{"id":7545,"date":"2014-12-02T11:26:42","date_gmt":"2014-12-02T11:26:42","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/12\/02\/the-deep-meaning-of-ferguson-the-end-of-the-rule-of-law\/"},"modified":"2014-12-02T11:26:42","modified_gmt":"2014-12-02T11:26:42","slug":"the-deep-meaning-of-ferguson-the-end-of-the-rule-of-law","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/2014\/12\/02\/the-deep-meaning-of-ferguson-the-end-of-the-rule-of-law\/","title":{"rendered":"The Deep Meaning of Ferguson: The End of the Rule of Law"},"content":{"rendered":"

Ferguson is of course just one instance.  But it is emblematic.  As usual, Victor Davis Hanson gets it right<\/a>:<\/span><\/p>\n

\n

In the Ferguson disaster<\/a>, the law was the greatest casualty. Civilization cannot long work if youths strong-arm shop owners and take what they want. Or walk down the middle of highways high on illicit drugs. Or attack police officers and seek to grab their weapons. Or fail to obey an officer\u2019s command to halt. Or deliberately give false testimonies to authorities. Or riot, burn, and loot. Or, in the more abstract sense, simply ignore the legal findings of a grand jury; or, in critical legal theory fashion, seek to dismiss the authority of the law because it is not deemed useful to some preconceived theory of social justice. Do that and society crumbles. <\/span><\/p>\n

In our cynicism we accept, to avoid further unrest, that no government agency will in six months prosecute the looters and burners, or charge with perjury those who brazenly lied in their depositions to authorities, or charge the companion of Michael Brown with an accessory role in strong-arm robbery, or charge the stepfather of Michael Brown for using a bullhorn to incite a crowd to riot and loot and burn<\/a>. We accept that because legality is becoming an abstraction, as it is in most parts of the world outside the U.S. where politics makes the law fluid and transient.<\/span><\/p>\n

Nor can a government maintain legitimacy when it presides over lawlessness. The president of the United States on over 20 occasions<\/a> insisted that it would be illegal, dictatorial, and unconstitutional to contravene federal immigration law \u2014 at least when to do so was politically inexpedient. When it was not, he did just that. Now we enter the Orwellian world of a videotaped president repeatedly warning that what he would soon do would be in fact illegal. Has a U.S. president ever so frequently and fervently warned the country about the likes of himself?<\/span><\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n

Read it all<\/a>.<\/span><\/p>\n

\nRelated articles<\/legend>\n
\n
\"\"<\/a>How to Tell the Truth without being Truthful<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Sick of Political Acrimony, Reader Goes on 'News Fast'<\/a><\/div>\n
\"\"<\/a>Ad Ignorantiam and the Law<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/fieldset>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ferguson is of course just one instance.  But it is emblematic.  As usual, Victor Davis Hanson gets it right: In the Ferguson disaster, the law was the greatest casualty. Civilization cannot long work if youths strong-arm shop owners and take what they want. Or walk down the middle of highways high on illicit drugs. Or … Continue reading “The Deep Meaning of Ferguson: The End of the Rule of Law”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,32,153],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-7545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime-and-punishment","category-current-affairs","category-morality-and-legality"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=7545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=7545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=7545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/maverickphilosopher.blog\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=7545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}