“First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law.” These reassuring words from President Obama came during unsettling anti-police riots in Ferguson, MO. But times have stayed unsettled, and many people direct similar words at Baltimore today. To question these words would seem like cheap cynicism. And yet, preserving the rule of law depends more on actions than words, and our actions tell a different story.
Ferguson protesters were angry that the police officer who shot an unarmed teenager was not indicted. Maybe they were wrong, in that case. But they are not wrong about the larger pattern that Ferguson, Staten Island, Cleveland, and now Baltimore represent. The pattern, despite exceptions (like North Charleston), is clear: the powerful are not indicted in America.
Besides the anti-police riots, another continuing news focus has been the epidemic of rapes on college campuses. Young men are acting with aggressive selfishness and contempt for others. This story reminds us of the hearings and investigations that have failed to curb rape in the military. We talk a lot, but look at our actions, which the young men are hearing loud and clear.
Seven years into an economic crisis created by bankers acting with aggressive selfishness, not one of them has been prosecuted. On the contrary, bank CEOs were visibly annoyed that Congress would carry the charade of accountability so tastelessly far as to actually question them. “First and foremost, we are a nation built on the rule of law.”
Under the CIA interrogation program, we tortured thousands of detainees (over a hundred of them to death), and not one torturer has been indicted. Dick Cheney boasted on national television of giving the go-ahead for torture, which many lawyers point out was sufficient probable cause to justify his indictment. Nothing happened. Italy convicted 23 CIA operatives in absentia for an extraordinary rendition kidnapping. But when one was arrested in Panama, the State Department took less than 24 hours to spirit him back to the States, safe from extradition to Italy.
The National Security Agency broke many laws against domestic spying, but nobody gets punished. James Clapper, Director of National Intelligence, lied directly to Congress about spying on Americans – lies conclusively proven by documents Edward Snowden leaked – and the Justice Department doesn’t even hint that it might consider prosecuting.
Our actions show a culture that holds law in contempt. We pay lip service to the rule of law while teaching that successful people make their own rules, dominate others and do whatever they want. This is the lesson that young men in America are tuning in to.
We conduct foreign wars largely with drones, which illegally assassinate without due process of law. Coal miners die in accidents at companies with hundreds of unpaid safety citations. Pedophile priests get moved around for decades by the Catholic hierarchy before their crimes catch up with them. Everywhere is the evidence that success comes with trampling on rules.
The significance of this disrespect for law is something we hide from ourselves. One tactic we use is pretending that life is this way always and everywhere. Not true. The savings and loan scandal of the 1980s was comparable in criminality to our recent mortgage crisis but much smaller, yet it produced more than a thousand felony convictions. So there is nothing natural or inevitable about our current paralysis.
We also pretend we don’t have a systemic problem, just problem individuals. That was George W. Bush’s defense; his repeatedly blaming “a few bad apples” for behavior typical of his officials and party became a running joke. But when some Democrats started campaigning in 2006 against the “culture of corruption” – a slogan that perfectly nailed the Republican Party of Jack Abramoff and Tom DeLay – Democratic Party leaders were plainly uncomfortable, and that campaign with its important message withered to an early and undeserved death.
Those of us who fought for Obama’s 2008 nomination realized he would not rock the boat when then-Senator Obama broke his promise and dropped his opposition to the amnesty bill for telecommunications companies that helped the NSA spy on Americans without warrants. Still, we were surprised by the vigor with which his administration protected war criminals from prosecution, cracking down ferociously on whistleblowers and expanding the use of the state secrets defense to block court oversight. A cruder tactic to hide the truth from ourselves, then, is to hide it behind veils of official secrecy.
Secrecy is a fundamental attack on the rule of law. When whistleblowers get persecution instead of protection, laws go unenforced. The only person ever jailed in connection with the US torture program is John Kiriakou, the CIA analyst who revealed the waterboarding of detainees. In the state secrets defense, the government doesn’t even pretend its actions were lawful but claims that revealing its secrets in court would hurt the national interest. That is, first and foremost are various powerful interests, but not the rule of law. As transparency advocates say, sunshine is the best disinfectant; the powerful in America make sure no sun shines on their lawlessness.
We fiercely oppose amnesty for illegal immigrants who harvest our crops and wash our dishes; amnesty is for corporations who betray us to renegade government agencies. When poor people damage property in protest riots, we are suddenly a nation of laws; but when bankers steal a trillion dollars of homeowner equity from the middle class, we are pragmatic about bending the rules. This moral flexibility is not just shameful, it’s dangerous. Ordinary people are pragmatic, too, and ambitious young people learn the lessons of success that our actions teach.
Young eyes are watching as the powerful get around inconvenient laws with lobbyists and golf course handshakes. When the youth see their elders resigned to the fact that only the weak are ruled by law, an amoral disrespect for rules is the natural outcome.
Looting, raping, criminal hazing of a frat brother, these are the ways a young man shows he has spunk, and that he is ready to join America’s ruling elite. If this sounds cynical, stop and notice that the true cynicism here is thinking people are too stupid to see how things really work, or too timid to practice the lawless aggression they see rewarded all around them. This is the world we have created by our craven indifference to abuse of power time after time after time.
Yes, our country was founded on the rule of law, but today that rule has lapsed. If we want it back, it will take more than talk. It will take forcing the powerful to answer to the law, which is never pleasant or convenient since the powerful – unlike the unemployed poor hawking cigarettes or teenage girls at a drinking party – are strong, and they fight dirty.
We need people of integrity to fight back. The quick indictment of the North Charleston police officer showed spine. And yet, that case was too shockingly clear to ignore. The release by the Senate Intelligence Committee of its report on torture was an act of courage, a bright spot that stands out against our dreary record. And yet, it is so little and so late, so poor a substitute for the prosecutions required by the UN Convention Against Torture and by domestic law. It is also sad that the courageous release of that report stands in stark contrast to its appalling contents, a record of our nation’s crimes against humanity.
The rule of law is more than nice words. As we see Baltimore burning and the violent reactions to police brutality, and read more shocking statistics of rape on campus and in the military, we can glimpse the almost unimaginable consequences of allowing the subversion of law to continue. We need the rule of law to be first and foremost again, which means enforcing law at the top as well as the bottom. We need the rule of law not just to rein in the CIA and protect future torture victims, but also for poor people, for communities of color, for vulnerable young women, for middle-class business owners, ultimately for all of us who want to live in a decent world.