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Re:ICE arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia... by JumpCrisscross on Sunday March 09, 2025 @08:20PM (#43315440)
You’re going off piste. I’m objecting to the claim that citizens are the final arbiters of the law. That is not a view that was held by the founders because they were studied in the history of direct democracies, the early forms of which didn’t distinguish between the citizens qua legislators and citizens qua courts.
Re:ICE arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia... by hayst4ck on Sunday March 09, 2025 @08:22PM (#43315459)
> 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."

That is literally in our founding document and literally citizens being the final arbiters of law.

Re:ICE arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia... by JumpCrisscross on Sunday March 09, 2025 @08:27PM (#43315494)
> 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.)

Re:ICE arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia... by hayst4ck on Sunday March 09, 2025 @08:34PM (#43315546)
This is a whole lot of pedantry to avoid questioning your own beliefs, which isn't surprising, because once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down, it means you have a personal responsibility to do so something if you want justice, and that's a hard reality to accept, so it's easier to live in comfortable denial.
Re:ICE arrests Palestinian activist who helped lead Columbia... by JumpCrisscross on Sunday March 09, 2025 @09:04PM (#43315762)
> once you accept the cold hard reality that justice comes from the bottom up, not the top down

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.