The United States is about freedom.  Central to any system of freedom is the "rule of law" – the principle under which all persons, institutions, and entities are accountable to laws that are:

• Publicly promulgated,
• Equally enforced,
• Independently adjudicated, and
• Consistent with international human rights principles.

What we have seen throughout United States history, up to and including recent events, is that when we ignore the "rule of law," as we often have, we do so at our own peril.

During the slave years, there were obviously two sets of rules.  It took over 600,000 lives to attempt to straighten that out.  Then there was the mistreatment of American Indians.  That error, which caused untold misery, was followed some years later by the Jim Crow laws.  Known as "separate but equal," they pretended to be consistent with the rule of law, but everyone knew they weren't.  The races were separate, and they weren't equal.  Suffering ensued.

Fast-forward to today, and you see that "sanctuary cities" have a separate rule of law for illegal aliens.  College campuses twist themselves into pretzels describing what is "allowed speech" and what is "hate speech."

In Broward and Dade Counties, Florida, school administrators along with local police created a two-tiered rule of law.  As Jack Cashill wrote recently, "[t]he spurious 'same behavior' insinuation would put the onus on law enforcement to treat black students more gingerly than they would non-blacks."  Many argue that this policy led directly to the Marjory Stoneman Douglas High School shooting.

Thomas Lifson of American Thinker recently wrote an article about the Kerner Commission.  He argues that it began our country's huge commitment to the welfare state that has "perpetuated multi-generational pathologies."  One might also argue that the Kerner Commission kicked affirmative action into high gear.

With affirmative action, one group of citizens is treated differently from another.  The standards the affirmative action group must meet for educational and occupational advancement are different, and generally much lower.

The late Christopher Hitchens, certainly no conservative, may have given the best understanding of the disparate standards of affirmative action when he wrote about Michelle Obama's Princeton thesis: "[t]o describe it as hard to read would be a mistake; the thesis cannot be 'read' at all, in the strict sense of the verb.  This is because it wasn't written in any known language."

If different laws, rules, and standards are applied to different groups, then we have created tribalism within the framework of our country.  The groups will stay separate until there is one, and only one, rule of law.

The rule of law is central to freedom.  It is a concept meant solely for the individual.  That is why Lady Justice wears a blindfold.  She doesn't care how smart you are, what your name is, where you came from, or any of a million other variables.  The time is long overdue for America to return, once and for all, to a single rule of law.  We have paid more than enough for our foolishness.