government. That doesn’t make them the final arbiters of the law. (Not even legal system. One point of that sentence is you don’t get to choose which parts you throw off.)
Justice, morals and—in my opinion—rights, yes. Even the right of the law to rule, yes. But the arbitration of the law? The particulars of its execution. No.
If the system of law is corrupted, you have to throw out the whole government. That’s why the attacks on our judiciary are so frightening. It’s really difficult to unfuck the rule of law.
The declaration of independence[1] was America's founding document, it laid down why the British colonizing the American continent felt they had a right to overthrow their government and secede. It was likely also written to create a mandate[2]/consent for the new ruling government. The document is extremely relevant to Americans right now who have forgotten its contents and what it cost.
It is somewhat of a culmination of the Age of Enlightenment[3], which is period where philosophical thinkers largely tried to make the "golden rule"[4] rigorous. John Locke[5] was a philosopher who wrote about the idea of a "social contract"[6] which is the absolute core of liberalism and "western"[7] ideals. The declaration of independence attempts to codify the social contract by instantiating it. The social contract is a philosophical idea, but the declaration of independence was a real world implementation of it. I think the french have their own.
A well armed militia is somewhat connected to this idea in that the 2nd amendment en-codifies the right to be able to withdrawal consent to be governed[8] when a government stops protecting rights. In many ways it is a canary in the coal mine for despotism. Technology however has advanced to a point where guns don't matter too much because a despotic government can prevent "free association"[9] with the use of a massive surveillance state that can detect "militias" growing before they are able to gather enough power to withdrawal consent.
Conservatism/Liberalism is a little confused in America. Liberals abandoned some of the core tenets of liberty, such as the 2nd amendment, solidarity, and making sure that those who violate the social contract experience consequences -- crime can't go unpunished and unjustices can't be allowed to fester. Liberals don't want to pay the maintenance cost of maintaining rule of law[10] because speaking truth to power[11] or meaningfully challenging those in power is dangerous. "Freedom isn't free" is a liberal idea born out of liberal philosophy despite conservatives saying it. "If none of us will die for freedom, then all of us will die under tyranny" is something some Americans grew up hearing from their fathers. Conservatives say a lot of liberal things, but don't understand where they come from or why they say them, creating a kind of "cargo cult"[12] Americanism where they perform American rituals without understanding the substance of those rituals. Conservatives largely aim to "conserve" christian culture, but the vast majority of Christians have almost completely abandoned the teachings of Jesus. Most of them will say things that are correct at face value, but they frequently aren't well educated enough to understand what they say, leaving them vulnerable to abuse.
I went through and gave Wikipedia links to many of the ideas presented because many of those ideas are much larger than the words themselves can convey.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_Declaration_of_I... [2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mandate_(politics) [3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Age_of_Enlightenment [4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_Rule [5]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/John_Locke [6]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Social_contract [7]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Western_culture [8]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consent_of_the_governed [9]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_of_association [10]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rule_of_law [11]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Speaking_truth_to_power [12]https://calteches.library.caltech.edu/51/2/CargoCult.htm
& You did well. Thank you for comment. Forgetfulness is not a luxury we Americans can afford at this juncture.
You acknowledge that this distinction doesn't matter to our government, so why pretend that the distinction matters? We should be screaming from the rooftop that it doesn't, because it's important to understand that right now.
If the government has no interest in the rule of law to attack its people, than the people need to abandon rule of law laws to resist their government. If we keep pretending that the rules matter to us while the government doesn't even pretend that the rules matter to them, we will be destroyed.
We should be screaming from the rooftops that it does (or else).
We got here in part due to this brand of lazy nihilism.
Courts are restraining Trump. It takes time. But they’re doing it, all the way up to SCOTUS. Trump remains popular, but it’s slowly eroding.
Want to know what nukes all of that? A couple of idiots going out on a joy riot.
The system that divorces people from reality is social media, so as long as social media is pumping un-reality into people's lives, I think you're being rather optimistic. What's happening right now is directly empowering social media oligarchs, so they have absolutely no reason to stop. The foundation of their power is un-reality.
Hope is not a strategy.
It’s much easier to stay inside your bubble, where everyone else will agree with you that your kids and former friends just hate America, and avoid dwelling on it too much. If you’ve ever known someone who was in an extreme religion or abusive relationship, it’s pretty similar and the most reliable way to break the spell is some kind of outside shock which can’t be ignored. Trump might get that with the recession he’s working on but it’ll take time for people to accept that it’s real and was totally avoidable.
Once the enforcers are loyalists, it hardly matters how the courts rule.
How is it so obvious? What is an example where they broke a law and they continued to do so after courts ruled otherwise?
There have been a number of cases that were judicially reversed both in Trump 1.0 and 2.0. They may have non-traditional interpretations of the law, but to say they don't care about laws at all is filed under TDS. Obviously they do as it dictates the boundaries and therefore their tactics.
Not to pick a fight with you. It obviously does not matter to the people running this administration, I agree with you.