Sometimes there is no satisfaction in being right. Only sadness for what has happened to our country — and to the concept of “equal justice under law”, to which I dedicated my professional life .
In 2018, I wrote about the disregard of the rule of law by the FBI in its treatment of Democrat vs Republican politicians.
I quoted legal scholar Frederick Bastiat that “It is easy to conceive that instead of being a check on injustice, [law] becomes its most invincible instrument.” In 1850 Bastiat was writing hypothetically. In 2016 America it became reality.
Last week special prosecutor John Durham released his 300+ page report on his investigation of the FBI efforts to prevent or overturn the 2016 election of Donald Trump, by using an illegal wiretap and lying to judges. Referring to the Trump/Russia collusion hoax, perpetrated by the FBI in conjunction with the Clinton campaign, this was Durham’s conclusion:
“T]he [Justice] Department and the FBI failed to uphold their important mission of strict fidelity to the law in connection with certain events and activities described in this report…”
There is no more damning charge that can be made against a law enforcement individual, or agency, than failing to uphold the law. Upholding the law is the very reason they exist.
Back in 2018 I lamented that so many of our citizens were not only seemingly unconcerned that federal agencies engaged in partisan politics, but that a disturbing number actually approved of and encouraged it. I opined the reason so many are willing to accept corruption of our basic concepts of law in pursuit of political ends was because our education system.
Our youth have been indoctrinated.
Since I wrote that opinion, the pandemic has revealed more of the insidious danger in our public schools.
To truly understand that danger, we must look to history. Let’s begin with the fate of Napoleon Bonaparte’s “Old Guard” at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.
The “Guard” were Bonaparte’s elite soldiers. He committed them to the battle in a futile effort to stave off defeat. According to French military lore, the last of the ‘Guard’ still standing at the end of the battle were surrounded and asked to surrender. Their commander is said to have replied to the surrender offer, “The Guard dies — it does not surrender!”… whereupon they were annihilated.
Whether that finale’ actually happened is a matter of debate among historians. But the truth is irrelevant. As a reporter in the movie “The Man Who Shot Liberty Valence” said, “When the legend becomes fact — print the legend!”
The legend of the “Guard” preferring death to surrender became an article of faith in the French army. That legend was a significant component of the esprit d’ corp that enabled the French army to withstand the German onslaught for eleven months during the horrific carnage of Verdun in WWI.
Yet just a generation later at the beginning of WWII , the French capitulated to the Germans in just six weeks — and the French army has became a punch line. What happened in just one generation?
The stunning French defeat in 1940 was attributable to several factors, not the least of which was the incompetence of the army high command that had become politicized (just as ours has become today).
America’s ‘woke’ military of 2021 has echoes of the heavily politicized French military that was routed by the Nazi Germans in 1940.
But there was another factor as well. The detrimental influence of the French teacher unions on their education system.
In her history of France between the World Wars, The Moral Disarmament of France, University of California professor Mona Siegel documents how the leading French teachers’ union — the Syndicat national des instituteurs (SN ) — made disavowal of patriotism a centerpiece of the curriculum taught to French children.
Those children, as young men, populated the 1940 defeated French army.
In assessing the cause of the rapid collapse of the army, a French general acknowledged the “moral decay” of the French troops, and told the head of SN, “You are partially responsible for this defeat!”
Like the French children indoctrinated by the teacher unions between the World Wars, our children’s education about our traditions of freedom have been undermined by ‘progressive’ teachers in our public schools.
Thomas Paine in his seminal treatise ‘Common Sense’, written at the time of the American Revolution, said “Government, even in its best state, is but a necessary evil”. That sentiment is at the heart of the Declaration of Independence, which declares to the world,
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. — That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed…”
Governments exist to secure our rights — period.
But it seems too many of our citizens think it exists to lie, cheat, and coerce others into line with their political agenda. That was the modus operendi of totalitarian governments under Stalin, Hitler, and Mao – and in my time in school we were taught that. Apparently not anymore.
Ask high school, or even college, students today about the principles of limited government enshrined by our founding fathers and many of them will tell you our founders were racist slave owners — so our founding principles are corrupt and obsolete.
Our education system is failing to teach the values of freedom this country was founded on. The consequence is a willingness of too many of our citizens to accept corruption at the highest levels of the principle of “equal justice under law”.
Gary Beatty lives between Florida and Pagosa Springs. He retired after 30 years as a prosecutor for the State of Florida, has a doctorate in law, is Board Certified in Criminal Trial law by the Florida Supreme Court, and is now a law professor.