Sherwood

(fm the BC thread "Cold Turkey")

Leo Linbeck III,
there’s a wee bit of space between “Nothing” and “public floggings and beheadings”

Today on Fox Bill Kristol was pointing out that Senator Levin's release of the embarrassing Goldman Sachs emails was a dangerous violation of the rule of law. Juan Williams was yelling that means nothing and the Boss gets to read your emails, and presumably show them to anybody. Kristol pointed out to Williams that we do not all work for Senator Levin, he is not America's Boss.

This reminds me of the "Give the Devil the Benefit of Law" passage in Robert Bolt's "A Man For All Seasons."

Seeking to strengthen the rule of the law and the markets and the heritage of the Constitution is not a defeat but a victory. Our inheritance is not a weakness but a strength. If we raise that standard and stand by it, if we keep pointing out that it is what made America the world wants to flock to, then we will win.

On issue after issue, Unlawful Enemy Combatants, Bankrupt auto companies, Colluding Conspiracies of Commercial Kleptocrats in Fannie Freddie and Finance, foreign despots flouting civilized standards to bully and seek power through the threat of genocide, and the effective invasion of America by illegal aliens that are bankrupting State and local governments while being often linked to drug cartels and networks of Marxist and Islamic terrorists, the two extremes propose to deny the rule of law that shields us. The answer of the Democrats is to abandon the law and preemptively surrender to our enemies while transforming us into a defenseless regulated satrapy in a polyglot authoritarian system. To many who claim to be conservatives also have abandoned all hope and preach a retreat into atavistic isolation that would trample the law underfoot and exclude potential allies in the long struggle.

475 years ago Sir Thomas More was in the Tower awaiting his trial. The Robin Hood of poetry and the movies had 300 years earlier retreated into Sherwood Forest not as a goal but only as a last resort means to hide from the usurper until he could lead the people back to support lawful government. The idea that there is a legitimate law and we can rally to it even if we need to fear arbitrary government is part of our heritage. There is a mighty forest that our civilization has planted, we should not chop it down.