2022 is a referendum on the rule of law
Conservatives spout Law ‘N Order as if it was a choice from the deep-fried menu at Cracker Barrel. The most mouth-watering aspect of choice to their minds is ignoring the law whenever it’s inconvenient.
Texas Attorney General Ken Paxton bugged out of his home Monday as a passenger in his wife’s truck to avoid being served with subpoena for a Tuesday court appearance. Paxton faces a class-action lawsuit from reproductive rights groups fighting to enjoin Texas officials from enforcing the state’s near-total abortion ban, which goes into effect on Thursday.
Pocket constitution-clutching Second Amendment activists swear, as Florida Republican Matt Gaetz did, that their favorite menu item from the Constitution protects “within the citizenry the ability to maintain an armed rebellion against the government, if that becomes necessary.” It’s right there in the constitutional analog of 2 Chronicles 17:35 (a verse that doesn’t exist).
Fanciful bullshit, writes Maryland Democrat Jamie Raskin, a member of the House Select Committee to Investigate the January 6th Attack on the United States Capitol. Raskin cites multiple sections in the actual Constitution addressing the government’s responsibility and powers for putting down insurrection or rebellion. None of the 900-plus insurrectionists charged with Jan. 6th crimes have had charges dismissed “on the grounds that the Second Amendment or any other part of the Constitution gives them the right to engage in violent insurrection against the government.”
Raskin writes in the New York Times:
As the historian Garry Wills long ago explained: “A people can overthrow a government it considers unjust. But it is absurd to think that it does so by virtue of that unjust government’s own authority. The appeal to heaven is an appeal away from the earthly authority of the moment, not to that authority.”
But self-styled patriots on the fringe right prefer to have their cake and eat it, to violate the Constitution while wrapping themselves in it. Sedition ‘N Patriotism.
Eugene Robinson mocks the GOP’s reboot of New Gingrich’s Contract With America as “a campaign of performative revenge.” Expect a 2023 House Republican majority to pursue ginned-up scandals against political foes and to cancel the Jan. 6 committee’s efforts to document the Trump coup plotters’ crimes.
“Republicans have become the pro-crime, anti-law enforcement party,” declares Allan Piper of Courier Newsroom.
“In many ways, this year’s elections will be a referendum of the rule of law, whether we are a country where, in fact, no one is above the law, whether we will do anything to address the epidemic crisis of gun violence, and whether we will continue to allowing fear mongering and race baiting to threaten the safety of our communities.”
Because Law ‘N Civil Order are not on the GOP’s menu.
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