PrintOctober 1, 2009
Nation of Men, Not of Laws
Roman Polanski and his allies seek to rape the United States and her Constitution. While this metaphor may seem repugnantly acerbic, it rings true. Webster defines rape as the act of seizing and carrying away by force. The thin raiment that hid the left's hatred and disdain for our Nation's Constitution has been torn to shreds by their vocal support of a convicted rapist and sodomist. Instead of defining what ‘is' is, the left has stooped to define what ‘rape' rape is. The left has laid bare its enmity towards justice and the rule of law. According to the left, the Constitution is "fundamentally flawed" because it is a concrete, tangible document based on moral absolutes, granting individuals superior power over their government.
In spite of the many valid criticisms leveled against John Adams, it is fair to argue that his ideal, that America was a "nation of laws, not of men," has been the bed rock of our Nation's longevity. At every crisis faced by our nation, the Constitution has always been there to temper the heated passions and calm the political tempests. The genius of the Constitution's simplicity and brevity has been one of the keys to its permanence. However, it is only a piece of paper. It takes people, no, citizens to create a civil, law abiding nation.
It is a dark day when the rule of law is disregarded because it conflicts with the left's amoral world view. In a world with no right and wrong, it is okay to accuse the 13 year old rape victim of sick complicity. Amoral relativism has reduced questions of right and wrong to simple expediency.
History proves where this leads. The scrap heap of failed empires is littered with the headless bodies of those whose downfall stemmed from the demise of the rule of law. From Judeo monarchies, to the Roman Empire, to the enlightened French, all suffered the same fate. Once a nation loses its moral compass it can only flounder in the doldrums that gave us Robespierre, Stalin and Pol Pot.
When everyone does that "which was right in his own eyes," beware! If there is but one lesson to be learned from history it is this: moral relativism is a canker that becomes the death knell of free societies. "Robespierre, with his cruel moral relativism, embodied the cardinal sin of all revolution, the heartlessness of ideas." Paul Johnson later stated that "you cannot preserve true freedom if you create a society in which freedom is not balanced by responsibilities and duties." These essential rights, responsibilities and duties are codified in our Constitution.
This idea of freedom was not novel to our Constitution. Thrasymachus, in The Republic, stated that "injustice, given scope, has greater strength and freedom and power than justice; which proves that justice is the interest of the stronger party and profit of oneself." The Founders fully appreciated this as they drafted our Constitution. They were careful to limit our express rights to those of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. Nowhere does the Constitution empower this Robespierrian...er...Polanksi ‘justice.'
The new justice is found in the hands of expediency. Just ask Mary Jo Kopechne. The new statute of limitations for celebrity rape has become an ambiguous sliding scale of moral equivalency. The left's faith in men is a "faith given to vanity and emptiness." When will America wake up from her drug induced stupor to find her virginity stolen by utopian vigilantes? True to form, the victim, America and her Constitution, are repeatedly assailed by the left as the real party at fault. Would we ask Samantha Geimer to apologize to Polanski? Outrageous! Yet our country is lead by one who continually apologizes for America and her Constitution.
Our Constitution lies diametrically opposed to the left's world view. There is right and wrong. The rule of law is a mirror that no man can escape from. The left doesn't like what they see. However, they'll giddily wield the broken shards of that mirror yelling ‘hypocrite' to all who claim to believe in right and wrong. Yet the left chooses to turn a blind eye to the hypocrisy in appointing Kevin Jennings as safe school czar who failed to report cases of pedophilia and statutory rape in violation of state law. Even more so, it is indefensible to argue that somehow, after the passage of 30 odd years, that the crime of rape ceases to be a crime-that ‘is' ceases to be is.
Why does the old sodomist matter anyway? We let a mass murderer of 270 come home to a hero's welcome. The global reaction to Polanski's arrest is merely a bellwether of the coming revolution. History does not lie -- history does repeat. Prodding our foreign enemies with a feather duster and a bushel of carrots only encourages our enemies and further weakens America. The irony of American being castigated by the French as being weak and naive is almost unreal. If only so. Our beloved Nation has become a nation of men, not of laws. John Adams be damned.
