- OPINION -
Why, you may have asked yourself, was "defunding the Police" and destroying the rule of law such a priority for the left throughout most of 2020 and even into 2021?
At first glance, the less informed individual who has a traditional hatred of tyranny might assume that defunding police (or higher authorities) is a very 'anti-tyrannical act.' But that would be a dangerous miscalculation.
It is not authority (properly checked), as the traditional anarchists' rage, that brings about tyranny, but instead, it is the lack of proper authority that ultimately leads to the tyrannical substitute for it.
Just ask the people of Germany pre-World Warr II. As the world-renowned historian and economist F.A. Hayek points out in his book, The Road to Serfdom, "Years before Hitler came into power, the rule of law had been on a steady and certain decline... for planning necessarily involves deliberate discrimination between the particular needs specific parties." *
By planning, Hayek was referring to all forms of socialism, whereby the means of production and even everyday life are often "planned out" by a higher authority. This is all the more fitting considering that the Nazi party was definitively the party of "Organized Socialism."
Contrary to common belief, the rule of law imposed impartially upon a people by its elected officials is the very thing that keeps a totalitarian state from becoming reality. The rule of law safeguards equality, freedom, and justice; for everyone will be held to the same set of rules.
The minute the rule of law is extinguished, it opens the door for a certain group of leaders, an "elite" class of citizens, to rise above the rest of the population and impose their own rules--partial and unjust as they may be.
To return to the question asked at the beginning of this short opinion: why did the left attempt to destroy the rule of law?
Food for thought.
From the Editor's Desk,
Al K. Scott
Chief Editor of The Portland Post
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