Saturday, December 17, 2016

A Government may be legal...and still be illegitimate

The United States has just gone through an intense election and the European Union is seeing its member nations involved in an almost universal crisis of confidence in membership in that union.

Most of us have been angry, disturbed or perhaps just uncomfortable with actions that have been judged by our respective national justice systems to be legal even as we "knew" that they were wrong.  Sometimes this has been because of badly worded laws, sometimes because of very good defenses coupled with inadequate or inept prosecutions (or the reverse), and sometimes because it seemed as everyone was so very worried about the individual tree as the forest was left to burn or wither.

In America Free Speech, originally defined to mean that there could, with rare exceptions, not be prevention of the right to say something, has become defined as meaning that whatever and however something is said, there shall be no consequences for it.  That is just a perversion of the original intent.  No longer is it necessary to be certain that your speech is a truthful statement lest you be brought into court for libeling someone...say whatever you want.  This may be legal...but any sane person would suggest that such action should be judged as illegitimate.

The legal system in America has become a tool to enable people to avoid consequences for doing and saying illegitimate things.  Just one example is the treatment of those entering and remaining in our country illegally.  Our Constitution is a contract between its government and its citizens;  it basically establishes that the government will protect its citizens and the country's borders and the citizens will obey the laws that govern the land.  How on earth does any person or group who has NOT obeyed the laws of the United States get the right to claim that the government provide them the protections promised to its citizens?  Those here illegally come to the table as non-parties to the contract and, moreover, they come with unclean hands, having already broken the laws that a citizen, as part of the contract, agrees to obey and abide by.

In France, the people voted NOT to join the European Union...but somehow (who know by what technical legal maneuvers) they are a member.  The fact that France's politicians have done something that they argue was legal, does not make it legitimate.  All over the world, the increased ability to communicate without prior constraint by governments is revealing to the people that their governments are run for the self-defined elites of each country, that the citizens are being made to support the lives of elites who care not one wit for the citizenry.

Strange that the elites seem unable to understand why the people are upset, angry and growing closer and closer to violence each day.  How quickly the elites around the world forget the lessons of the Russian and French revolutions, among many others.  When the government(s) show contempt for the law or use it for their own privileged purposes,  why should they not understand that the citizens will see that they need to act in their own interests regardless of the laws, in the same way that the politicians have done to mistreat the citizens, to regain control of their own lives.

Those in power can only avoid "consequences" for so long before they must account.  And the longer they delay that accounting, the more extreme the consequences.

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