Guest Column: Law of the land must prevail

By Medicine Hat News Opinon on April 28, 2018.

There is no hidden corner in anyone’s brain that can make sense. A man jumps the curb with a van, jams his foot onto the gas pedal. The van, like an iron beast, rams, tosses, tramples, and tears at the sidewalk crowd. For almost a mile.

Only seconds before, people had been immersed in their thoughts and plans, only sightly aware of the others all around them, similarly listening to their own mental scripts. A van.? On the sidewalk? Delivery van maybe? But suddenly it accelerates. A witness tells of bodies flying, bloodied, dead. Old women, young women. Mostly women. For seven minutes.

Ten dead, 14 severely wounded. The driver, pleading to be shot. We want him to be shot. We want him to be torn to shreds, to be slowly turned to a mangled mass oozing blood. There is no why, no shred of reason. Any attempt at an answer would be a faint spark in the unfathomable darkness of the moment.

And we feel this way whenever we hear of another senseless act of violence and injustice — mass shootings, serial killers, people preying on the vulnerable. We want blood. That’s understandable, and maybe in earlier times an immediate retributive response was possible, even acceptable. But did vengeance ever really heal the wounds, bring back the dead, or deter similar acts? Did sating one’s bloodlust make one feel better or safer? I think not. And we all know this, and slowly our bitterness turns to compassion for the victims, the survivors, and the families.

There are very good reasons why the vigilante response we instinctively adopt is no longer accepted in western democratic societies. These reasons fall under the belief that society is safest for everyone if ‘the rule of law’ is followed. The U.N. defines the ‘rule of law’ as “É a principle of governance in which all persons, institutions É the state itself, are accountable to (public) laws, equally enforced and independently adjudicatedÉ”

So, while it seems natural in these moments to lash out with violence against violence, nature can be a very cruel and messy place. As Thomas Hobbes pointed out, life in the state of nature can be “nasty, brutish, and short.” So we have laws.

The rule of law concept has been well understood and accepted in Canada. We generally follow our laws, and generally trust and respect the men and women whose job it is to enforce those laws. We’ve had a few crises, the Oka crisis in Quebec, and presently the illegal protests in B.C. against the pipeline expansion, for example.

We’re also seeing growing unrest in the prairie countryside over inadequate policing of private property. This has resulted in a terrible tragedy in Saskatchewan, and a shooting in Okotoks. These incidents point to failings in our laws. Individual’s complaints deserve to be heard and redressed. But most Canadians know that Mr. Stanley and Mr. Maurice chose to ‘take the law into their own hands’ and will likely be asked to pay a price, according to the rule of law. Fairness, one of the principles of the rule of law, will hopefully be applied in the Maurice case, and increased police surveillance and greater security of the countryside will result.

In the U.S., however, there is a powerful and growing tradition of challenging the rule of law. We read about a growing organization of ‘constitutional sheriffs’ in rural counties across the country coinciding with Trump’s ironic anti-Washington tweets. They are guided by the belief that the elected sheriff is the sole interpreter and enforcer of the Constitution in their regions. They, and their ‘posses’ are, very literally, claiming to be ‘the law’, the protectors of ‘their citizens’ against the overreach of state and federal governments. Heaven help you if you get on the wrong side of Boss Hogg, or are the wrong colour, the wrong religion, or gender. Mob injustice and the KKK is back.

The Bundy situation in Nevada/Oregon, another example, became an armed political insurrection over the use of federal lands for grazing. Since 1994 Mr. Bundy grazed his cattle and refused to pay the required taxes. When the government came to collect, the Bundys, supported by several dozen militiamen, staged a month-long armed standoff. A court case will follow this year. But in a land of heavily armed anti-government citizens who reject the authority of the law, it’s questionable whether the rule of law will prevail. And that is worrisome. Will the U.S. devolve even further into lawlessness, mob rule and arbitrary injustice? Who benefits?

Libertarians, shouting “Don’t Tread On Me” embrace anarchy. Civil unrest, draped in the tattered rags of a flag, wags a crocked and bony finger at us. Hang on Canada. Ignore those angry red-faced men in your midst.

Peter Mueller is a long-time resident of Medicine Hat who, in spite of all the evidence, continues to believe we can build a better world.

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