William Roper: So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!
A Man For All Seasons (1966)
Sir Thomas More: Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?
Roper: Yes, I’d cut down every law in England to do that!
More: Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned ’round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man’s laws, not God’s! And if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake!
What happened at the U.S. Capitol on January 6, 2021 was, in fact, inevitable. The United States of America is not immune to the same forces that led to Julius Caesar crossing the Rubicon in order to replace the Roman Republic with the Roman Empire. Those same forces that led in turn to Robespierre, Lenin, Hitler, Stalin, and Mao. Since 1788, the United States Constitution has stood like a shield to “Secure the Blessings of Liberty” and defend us from such men. But you cannot run an engine without oiling it, and you cannot rely on a document without people respecting it.
Eric Hoffer was a San Francisco stevedore philosopher who found time in between his laboring to write 10 books, including a slim 1951 volume called The True Believer: Thoughts on the Nature of Mass Movements. Hoffer believed that mass movements, whether religious or secular in nature, stemmed from an underclass of people frustrated with their current condition and ready to latch on to anything that would promise them meaning and fulfillment.
The logic is as follows: When a society feels stagnated and people feel trapped in a meaningless existence, they must find a meaning. But where will they find it?
They can turn to religion, but what if religious leaders have betrayed them, like the pre-Reformation Catholic Church, or the scandal-ridden mess of American Evangelicalism?
They can turn to family and civic life, but what if our civic institutions have fallen into decay and they are detached from their family with no ability to find a mate to form a new family?
Or, they can turn to a Dear Leader. A bold speaking individual who will tell them they can be great if they just join the Cause. Instead of facing the daunting prospect of building a meaningful life on their own, step by step, friendship by friendship, job advancement, community involvement, and caring for the next generation, the Cause will give them a readymade meaning like McDonalds gives a franchisee a prebuilt brand, menu, and supply chain.
“Faith in a holy cause is to a considerable extent a substitute for the lost faith in ourselves,” Hoffer writes.
This is where we stand. Two Holy Causes, the MAGA Right and the Socialist Left both know that the post-1945 consensus that lasted from Truman and Eisenhower to the Bushes and Obama is ready to fall. The Baby Boomers never could understand just what a gift they had been handed by the Greatest Generation, and have slowly been squandering it since the Sixties.
Winston Churchill said of pre-revolution France: “The nobles had lost their energy and their faith in themselves. The clergy were divided. The King and his Court lacked both the will and the ability to govern.”
This is where we stand today, and we’re well into and perhaps even almost finished with the first stage of a revolution as identified by Hoffer, that of the rise of men of words. The men of words do the preliminary work of tearing down the existing order of things in the minds of the people. Because they are merely talkers and not doers, they are generally given wide leeway to say whatever they like, especially in America where we have a First Amendment and are justifiably proud and protective of our free speech.
So we have the talkers. The media talking heads and the ambitious politicians who stir the pot with selective reporting, exaggerated statements, and more and more outright falsehoods.
The disaffected and stagnated listened to them. A steady drumbeat of increasingly apocalyptic press releases, fundraising emails, cable news appearances, and tweets was delivered to the unemployed, the retired, and the fearful, until their fear and anger gave vent. Now the the men of words are backpedaling, saying that the mob invasion of the Capitol is inexcusable, indefensible, and they do not condone it.
Well, what did they think would happen, I ask? You cannot simultaneously claim that an election was stolen, that this represents a existential threat to the nation, and that the courts have denied any recourse, while also saying that your listeners should sit by peaceably. If the law is unjust, then defiance of the law is just.
Josh Hawley, Ted Cruz, and every other Senator and Representative who objected to the lawful process of counting the Electoral College ballots are like Roper in A Man For All Seasons. They wish to cut down the trees of the United States Constitution and dozens of courts who found absolutely no evidence of voter fraud on a scale anywhere close to what would have been necessary to steal the election.
And now they have cut down those trees (in the minds of their supporters, at least) and the wind has begun to blow, and for what? To defeat the Devil? No, just to keep one ineffectual doddering old man from replacing another ineffectual doddering old man in the Oval Office.
So here we are, respect for the Law, respect for each other’s rights, gratitude for what Jefferson and Madison gave us in 1788 and Lincoln and Grant saved for us in 1865 have been all but destroyed.
Once the men of words have done their foolish work, the decks have been cleared for the men of action. The men who will make the trains run on time, as they said of Mussolini. There is only one way back from this that does not lead inexorably to America falling at home to the totalitarianism it has faced and defeated abroad so many times.
We need good men and women of action or we will have evil ones.
Our constitutional order must be respected, defended, and restored, because it provides the only human defense against totalitarianism. That means that the legislative bodies of government, from city councils, to state houses, to the Congress, must begin once again to fulfil their duties to listen to the people and respect the system of the founders.
Government must be shown to work for the people. The roads must be paved, the budgets must be balanced, waste and fraud must be dealt with, and a new generation of leaders must find the courage to break out of the old, ossified trenches of partisan warfare to deal with immigration, health care, criminal justice, and all the other problems that face the United States of America.
And each and every individual in public life must remember that what is sauce for the goose is sauce for the gander. We have seen the parties swap their talking points with each other like clockwork. When Obama was president Republicans were for balanced budgets and limited executive power, right up to January 20, 2017. Conversely, Democrats were for the Pen and Phone until it was Donald Trump wielding those two implements in the Oval Office.
No more. We must treat our laws and traditions as though they apply to all, rather than as cudgels to be wielded against our opponents.
And how do we do this? We must inspire a new Cause, a Cause of good and not of evil. In opposition to the extreme right and extreme left we must stand boldly for an America that is great because America is good. An America that deserves to be defended and preserved so that each may live peaceably with their neighbors.
It starts at the bottom. It starts with you. It starts with me. And it starts with local communities. Evil mass movements are top-down affairs. A movement for good must start in each individual human heart, because only good and virtuous hearts who have a community to turn to will be able to resist the siren call of mobocracy.
So begin to rebuild. Rebuild yourself, rebuild a friend, rebuild an institution. The evil men of action will be defeated by the good men and women of action.
As a final note, even if we succeed this time, which I dearly hope we do, I also know that someday the United States will go the way of Rome. Because there is only one eternal country, and as the words of Sir Cecil Spring Rice’s moving hymn state:
Her fortress is a faithful heart
Her pride is suffering
And soul by soul and silently
Her shining bounds increase
And her ways are ways of gentleness
And all her paths are peace
That hymn is I Vow to Thee My Country, one of a few “unofficial” English national anthems. If you’ve never heard it, give it a listen.
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