Redefining the "Rule of Law"

Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore has been harshly criticized for ignoring a federal court order calling for the removal of a monument displaying the Ten Commandments on public property. Most of the attacks have come from the usual suspects on the liberal left, but conservatives, in a surprising twist, have also joined in the fray.

"Cultural Crusader" Michael Medved accused Justice Moore of taking a position that could lead to the breakdown of the rule of law. Radio icon Rush Limbaugh said on his show, "For our system to work, for there to be a functioning legal system, the federal courts have to be obeyed no matter. And then dealt with within that system, whenever a decision come down that's obviously wrong or offensive or what have you." Limbaugh went on to say that if more people followed Justice Moore's example, it "would lead to chaos, anarchy and a system of civilization and society that we would not want."

Traditionally, conservatives have been the strongest advocates for the rule of law. In the Ten Commandments case, however, many of them have taken a position that is diametrically opposed to the rule of law. They sympathize with Justice Moore and concede that the federal judiciary is making a mockery of the Constitution, yet they insist that we must abide by these unconstitutional rulings lest we plunge our entire civilization into the fathomless depths of chaos and anarchy.

Fortunately, some conservatives actually get it. Alan Keyes, in a column for VisionForum.org, wrote the following:

When, by their careless and contradictory abuse of the Fourteenth amendment, the federal judges and justices arrogate to themselves the power, which, by the first and tenth amendments the Constitution reserves to the states, they deprive the nation of this prudent and logically balanced approach to the issue of religious establishment. Whether through carelessness or an artful effort to deceive, they ignore the distinction between the individual right to free exercise of religion and the right of the people to decide their government's religious stance. They have in consequence usurped this right of the people, substituting for the republican approach adopted by the Constitution an oligarchic approach that reserves to a handful of un-elected individuals the power to impose on the entire nation a uniform stance on religion at every level of government.

These federal judges, in granting themselves power they were never meant to have, are the ones violating the rule of law. What's puzzling is that many conservatives fail to see the inherent danger of allowing this to continue. They would rather have us believe that the widespread disobedience of immoral and unconstitutional court rulings (which is not even happening) is somehow worse than the rulings themselves.

What we have here is a prescription for judicial tyranny, pure and simple. Those who say that we must abide unquestioningly by their definition of the rule of law are in essence asking us to succumb to the whim of a few black-robed tyrants. After all, once the rule of law has been bastardized, it ceases to be the rule of law.

So, where does that leave us? Is anarchy the only alternative to tyranny? If that's the case, I'll take anarchy.