“The closer the collapse of the Empire, the crazier its laws are.”
― Marcus Tullius Cicero
A New York jury found Donald Trump guilty on all thirty-four counts of falsification of business records, which is a “felony” in New York.
Not long after the announcement of guilt, the opposing responses reverberate on the streets outside the courtroom, America’s cable and network news outlets, and just about Facebook page or Twitter feed from California to Maine. In some cases, the verdict was cause for celebration. Giddiness was in the air. Tears of joy were shed. There was dancing in the street and MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow seemed happy for the first time in years. It was a bit reminiscent of the celebrations that came after VE Day and VJ Day or the days after Neil Armstrong walked on the moon in 1969. The counter responses were decidedly unhappy. Anger and disbelief were the most common expressions. Cries of “kangaroo court” and “rigged verdict” grew louder and louder as the post-cerdict hours passed.
While I share some of the sentiments of the counter responders, I’m at a place where I believe I can see something far more important than the fate of Donald Trump, Joe Biden, and America’s media and celebrity cultture is at stake. It is the Republic itself that is now in mortal danger!
You might be asking yourself why would I make such an outrageous claim?
I’ll be delighted to explain. Let me begin with the state of the law. It’s broken. It can be twisted and manipulated in the most obscene ways, depending on the ethics of the lawyers and judges ovserseeing the system. As Sol Wachter, chief justice of New York’s Supreme Court, observed in 1985, “Any good prosecutor can get a grand jury to indict a ham sandwich.”
Chief Justice Wachter made that ominous observation about forty years ago. Things are much worse than that now.
While I’m no expert on the law, I did take the opportunity to peruse the U.S.Code, the compilation of all the laws on our books when I retired from FedEx. I’ll admit to being bored prompted my search, but in the end it proved quite enlightening. Did you know, for example, that our code has over 60,00 pages filled with laws and legal jargon? We’ve had laws on our books concerning condensed milk, like the “Filled Milk Act” of 1923 or the Employment on passenger vessels of aliens afflicted with certain disabilities act highlighted under 8 USC 1285.
Can an enterprising prosecutor like Alvin Bragg in New York or Jean Peters Baker here Kansas City indict a ham sandwich if they care to? You betcha! And, worse yet, they can indict you and me if we irritate them enough. In 2011, In 2011, Harvey Silvergate, a Harvard educated attorney, published a book titled “Three Felonies a Day – How the Feds Target the Innocent.”
How can something like that happen in America? It seems impossible, but it’s far more possible than we can imagine. Once you read the following quote from Amazon’s synopsis you’ll see what I mean:
“The average professional in this country wakes up in the morning, goes to work, comes home, eats dinner, and then goes to sleep, unaware that he or she has likely committed several federal crimes that day. Why? The answer lies in the very nature of modern federal criminal laws, which have exploded in number but also become impossibly broad and vague.”
We need to open our eyes. One day that ham sandwich can be Donald Trump. The next day it might be some pro-lifer like seventy-five year old Paulette Harlow, was sentenced to over two years in prison for demonstrating on behalf of an unborn child in our nation’s capitol. The federal government has 60,000 pages chock full of laws on the books. If they want to get us, they can.
It all makes me wonder if there is more in store for the future. Are we eventually going to get to the place where Lavrentiy Berea’s “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime” will be all the law they need?
Cicero was right. One of the glaring signs of a collapsing empire is craziness in the laws. Another of the signs is a foreign policy so focused on enemies across the sea that it has turned us into a world hegemon. Since the early twentieth century we have gotten embroiled in conflicts all around the globe. Sadly, many of these enterprises have been demonstrations of raw power, with very few that benefitted us or the nations we claimed we wanted to support. We’ve gotten ourselves tangled up in Southeast Asia, the Middle East, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan, and other ports of call around the globe. We’ve expended huge amounts of human treasure and capital in these places, with little to show for our effort. The only conflict we’ve gotten involved in that was necessary was World War II, the war author Studs Turkel rightly called “the good war.” Americans in that conflict fought bravely and civilization was saved. Then, when the enemies of freedom were defeated, America undertook massive plans to rebuild the nations that had suffered so much during
the war, including Germany and Japan, our enemies. We were a truly noble nation back then.
After the war our national focus changed dramatically. The fear of enemies abroad led us to turn our attention away from America and the needs of the American people.
There were warnings about what might happen to us, but we’ve ignored them. In his 1838 address to the Lyceum in Springfield, Illinois, Abraham Lincoln warned us:
“How then shall we perform it?—At what point shall we expect the approach of danger? By what means shall we fortify against it?—Shall we expect some transatlantic military giant, to step the Ocean, and crush us at a blow? Never!—All the armies of Europe, Asia and Africa combined, with all the treasure of the earth (our own excepted) in their military chest; with a Buonaparte for a commander, could not by force, take a drink from the Ohio, or make a track on the Blue Ridge, in a trial of a thYet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”ousand years.At what point then is the approach of danger to be expected? I answer, if it ever reach us, it must spring up amongst us. It cannot come from abroad. If destruction be our lot, we must ourselves be its author and finisher. As a nation of freemen, we must live through all time, or die by suicide”
Less than thirty years after the Lyceum address, Abraham Lincoln was elected President of the United States. He was to take us through what was the most perilous time in the history of this nation. By 1865, he had been President for four years and had led us on a great national crusade to
blot out slavery, our great national sin. About a month before the Union won that war, Lincoln had been re-elected. At his second inaugural, Lincoln recounted the terrible losses both sides had incurred in the conflict:
“Yet, if God wills that it continue until all the wealth piled by the bondsman’s two hundred and fifty years of unrequited toil shall be sunk, and until every drop of blood drawn by the lash shall be paid by another drawn with the sword, as was said three thousand years ago, so still it must be said, “The judgments of the Lord are true and righteous altogether.”
He closed the address with a statement of the noble purpose the nation was to undertake once the war was over – “to bind up the nation’s wounds.”
About the time Abraham Lincoln was making his Lyceum address, French philosopher Alexis de Tocqueville made the following observation about the America when he penned his famous “Democracy in America” in 1835:
“America is great because she is good, and if America ever ceases to be good, she will cease to be great.”Alexis de Tocqueville – Democracy in America.”
I’m not sure the same thing be said of the America I live in today. Our leaders are driven by an insatiable urge for power rather than service to the nation. Our journalism, one of the institutions that is supposed to serve as watchmen for the people, has been corrupted to the point that the people no longer trust journalists to tell the truth. Our entertainment is becoming increasingly obscene. Little children are “bumping and grinding” on stage while perverted adults cheer them on.
And so it goes. How long can such a nation survive, much less flourish?
As I see it, there is only one way forward. We must actually turn back and seek God. As Ezra put it in the Old Testament:
“ If my people, who are called by my name, will humble themselves and pray and seek my face and turn from their wicked ways, then I will hear from heaven, and I will forgive their sin and will heal their land.”
This is what I believe. The way forward is actually back.