Are you just a bit bored this evening? Maybe your favorite baseball team is out of the playoffs and your favorite college football team is busy trying to arrange bail for the starting offensive line. If, for whatever reason, you find yourself with nothing to do this evening … I have a suggestion, but you'll need kids. If you don't have any kids, then one might point to the fact that you are bored this evening as a reason.
OK ... call your kid with the best grades – preferably a high-school student. Tell him or her you need some help. Tell them you heard this phrase, and you don't quite understand, and maybe they could help you out with an explanation.
If their first question is: "What's a phrase, Daddy?" Just give it up and go open a beer.
With a little bit of luck, you'll hear: "What phrase is that, Daddy?"
"It's some thing about the rule of law. Can you tell me what they mean when they say 'rule of law'?"
After you have finished this exercise, I want every one of you to mail me a letter if your ace government-school student actually had any idea in the world what you were talking about. I'll alert the postman that I have two or three extra letters coming.
My suspicion is that you couldn't find enough government-school teachers who understand and teach the concept of the rule of law to get together a decent game of craps. They're too busy teaching our children about "democracy." Pity. There are few concepts more important to our republic and to the preservation of liberty than this one – the rule of law – and few concepts that could be more destructive to personal liberty than the idea of democracy.
Blasphemy! Who hired this idiot to write a column anyway? He thinks that democracy is destructive to freedom?
Absolutely – and I'm not alone.
There were some other people in the history of this country who didn't think too highly of the idea of democracy. They had names like James Madison, John Adams, Thomas Jefferson, John Jay and others. We call them our forefathers. Your government high-school student probably thinks we're talking about four fathers. Sad.
Democracy, my friends, is rule by the majority. Whatever the majority wants, the majority gets. Call it what it is: mob rule. You can search the United States Constitution, the Declaration of Independence, and the constitutions of every single one of the 50 states and you will not find the word. Not once. Carry the search further: Look for the word "democracy" in the State of the Union speeches of any U.S. president prior to Woodrow Wilson. Taft may have uttered the word once. Before that … nothing. Not one mention.
Could there be a reason our founders avoided the "D" word? You bet! They didn't like mob rule and they knew that any government founded on that principle would perish quickly … dissolving into chaos and totalitarianism.
The men who established the framework for our government had a clear vision. Personal and economic liberty under a government severely limited in its actions by the rule of law. A government of law, not of men. A country where the law – established under the framework of our Constitution by officials selected by the people and by the states – controls. Law that applies to the weak and the powerful, the rich and the poor, the minority and the majority.
OK, so why is all of this so important right now? Two words: New Jersey. The Supreme Court of New Jersey has now given us a glaring example of what happens when governance turns from the law and to the will of the mob.
The law in New Jersey was crystal clear: If a political party wanted to replace a candidate on a general election ballot, the move had to be made no less than 51 days prior to the election. Not 50 days, 51. The New Jersey Supreme Court has now determined that this particular law can be interpreted to mean 34 days. The Jersey Justices must have been reading the New York Times. The day after Torricelli's exile to shame, the Times opined:
The Republicans are likely to argue that under New Jersey election law, it is too late to put another name on the ballot. But legal wrangling over ballot access cannot be allowed to obscure the central issue, which is one of democracy. The guiding principle should be the voters' basic right to a genuine election.
So, now I've wrapped this up into a neat little package for you, and for your child-scholar. The New York Times has decided that "legal wrangling," (the law) just can't be allowed to obscure the wishes of the mob (democracy).
How long will it be before the left manages to complete our dangerous transition to a government of the majority? With the help of America's "Newspaper of Record" and our government schools, it shouldn't be long at all. Perhaps some of your black acquaintances who lived in the South prior to the civil-rights movement can tell you what mob rule is really like.