Liberal Principles #0

[forsyth]

I think this is really one of the fundamental starting points of liberalism (and most post-Enlightenment political thinking in the West). And again, it ties in together with a lot of the other things. It's got a nice short name, though.

Rule of Law.

The full phrase is "Rule of Law, not Men," but it's referred almost everywhere as Rule of Law. And what it means is simple, it means the laws apply to everyone. Even the people who write them. Even the people who enforce them. Everyone. There's no king who is the Law, or anything like that, the law applies to everyone. And yes, it's just messy human law, made through messy politics by politicians and regular people, but because of that, it can be changed when it needs to. When things change, or when enough people decide the law isn't needed any more, or when people decide the old law was a bad law.

And when this meets the other fundamental I already covered, equality, you get the idea that everyone is equal before the law, and entitled to the same protections, no matter who they are. Everyone's entitled to a fair trial, a competent lawyer, and so on. This is one of the traits that Republicans have tended to twist into "SOFT ON CRIME ARGLEBARGLE" lately, but honesty's not really one of the strong traits of the modern GOP.

This is one of the things about the Bush administration that's the most fundamentally dangerous to the way our country works. They don't think the rules should apply to them. They think they should be able to do whatever they want, because the're "good", and "fighting evil". So there's no need to explain their actions, or to mess around with things like hearings for detainees, innocent or guilty, etc. And that they're fundamentally wrong on.

No man is bigger than the law. And if the people in charge of creating and/or enforcing the law, what reason do any of the rest of us have to follow it? If the law's to mean anything, it has to apply to everyone. Even the President, even Congress. Everyone.

As before, comments and suggestions are encouraged, I'm gonna hit at least Security on the fundamental ideas, and probably Democracy, and maybe some others, or alter some of the ones I have with feedback, and then expand from how the fundamental ideas tie together and interact and use that to show where (at least my version of) liberalism ends up with actual policies, foreign and domestic.

Comments

[megpie71.livejournal.com]

I'd agree with this as being a central precept of any Western liberal philosophy. The Rule of Law is at the very centre of the ideals of the Age of Reason, on which the majority of liberal thinking is based - the notion that nobody is above the law; that nobody is born with more rights before the law than anyone else; that criminal acts are criminal no matter who does them. It's a series of concepts that have slowly been percolating into the popular consciousness over the past four centuries, and all of them are utter poison to the type of mindset which sees itself as being somehow "other" to the law, or sees law as some kind of good or service which they order when they want it and ignore the rest of the time.

The privileged, in other words (privilege coming from two words meaning "private" and "law") tend to regard this as being essentially inimical to their view of life. Which it is, in a lot of ways. It was the growth of the Rule of Law which assisted in the growth of such things as the Industrial Revolution (which devalued the wealth of large landholders), and which played a large part in the English Civil War (which essentially removed the absolute power of the monarch in that country), the French Revolution (which removed the monarchy from that country) and the Reformation (which removed the absolute power of the Catholic Church from the majority of Europe). Given that the conservative position is one which prefers things to remain as they are (and given that the majority of conservative people are the ones who have done very nicely, thank you, out of the current situation) it's not surprising that an opposition to the Rule of Law as an absolute is something of a conservative standpoint.

[forsythferret.livejournal.com]

This is all true. The Rule of Law, like many liberal ideas, has been extremely succesful, at least in the US. So much so that even the conservatives try and put what they want to do in terms of it. Much like most tolerance and personal freedom, even the Republicans try and argue their ideas from that point of view, or at least pay lip service to it. Look at how the history of racism played out over the past 30 years. So from that point of view, even today's conservatives are pretty liberal, at least compared to hundreds of years ago. Even if the entire US political system is off on the pretty extreme right compared to Europe.

Which might be part of the problem, because liberals figure their ideas are so popular, and even their opponents sound like they believe in them, it's not such a big deal any more. It's not that simple.