Why Do Rulers Bother With the Rule of Law?
equal justice under the law is a good thing, experts agree
In the current moment, where Democratic-adjacent organizations are using “lawfare” to attack President Trump and his associates, one may ask: Why does a ruling class even bother to appear “just” and even-handed?
Victor Davis Hanson goes through the chapter and verse today about how the rulers take care of their own and dish it to their opponents, from the Trump Russia scandal where all the lying IC chappies got off scott free to the storing of classified documents where Biden is too old to face prosecution.
I mean, they got the power. Why not use it?
But you’ll notice, when the Deep State goes after Trump, they invoke a narrative that they are defending “Our Democracy.” So they are not arguing that they are taking out Trump because they can. They insist that he is a monster. They insist that the January 6 protesters were “insurrectionists.” They insist that Trump defrauded banks in a real-estate deal. So justice must be done.
You and I may say to each other: right, tell me another one. But still, our rulers still want to appear that they are defending the rule of law.
But why?
I would guess that, in the bigger picture, rulers are well advised to appear just and even handed. Experts agree that a long period of injustice tends to result in a head of rebellion. But, I am sure, down the ages, that rulers have always put a thumb on the scale. Because they can.
Maybe the rulers beating up on the opposition isn’t enough to provoke a head of rebellion. Maybe it also takes running out of other peoples’ money to create the occasion of rebellion — sorry, insurrection.
The other thing, of course, is the notion of Crane Brinton in Anatomy of Revolution. You get reigns of terror and Great Purges and Cultural Revolutions after the rulers’ magnificent plan has failed to deliver the prosperity and justice that was promised.
And I think that the Brinton notion applies to America today.
I say that the agenda of the educated class, that it would deliver prosperity and justice through a knowledeable administration of government of experts, has failed.
I think that life is good for the educated class in tech and education and the regulatory bureaucracy and the ocean of lefty NGOs. And life is OK for the underclass that lives on government benefits. I assume that if life were not OK for the lower class we would be hearing about it through mostly peaceful protests.
Look, this doesn’t take a genius to figure out. I think that we can trust a ruling class to take care of its own: to feather its nest and to look after its supporters.
But when the rulers start manipulating the economy with subsidies and grants to push its agenda and to penalize its enemies, that’s when it gets into trouble.
And the reason is simple. Politics needs to keep away from the economy. Growing the economy has nothing to do with politics. The economy is not a question of dish your enemies and gift your friends. It is a cooperative operation on an unimaginably vast scale with buyers and sellers and makers and financiers signaling to each other in good faith through the price “system” and the credit system and the equity system. Good faith. Ever heard of that, politicos?
But, of course, the rulers need the wealth created by the market economy when they want to go out and have a nice little war, whether it’s beat the Nazis WWII or beat the Commies Cold War or Save the Climate with EVs and wind power. And you will notice that whenever the rulers go to war it is not in good faith. It is always some cooked-up narrative pushed out by the intelligence community and the regime media and you are not allowed to disagree.
Look, I don’t blame the rulers for their cooked-up narratives. Cooked-up narratives is what politicians do. Just ask Nancy Pelosi as she cooks up a narrative about Trump and “bloodbaths.”
But you and I — sometimes — get to tell the politicians to take their cooked-up narratives and put them where the sun don’t shine.
Anyway, I think that all the lawfare and cooked-up narratives and perversions of the justice system are a signal, a “tell” that our rulers know they have a problem. They really don’t know how it happened, because, of course, they are the best rulers since sliced bread.
But they know that Trump is the baddie.
Of course. “There is no politics without an enemy.”