Our constitutional republic is based on a document that defines what our government is, and what it can and cannot do. Americans have been taught that this document is an impervious and impenetrable rock upon which all our hopes and dreams for peace and progress rest – but that simply is not true. That document is constructed of principles, and principles are human constructs, unfortunately as malleable as modelling clay in the hands of the weak and subservient and the unprincipled strong.
Our Constitution and the laws flowing from the duties and responsibilities of government enumerated therein, only have value because we treat them that way. Conversely, when laws are not valued, abiding by the law becomes a burden and a strategic weakness when the lawless are allowed to operate outside the law.
The bright line between law and lawlessness is principle.
It is impossible not to notice the lawlessness of the current regime and the ensuing chaos inevitably raises the question of whom or what is responsible for keeping them in check.
The answer to the “what” is easy, it is the restrictions written in the Constitution – the “whom” is a bit more complex.
I’ve often used the analogy of speeding on an isolated, deserted highway. What stops you from cranking the good old cruise control up to 85, 95 – or even 105 – in a 75-mph zone, and pointing your land rocket toward the last point where you saw the sun?
No law can stop you. A law enforcement officer can temporarily reduce your speed with an autograph session but once he is out of sight, you are free to go right back to speeding. Whether you fear punishment or not, the only thing that really can stop you is your respect for the law, a belief that adhering to the speed limit is the right thing to do.
But what about limits?
Once you pass the legal limit of 75, what is the limit?
Once you break the 75-mph barrier, the functional limit is only what you feel safe in getting away with. If you believe that your Mercedes AMG can outrun anything on the road, why not 125 mph? You have already broken the law, right?
The example is to propose that laws do little to restrain people or constrain government without the people in charge respecting those limits. I know that I have quoted it before, but John Adams wrote:
“Our Constitution was made only for a moral and religious people. It is wholly inadequate to the government of any other.”
If the Constitution is the “what”, the “whom” are the people with whom we have entrusted control of government – they have a responsibility not to stretch the Constitution to make it fit their political desires, they must endeavor to protect and abide by is as is required by their oath of office.
But there is also another “who”. That “who” is us – the “We, the people” designated in the Constitution. We have a duty to refrain from electing people to office without the requisite character to hold to the limits and as much a duty to defeat those in office who seek to “reinterpret” the Constitution. The people also have a duty to remove any regime that acts in contradiction to the principles enumerated in the Constitution, thereby losing the consent of the governed.
The Biden regime has proven, as the Obama regime did, that the antecedent to the Adams quote is true, that:
“…we have no government armed with power capable of contending with human passions unbridled by morality and religion. Avarice, ambition, revenge, or gallantry, would break the strongest cords of our Constitution as a whale goes through a net.”
I have long believed these three things are absolute truths: 1) arbitrary and capricious adherence to, and enforcement of, law is tantamount to lawlessness, 2) the lawless respect no laws, and 3) the lawless will use the law as a weapon against the lawful.
I know we have questioned the legitimacy of the Biden regime due to questions about the 2020 elections – but illegitimacy also has deep roots in a disrespect for lawful controls. It is not illogical to consider a lawless administration to be illegitimate.