I think [Mark ] Mykleby’s letter gets at something very important: We cannot fix what ails America unless we look honestly at our own roles in creating our own problems. We ”” both parties ”” created an awful set of incentives that encouraged our best students to go to Wall Street to create crazy financial instruments instead of to Silicon Valley to create new products that improve people’s lives. We ”” both parties ”” created massive tax incentives and cheap money to make home mortgages available to people who really didn’t have the means to sustain them. And we ”” both parties ”” sent BP out in the gulf to get us as much oil as possible at the cheapest price. (Of course, we expected them to take care, but when you’re drilling for oil beneath 5,000 feet of water, stuff happens.)
As Pogo would say, we have met the enemy and he is us.
But that means we’re also the solution ”” if we’re serious. Look, we managed to survive 9/11 without letting it destroy our open society or rule of law. We managed to survive the Wall Street crash without letting it destroy our economy. Hopefully, we will survive the BP oil spill without it destroying our coastal ecosystems. But we dare not press our luck.
We have to use this window of opportunity to insulate ourselves as much as possible against all the bad things we cannot control and get serious about fixing the problems that we can control. We need to make our whole country more sustainable. So let’s pass an energy-climate bill that really reduces our dependence on Middle East oil. Let’s pass a financial regulatory reform bill that really reduces the odds of another banking crisis. Let’s get our fiscal house in order, as the economy recovers. And let’s pass an immigration bill that will enable us to attract the world’s top talent and remain the world’s leader in innovation.
[blockquote]…we managed to survive 9/11 without letting it destroy our open society or rule of law…[/blockquote] His is a debatable assertion, particularly concerning the [i]Rule of Law[/i], a technical term which I am beginning to suspect he doesn’t fully understand. Heck, I have read quite a bit about it and am not certain I [b]fully[/b] understand all that it entails. But his assertion that the [i]Rule of Law[/i] has not been destroyed is questionable.
One inescapable component of what is meant by the [i]Rule of Law[/i] is that all people are equal before the law (sometimes stated as justice is blind), [i]i.e.[/i], that everyone is treated according to the same standards in the law, who you are, what your ethnicity is, how much, or little, your personal net worth, are all irrelevant under the [i]Rule of Law[/i]. What matters is what you have done in response to any particular circumstance or event covered by the law.
But Friedman’s assertion raises one very important question: How many sections of the U.S. Code, or any state’s Code, in either case civil or criminal, must fail to satisfy the requirements of the [i]Rule of Law[/i] before that Rule can said to be [b][i]destroyed[/i][/b]?
I would argue that the [i]Rule of Law[/i] has been subject to considerable erosion in this nation for at least the past six or seven decades. And the first statute, Federal or local, which codifies as law a departure from the [i]Rule of Law[/i], must give us pause for concern that it is the beginning of the end for the [i]Rule of Law[/i] in this country.
I mention six or seven decades because I don’t remember precisely when the Federal Income Tax was changed from a flat rate to a set of graduated rates, depending on income, because that is one handy example of an erosion of the [i]Rule of Law[/i]. The only way that income taxation can satisfy the [i]Rule of Law[/i], is if it is a ‘capitation’ ([i]per capita[/i]) tax or a flat rate on income, whether with or without fixed personal exemptions in the latter case. A second example of such a departure is the imposition of the Social Security System on legal residents of the U.S., because it doesn’t apply to everyone (elected Federal Officials are exempt, as are Federal employees who began their continuous Federal employment prior to the replacement of the Civil Service Retirement System with the Federal Employees Retirement System).
If you think about it for any length of time, you will realize that these are just a few of the, now numerous, instances of inequitable treatement of individuals and groups under U.S. (and many state) statutes. So the [i]Rule of Law[/i] may not have been totally destroyed, but the seeds of its destruction were sown before many of us were born, and additional seeds are planted virtually every year in the Federal Register by our elected representatives—all without much fanfare (unless the actual details of the statutes can be disguised with nice sounding slogans).
Pax et bonum,
Keith Töpfer