These two basic tenets of America deserve attention since they are currently endangered. I offer here a simple explanation to clarify their significance: the word “rule” means that United States citizens are blessed by equal protection and equally beholden under the laws of our land, not any person, corporation, or group of people. Usually, “rule” is associated with a person or group that dictates the behavior of others, such as a king, autocrat or religious pastor or minister. Instead our founders chose to be ruled by laws intended to be fair, just, and blind to prejudice. Note the word ‘intended’, for we know many laws are not fair and certainly are prejudiced in favor of one group. Also, over the course of almost 250 years, people strove to expand the meaning of ‘citizens’ to include not just white men, but black men, Hispanic men, all women, and native Americans. These were not easy tasks, to say the least. But this expansion is one of the several accomplishments from our nation’s growth.
The laws of our land have their foundation in the Constitution, and branch out from it to local and state laws. Many of these are common sense regulations, universal so that we can function across state lines. Traffic signals, for instance, with red, yellow, and green lights regulate driving patterns everywhere, with penalties for disobeying them. Others are basic protections of our rights: to a trial by jury, to not be imprisoned for debts we owe, or to be deemed innocent until proven guilty.
But what about when our laws are not universal, or fair, or we disagree with them? Martin Luther King challenged laws unfair to black people by adopting Gandhi’s peaceful resistance tactics, and explaining in writing, from a jail cell, how unjust laws hurt everyone. The peaceful protests he fostered brought us closer to universal equality, albeit with terrible loss of life.
Ultimately just laws depend on the right to vote for all US citizens of age. This is a bit complicated by our representative government; with the right to vote, we elect people we trust to make laws. We have become cynical about this, but it still forms the basis of a free society as opposed to one dictated by any one person or group. In addition, this government of representatives we elect protects us by the checks and balances of its form. That is, the triad of the courts, the administration (presidency), and the two branches of congress. The fourth protection, I believe, is our free press.
For sure, any or all these things can become corrupted, or too onesided. But hashing out what’s fair to all by changing unfair or incomplete laws by the vote is the right way to make change.
It is a grave mistake to lose faith in these foundations; to sow doubt in them for one’s own gain is an ultimate travesty of American values. Plenty of people in our environment are selfish enough to sow doubt for personal gain, but an equal number, I think, are really working for the good of us all. Choose carefully when you vote, and be grateful for that right as well as the rule of law.