CommentsONE MAN’S OPINION-After the rule of law has been killed, a society will live under the delusion that its decisions and actions are done under the rule of law.
In reality, unchecked power controls, and anyone who points out that power has replaced the rule of law becomes persona non grata. The current impeachment proceedings have the formalities of law, but the substance is waning.
We Were Founded as a Republic Based on Rule of Law
One sign that both the Dems and the GOP are departing from the rule of law is their shunning the word “republic” in favor of harping on “democracy.” Our Republic limits the power of the people. As a republic, our Constitution balances various centers of power, and the passions of the majority often becomes a power that threatens the Republic. That is why our Constitution took away the power of the people to have whoever they wish to be the President.
Demagogues prefer a democracy which can be easily turned into a mobocracy. Hence, demagogues avoid republics which have multiple controls on the power of the people. While elections are a necessary vehicle for the people to properly express their consent, the will of the people is constrained as is the power of people they elect.
In a pure democracy, which the Greeks knew could soon become a mobocracy, the rule of law does not reign. Whatever the mob wants at the moment is what reigns. They believe that ultimate power rests in the transitory will of the people. If they want to lock up kids in cages, that’s okay. If they want to send certain groups to jail because their skin hue is too dark, that is the right of the mob. If they want a lunatic as their leader, that’s fine and dandy.
A Republic, however, does not enshrine the passion of the people as the basis of government. Rather, the government operates on the rule of law. The U.S. Constitution has several provisions to reduce the accumulation of power. That’s why we have three branches of government. The purpose of the U.S. Constitution’s impeachment process is to take away from the people the power to keep an anti-Constitutional President. Knowing that the mob will from time to time elect the most horrid of candidates, the founding fathers gave us the constitutional procedure of impeachment and divided the process into two sections. The House, which was considered to be the voice of the populace and hence more unstable than the Senate, got the power to start the impeachment with the fact gathering. The more stable Senate was given the sole power to conduct the trial.
The Republic is under attack from both parties because both play to the passions of their extreme bases. The Dems have been particularly aggressive in their promotion of “democracy” over the Republic. The impeachment process not only limits the power of the president, but also constrains the power of the people who elected him. And that is how it should be in a Republic.
What If the House Trashes the Constitution and Refuses to Do its Job?
Maybe, somewhere in the Federalist Papers there was a discussion about the oxymoronic situation in which the House would start an impeachment but then refuse to gather the necessary evidence, thinking it could do better in the upcoming elections. Such a situation would have abdicated the rule of constitutional law in favor of mobocracy. In any event, that’s what we face today. The House subverted their role so that their official record fails to support the articles of impeachment. Then, they tried to get the Senate to take over the House’s role of fact gathering. Now, saying that the House’s dearth of evidence is “overwhelming evidence” is the sort of claptrap one tells a mob.
Yes, when the House trashes its own role in the impeachment process it is engaging in demagoguery by asking the people to overlook their departure from the rule of law. The bizarre aspect of the Dems’ behavior is that they sabotaged their own case by refusing to gather evidence. In my November 18,
2019 CityWatch article I noted that the GOP was beginning to step back from Trump in face of the testimony in Schiff’s committee. Trump’s Nixonization was on the horizon.
On November 25, 2019 http://bit.ly/34grMyd I warned about the danger of Pelosi’s stopping the evidence gathering:
“The idea that the House hearings have produced enough evidence to criminally convict Trump is misleading, which is why Nancy Pelosi announced it so forcefully. By pretending that no more evidence is necessary, she is trying to stop the evidence gathering before it becomes great enough for the political act of removal from office to occur.”
Despite the admonitions of the law professors, Pelosi killed the evidence gathering, and now we have a constitutional nightmare no one wants to acknowledge.
The Senate’s removal of Trump based on this deficient record fails to answer the question: “What did Trump know or do and when did he know or do it?” This sets us on a path towards a civil war. What if John Bolton simply goes on TV and tells the world what he knows? Who would hate Bolton more – Trump or Pelosi?
(Richard Lee Abrams is a Los Angeles attorney and a CityWatch contributor. He can be reached at: [email protected]. Abrams views are his own and do not necessarily reflect the views of CityWatch.) Edited for CityWatch by Linda Abrams.
