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Early in the fifth century, a masterpiece of literature was generated. Entitled The City of God, the now common get the job done of consolation was composed by a male destined to turn into the foremost scholar of the early Christian Church. Saint Augustine wrote his renowned do the job below terrible circumstances nevertheless, for the age he lived through was just one nothing at all brief of utter chaos and upheaval. Only a couple quick yrs experienced passed because Visigoth armies had taken the metropolis of Rome by force–ransacking the symbolic headquarters of the civilized environment in an earthshattering feat that no barbarian tribe experienced dared undertake for some eight hundreds of years. Thus, by Augustine’s working day, the Roman Empire was collapsing–and with it, numerous of the concepts that experienced laid the groundwork for what we moderns connect with the Rule of Law.

1 profound remark from Saint Augustine’s intensive operate can illustrate the crux of a dire condition our present day society now finds for alone: “Without justice, what is authorities but organized robbery?” In other words and phrases, if the Condition ceases to mirror the very essence of its social function–the genuine pursuit of Justice–Augustine accurately reasoned that no genuine way is left to distinguish such an business from a frequent band of intruders and criminals.

Even though the Roman way of daily life perished not lengthy after Saint Augustine’s loss of life, the Catholic bishop’s influential procedure of this disaster survives to this working day. Regretably, various of the lessons in his treatise may be going the way of the historical buy they ended up composed under, for by no suggests is it an exaggeration to say that Western civilization is once once more on the brink of ruin–not from exterior forces this kind of as barbarian tribes, but from an interior corrosion of honest character.

We do not have to look far to see this barbaric internal decrease. Underneath the rubric of the coronavirus pandemic, for the previous year and a 50 percent, nearly each point out across the place has been subjected to arbitrary 1-gentleman rule, whereby just about all condition governments all over the union–red or blue–have been wholly subsumed beneath apparent wannabe dictatorships. Even in my own backyard of West Virginia, where Mountaineers are supposedly often no cost, the present Governor’s administration–whose suitable career is restricted to basically enforcing the law–illicitly usurped this extremely constrained authority.

Seemingly taking their cue from a single another, Governors throughout the country took it on them selves to systematically reshape the extremely underpinnings of American government. Going significantly past slight violations like little alterations to the regulations by their personal accord, this abuse of energy was so pervasive, it extended to the generation of total new legislation on a whim, decreeing them at will, and repealing any of them entirely. To restate the elementary transgression: In point out by state through this region, all these radical steps have been carried out–and go on to be threatened–solely at the haphazard discretion of 1 solitary man or woman. With handful of exceptions, the Main Executive of your state has become the law. Even the most set and lengthy-standing protections from the Bill of Rights have not thoroughly withstood these messy tirades of one-person rule.

This is no very small trouble, for in our have period, one particular of the key means to reference the classic basic principle of Justice that Saint Augustine described can be discovered inside of our composed Structure. This document, which all our elected leaders swear to uphold, expresses immutable ideals–First Principles that demand fidelity, which in flip, enable to serve as an goal conventional that can establish the Just from the Unjust. Despite the fact that the whole-fledged departure from instantiating the Form of Justice within just American government started many years ago, nowadays, the brazen effort and hard work of forsaking this critical advantage is shamelessly paraded on full exhibit via the blatant rejection of the spirit of constitutional legislation.

For starters, any individual who can remember their essential lessons from 8th-grade civics class is aware of that only the Legislative department has the rightful ability to make the laws–not the Executive. What is far more, these new-fangled illicit government instructions are not harmless prescriptions that tweak small rules. To the contrary, these broad-sweeping edicts are extra reflective of totalitarian decrees that are not basically distinct by diploma, but vary totally by variety. Of these appear the incapacity to depart your personal residence less than the menace of arrest and jail, the overall prohibition of participating in commerce under the roof of your extremely own enterprise, sanctions from doing work and producing–if only to make enough to place foodstuff on your table–along with serious limits from the most rudimentary usually means of journey and the consistent disruption of your children’s schooling.

Perhaps most staggering, in immediate violation of the Initially Modification, very last calendar year these recently-styled regimes, occupying state capitals in the course of the country, shuttered the most basic American rights to peacefully assemble, directly restricting–and even outright banning–the skill to worship as you see match. In the broad the greater part of states, lots of of these illegal orders have been carried out, while some were being merely implied. But nearly as crucial to note–even in my residence of rural West Virginia–no challenging limitations to these newfound powers have been conceded by the novel regimes headed by these would-be despots.

