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Culture War Roundup for the week of December 12, 2022

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That seems like a very general argument against a lot of principles. "Don't be for the rule of law. (...) Law is the strongest mechanism for collective violence in our society. When people start using it to instigate lawsuits against people like yourself, that is in fact an existential threat to you. If they decide to jail you, your rule-of-law absolutism will not restrain them. (...) There are principles worth dying for. The right to try to use the law to sanction people without restraint is not one of them." Basically every societal policy benefits some and harms some, and, yes, those who it comes to harm tend to regret previously having supported it.

...and, you know, now that I think about it, I don't see that as a problem. Lots of people out there are enthusiastic proponents of punishing criminals and sending people to jail based on the decisions of a jury of their peers, but will curse the jury, the state and the entire legal system if they are deemed to have committed some crime and they are the ones sentenced to prison - especially if they believe themselves to be innocent. Were they wrong to have been for legal punishment before it was levelled against them? Would you hold it against them that they flipped opinion once they pulled the short end of the stick? Should an argument like "you know as well as I do that the legal system sometimes punishes innocent people, and if that were to happen to you, you would rage against it; so it is hypocritical of you to be a proponent of it now" persuade the pro-law-and-order individual to change their stance?

That seems like a very general argument against a lot of principles.

It's an argument that very few principles are strong enough to be terminal.

"Don't be for the rule of law. (...) Law is the strongest mechanism for collective violence in our society. When people start using it to instigate lawsuits against people like yourself, that is in fact an existential threat to you. If they decide to jail you, your rule-of-law absolutism will not restrain them. (...) There are principles worth dying for. The right to try to use the law to sanction people without restraint is not one of them."

Law is not the strongest mechanism for collective violence. Human will and human cooperation are.

Beyond that, though, all you have is a somewhat confused and uncharitable description of the simple principle that rule of law is not a terminal value. We assent to the law, to society, because we believe that doing so will deliver a better life for ourselves and for people in general. From John Brown to the Warsaw Ghetto to Omelas, History and philosophical theory overflow with examples of cases real and readily imagined in which it is better to reject the rule of law than to consent to it. One need not declare war on society over the slightest legal inconvenience, but likewise one need not bow to law that is plainly destructive of the good. Sometimes laws are bad, and the only recourse is to break them or to tear them down. Do you disagree?

If people hate you or your group, it's possible for them to use the law as a weapon against you. If they do so, especially if they do so for reasons that seem irrational or evil to you, why should you accept oppression to preserve a law that exists to stamp on your face? This principle, the recognition that law used as a weapon will inevitably lead to conflict, should ideally serve to keep people from abusing the law in this way. Far from undermining the common peace, such a recognition preserves it by not allowing foolish people to lie themselves creating a conflict they are powerless to end.

Would you hold it against them that they flipped opinion once they pulled the short end of the stick? Should an argument like "you know as well as I do that the legal system sometimes punishes innocent people, and if that were to happen to you, you would rage against it; so it is hypocritical of you to be a proponent of it now" persuade the pro-law-and-order individual to change their stance?

It's a reasonable argument. Only, how "innocent" are the "innocent" people in question? Innocent in the sense that they've spent their lives peaceably and with goodwill to their fellow men? Innocent in the sense that they didn't do this particular crime, but definately did dozens of other crimes? Innocent in the sense that they did do this crime, but you can't prove it? Innocent in the sense that they did it, you can prove it, but you proved it the wrong way so procedure says we let them get away with it?

And on the other hand, why are they caught up in the system? Is it a legitimate accident of fate, wrong place, wrong time? Is someone out to get them? Is someone out to get anyone like them, and they were the first [X] handy? Is there a coordinated campaign to find a way to screw them, and to hell with the law?

Inconvenient questions, to be sure. The Correct Answer(TM) is to put one's faith in the system, in the rules, in the Proper Procedures, and trust that everything will work out for the best, in this best of all possible worlds. That answer worked pretty well when we had a high trust society, when everyone was pulling together. It appears that it works somewhat less well when we only have enough trust for credit cards to work.

This is all a long way round to return to the original point: Your systems and your rules and your procedures aren't what society runs on. They never were, and they never will be. The foundation of any society is trust and good will, and the institutions, the rules and procedures are built on top of that foundation. When the foundation goes, how can the structures built upon it remain standing? All the principles you're pointing to are good and useful... provided we have mutual trust in our fellow man's investment in our common peace and prosperity. Without that, it's foolishness, nothing more.

That seems like a very general argument against a lot of principles.

It is. "The Torah is not a suicide pact" is one example of the same argument. As with most such general arguments, the problem is that an escape hatch designed to avoid the very worst of consequences quickly swallows all the principles it applies to. For instance, not allowing people to plan murders on the platform quickly leads to the most milquetoast of things as being tantamount to planning a murder and thus prohibited (this was the fig leaf for the Trump ban, after all). The only way around that is basically good faith, people with as much dedication to the law as the rabbinate who can actually be trusted to keep such general exceptions in check. But good faith actors are thin on the ground; good faith actors with authority even less so, and no procedural safeguards can constrain the bad-faith ones.