🔗 Share this article

The domestic and foreign policies – from the effort to overturn the election five years ago to recent actions and threats – weaken not only national and global jurisprudence. The implications are broader.

They jeopardize the fundamental meaning of what we mean by.

The moral purpose of a functioning society is to forestall the dominant from harming and taking advantage of the less powerful. Without this, we could find ourselves locked in a state of nature where survival of the strongest wins.

This principle is central of the Declaration and Constitution. This is also the foundation of the postwar international order supported by the United States, built on international cooperation, democracy, individual liberties, and the supremacy of law.

However, it is a delicate principle, frequently ignored by those who seek to abuse their authority. Maintaining it necessitates that the powerful have enough integrity to abstain from seeking temporary advantages, and that the public hold them accountable when they fail.

Absolute power does not make right. It results in turmoil, disruption, and conflict.

Whenever people or corporations or countries that are advantaged prey upon those that are less so, the framework of civilization unravels. If these actions are left unchecked, the system fails. Allowing it to persist, the world can fall into chaos and war. It has happened before.

Our current reality is a global community with deepening divides. Influence and wealth are held by fewer hands than in modern history. This invites the elite to exploit the disadvantaged because they act with a sense of above the law.

The wealth of a handful of tycoons is difficult to fathom. The power of big tech, big oil, and large defense contractors covers a vast portion of the world. Advanced technology is poised to consolidate economic and political clout even more. The destructive power of the major powers is unmatched in the annals of time.

Enabled by political allies and a sympathetic judicial body, the highest office has been turned into the most powerful and unaccountable agent of state power in history.

Combine these factors and you perceive the threat.

A clear connection ties past breaches of norms to present-day provocations. These were founded upon the hubris of invincibility.

You see parallel dynamics in the actions of other powers: in territorial invasions, in coercive diplomacy, and in the rampant monopolization by industrial titans.

Yet, raw power does not establish right. It produces instability, revolution, and war.

Historical evidence demonstrates that rules and conventions to limit the powerful also safeguard them. Absent these limits, their insatiable demands for increased control and resources in time lead to their downfall – along with their corporations, nations, or empires. And risk global conflict.

This blatant lawlessness will plague the nation and the world – and the very idea of a rules-based order – for the foreseeable future.