Of study course, with the Covid-19 pandemic performing as a type of catalyst behind this continued perversion of electrical power, the reasons for the rejection of Saint Augustine’s Justice–or what Thomas Aquinas would afterwards simply call the natural law–can, at finest, be minimized to the worn-out utilitarian maxim of “the greatest great for the finest number”–an intellectually-bankrupt ethic which can usually assault the dignity of the particular person, foremost in the direction of a perspective exactly where men and women have no intrinsic benefit in by themselves. As soon as this is recognized, folks can be made use of as mere devices toward the accomplishment of some imprecise and undefinable value whereby the finishes will often tend to justify the suggests. Mainly because of this extremely subjective character of the utilitarian creed, it ought to come as no shock that this kind of an ambiguous plan has been really useful to validate the actions of almost each individual tyrant all over history.

But prices of grounding judgment inside of a utilitarian strategy is fairly charitable therapy, mainly because at worst, the regimes that have overtaken so quite a few states may have no serious moral framework driving their actions at all. In this regard–which I suspect could be the real case–all that is genuinely deemed quantities to what Friedrich Nietzsche termed The Will to Power–a fanatical knowing that denies the existence of ethical universals altogether. In actuality, less than this Nietzschean system, morality itself is seen as a measly human invention. Consequently, if ethical codes flimsily stand as only gentleman-designed constructs, then ethical obligations can be dismissed, while all of morality can be wholly dismantled–so prolonged as it’s effortless and self-serving to do so. Underneath this darkish light-weight, the only thing remaining to go over then is the sustained realization of raw electricity for its own sake. Insofar as they are thriving in aiding with this unadulterated pursuit of electrical power, all political actions, nevertheless atrocious they may be, can conveniently receive vindication from regimes which quietly cling to this sort of brute beliefs.

Irrespective of this, numerous of these Governors, who appear to care a lot more about their overall look on television than the responsibility to uphold the Rule of Regulation, are not the only place of work-holders liable for this systematic abuse of power. In simple fact, my possess working experience in the Statehouse has demonstrated that though some lawmakers have truly pushed back again towards this depravity, they are the exception to the rule. Numerous Delegates and Senators who have served for years in the point out Legislature–all the while preaching against the overreach of govt and the dire require for strict limitations–have stood idly by and tolerated this defilement of constitutional order.

Even even worse, in immediate opposition to their solemn oaths of office environment, lots of point out legislators have also actively aided and abetted the decay of correct law–and in so accomplishing, reaped the rewards of political patronage with appointments to new cupboard positions and the 6-figure salaries that typically accompany them. These legislators, too, ought to also share in the blame for the gross breaches of lawful political authority, for this Machiavellian sample is most likely not constrained to my residence in West Virginia.

The decadence of these twisted regimes overtaking our states has introduced back the radical thought of 1-guy rule–and this degeneration now stands more akin to monarchy than anything which could possibly resemble the republican check-and-stability procedure as soon as conceived by the Baron de Montesquieu. If we are to curtail the social harm, sturdy endeavours ought to be carried out to avert this warped idea from starting to be far more legitimized. Soon after all, 1-male rule has been so overseas and egregious to the American way of existence that our ancestors the moment fought and died to eradicate it.

Small logic is essential to know the outright risk that such “new entire world orders” can bring to our existing modern society. That they have ongoing for so long although stands as a menace to the long run of our standard political procedure. In the conclusion, the routine maintenance of a absolutely free republic can frequently relaxation on the advantage of its citizens. It is with hope then that lots of Individuals can obtain solace by remembering–they are not descended from gentlemen and women who have been lacking in character.

(Pat McGeehan is a 5-term state delegate. A graduate of the US Air Force Academy, Pat served as a Army Intelligence Officer, finishing a tour in the Middle East. He is the writer of three publications, such as “Stoicism and the Statehouse,” which gained bestseller status for its category on Amazon. Pat currently aids handle an different faculty for troubled children and is ending a graduate degree in philosophy from Franciscan University. He resides with his daughter Kennedy in Chester, WV. Contact him by electronic mail at [email protected].)

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