I'm Not Cheering

      Received a comment the other day, in which the commenter was pleased one of the more visible would-be insurrectionists was (probably) headed for jail.

      While I understand the sentiment (and find the prospect appealing), I'm declining to publish it.  Nothing personal, Mr. Commenter!  I am happy to see the rule of law prevail.  But I'm not comfortable with the notion that a setback for bad guys is always and necessarily a triumph for good guys.

      Grown-up men and women leaned hard on our system of government, lawyers and political pundits and politicians who should have known better, and while it didn't break that time, it's badly bent.  Rebuilding it will be a long, slow process and there's no guarantee of success.  The process has already established precedent, defining the limits of executive privilege and finding that a Congressional subpoena has the force of law.

      A little haziness at the corners isn't a bad thing.  Those who take care to steer wide of illegality will never come close enough to test the edges.  And we are now losing more of that ambiguity.  It will make no difference to moral people -- but it will make it that much easier for slippery characters to come right up to the line without ever quite crossing over.  I suppose it's a kind of loss of innocence -- which is downright risible, applied to the freewheeling wheeling and dealing of Federal politics   Nonetheless, the United States of America will emerge from this stretch of history even less dewey-eyed than before, if our system of government makes it though at all.

      Caesar, Napoleon, Lenin* -- history tells us republics can fall, frequently to the cheers of the mob, and most often into autocracy.  History tells us that republics rely on respect for the traditions of their basic law, and on the expectation that law will be fairly and faithfully administered. Undermining that undermines the legitimacy of the republic.  If the men and women who hold and run for office do not support the constitution, if they sow doubt and fear, it does not bode well for the republic.

      If you love this country, stop hacking away at its roots.  And stop others from doing so.  Don't vote 'em in!  If they're already in, vote 'em out!

      I'm moderately pleased to read justice has, in a case or two, run its course with would-be insurrectionists.  I'm still not happy at the attempt to subvert the normal workings of our government.
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* What, Lenin?  Yes.  Russia's February Revolution in 1917 established the beginnings of a European-style democracy but was stifled when it was followed that same year by the October Revolution, open war between the Red Army of the soviets (workers and solders councils) against the White Army, amounting to everyone else.  Russia had possibly been on the verge of evolving a clunky, awkward two-chamber legislature, the conservative Duma and the hot-headed, extreme social-reformist Soviet; but the Communists wanted all the power, not open debate and compromise.  The country bled for six years; Lenin led to Stalin.  That history should stand as a dire warning of the dangers not only of communism but of eroding democratic norms, of political violence with no goal but absolute power and of the dangerous lure of personality over principle.