By Stephen Smoot
Recently, United States Representative Alex Mooney traveled to Fort Ashby in Mineral County. He spoke at the town named for a fort constructed by a 23 year old George Washington to protect the frontier against French and Indian attacks.
Mooney described the nation that Washington and other Founding Fathers worked to create, first in a continental war, then in the Constitutional Convention, has fallen under a form of attack. He accused the Department of Justice and Federal Bureau of Investigation of launching witch hunts and noted that “we should be scared when governments do things for the first time,”alluding especially to the cases against former President Donald Trump.
“We should be scared when governments do things for the first time ever,” Mooney explained.
John Adams formulated the maxim that serves as the title to this piece. Adams believed that adherence to the rule of law served as one vital difference between a free republic and despotism – even a despotism imposed by a majority rule democracy. James Madison especially feared the possibility of “the tyranny of the majority” unchecked by government structures and appropriate laws.
The cases against Trump, which stretch to their limits and beyond the correct application of law, reflect an expanding willingness to disregard laws and the principles that underlie them.
Even worse, Associate Supreme Court Justice Ketanji Brown Jackson recently seemed to argue in favor of censoring anti-government speech. She stated that her concern “is that your view has the First Amendment hamstringing the government in significant ways.”
The first principle that an American law school ought to teach is that the Bill of Rights exists to hamstring the government. Each amendment throws a “thou shalt not” first at the federal government, then later on via case law to state and local as well.
The Founders understood that government represents the main threat to the freedom of the people and worked to tie it down through the Constitution, other laws, tradition, education, and practice.
Rule of law is vital to a well-functioning social system. Application of this principle across the board can create small scale injustices, but removing this principle creates far worse problems. When standards of law and objective application thereof fall in favor of applying emotions and subjective notions of equity, it throws the justice and government systems out of balance. Unfairness and corruption thrives in such an environment.
Just look at cities that abandoned the notion of enforcing the law. Just look at schools that stopped enforcing the rules. The failure of rule of law alternatives in cities like Portland, Oregon, San Francisco, Chicago, Los Angeles, and New York City is obvious enough for anyone to understand.
And just look at nations who have struggled with these problems for most of their existence, such as Haiti.
Toward the end of the Roman Republic, two major figures emerged named Tiberius and Gaius Gracchus. These brothers formed a political party called the Populares who opposed adherence to the constitution of the Roman Republic. They argued that change and reform under the constitution was too slow and proposed end runs around it that gave their supporters what they wanted, while also increasing their own personal power.
The Gracchus brothers successfully established momentum toward the undermining of the Republic’s constitution. Over the next six decades, Rome suffered civil wars, dictatorships, and social misery as the structures of law that protected the people broke down. Along the way, opponents of the constitution granted citizenship to thousands of non-Romans to build their own base and expanded the power of the central government.\
Eventually, the rise and death of Julius Caesar led to the establishment of the Empire under Augustus.
The Founding Fathers knew well how the Roman Republic died. That is why they emphasized a government of laws. Rule of law is predictable, promotes social peace, and is understandable to the people.
Any alternative to the notion of rule of law leads to tyranny. Bringing back the ideal of rule of law is one of the vital moves that will save the Union and restore social and political peace.