The rule of law
And why we deeply care
My online COMM 4420 (Communication and the Law) class is winding up in a week or so, and the most recent module (what we call a week’s worth of reading and assignments) covered, in part, the right to protest as guaranteed by the First Amendment.
I would not take this class online, and I wrote the damn class. It’s a lot of reading, and it’s chockfull of real-time examples, but it doesn’t allow (given that it’s online) for the kind of face-to-face discussions that fuel the in-person class, which begins with the fall semester on Aug. 29.
Some of the responses to the assignments about protest have been interesting, and they’ve give me several moments when you’re reading a paper and you know that student got the concept you’re sharing on some cellular level. In the case of this module’s assignments, that comes when we realize that even if we don’t like what someone is protesting, that person has a right to do so within certain fairly broad parameters.
In my responses to the assignments, I use the phrase “rule of law,” a lot. Rule of law makes certain that we are all treated equally, that no one person rises above another. Of course, in practice, this concept remains aspirational.
I keep coming back to the idea mostly because I’ve been thinking about the rule of law, a lot. On Monday, when the FBI applied a legal search warrant on the vacation home of a former president, that signaled to everyone, worldwide, that we embrace the rule of law, that no one is above that application, and that no matter our station — the one in which we were born, or the one at which we arrive — laws matter.
So it’s been interesting to watch the social media feeding frenzy on the right as Trumplicans react to TFG’s pique over having to follow the law. Calling the search warrant a “raid,” as TFG did in a long, winding, butt-hurt message from Truth Social, is inaccurate, and treating it as anything other than what needed to happen strikes me as an indication that we are so tragically divided it will take some kind of miracle to bring us back together. There was probable cause to believe the former president did not treat classified documents with the respect they need. Have you any idea what kind of evidence the courts needed to allow such a search warrant?
I’ll let Bill Kristol, a conservative with whom I rarely agree, take us out:
I point out some of the hypocrisy that supporters of tiny hands Hitler spew when they try to defend him to me and they just don’t care
But one thing that makes them stop and think is when I tell them that they should keep with it because it makes it easier for me to mock them
They don’t like to appear to be a joke
This is somewhat off topic but I’ve been thinking about this filtered through the results of the Connecticut republican senate primary yesterday. On the surface it’s reasonable to assume that Levy’s MAGA cult supporters where motivated by current events until you realize that the turnout was barely 20 percent. Even in towns like West Hartford, Simsbury, Farmington, etc where Klarides won, turnout was low so it looks like suburbanites and by inference, suburban women, sat this one out. So if we assume the Mar-a-Largo search lit a fire under the magas, were they maxed out in a twenty percent turnout or did they underperform like the non-magas? Did center/right voters assume Klarides had it in the bag and stay home in the a/c? Ok, based on my overuse of the word, a lot of assumptions; and questions for campaigns and pollsters to think about. Based on her buying into the cult, I’m guessing Levy is going to run a scorched earth campaign which is probably a good thing. The contrast will be painfully clear and at times embarrassing but will hopefully motivate people who reject the cult because yesterday reinforced what we already know. In a low turnout, anything can happen.