Dear Friends,
It seems to me, the quality of mercy of our rulers is hard and sharp, but they expect and demand from us a soft and easy mercy, this is the way of a despot and not a human hearted legislator. The adage, “Ignorance is no excuse under the law…” speaks to this truism, in that those of us who don’t write law and have only a very limited access to knowledge of the law, are held to every word and letter, but those who write law, adjudicate law and enforce law, have as a ready excuse ignorance, as a means to escape the punishments of the law. Moreover, the law grows like a Kudzu vine smothering every human endeavor with strings that bind, so that we need permission from our rulers to do anything, yet they have total freedom of action, even to the point of scoffing at our calling for Constitutional limits. This has become so pervasive, even a blind and deaf man could see and hear there is despotism, while the “learned and wise” claim there is ever greater liberty because in our society today, perversions are rife.
I say “rulers” because those who hold elected office are no longer republican in spirit, polity in action or human hearted in mind, they rule us as Dionysus did Syracuse. When a legislator is above the law, they are no longer a representative but a ruler in definition even if they call themselves a representative. Like in the days of Rome after the republic ceased to exist, the Praetorian guard and emperor called Rome a republic but like today, to call the Roman empire or Western civilization a republic is like calling a fish a bird, calling it so does not make the fish able to fly nor does the name change the nature of the object.
Mercy is no longer in the vernacular of government the term they like to use is justice while justice is the last thing they seek. Thrasymachus said it best that the “great men” in society are not just and should not be just, they should only claim to be just as a means of controlling the “little people” who only seek to live their lives in peace. Thrasymachus’ great men are the equivalent of our senators, Presidents and judges, they seek to appear just but in reality are not just. This is because justice requires as a prerequisite, mercy. Justice without mercy is not justice but injustice. In other words, justice is an objective good, not a subjective one, our rulers have made justice a subjective good.
Our rulers are daily caught in one scandal or another, when they are, a careful examination of their every excuse is ignorance of the law, and their ignorance requires from us mercy. President Obama claims ignorance of scandal, ignorance of the law and ignorance of our Constitution almost every day. Since he is ignorant of the law we are supposed, and many of us do, forgive his transgressions in supplying arms to Mexican drug lords and Islamic terrorists. When he claimed he learned about this or that scandal from the papers as the rest of us did, he is claiming ignorance of what is going on in his administration and when he calls for us to relinquish our Constitutional Rights for political expediency he is claiming ignorance of our founding ethos. His calls to ignorance are met by our mercy.
If you or I were caught breaking whatever arcane regulation however, no matter how esoteric or absurd, we are held to that regulation by the full weight of the government, no mercy and no quarter is given us. Encroach a newly defined wetland and face severe punishment, ignorance is no excuse for us, but it is a perfectly valid excuse for them. When Tim Giethner and Charlie Rangle were caught chiseling on their taxes they claimed ignorance, you or I would have faced penalization for far less. Hillary Clinton claimed ignorance about the Benghazi terrorist attack on the anniversary of 911, having a private e server for her government emails, FBI records in her possession among a host of other crimes you or I would face jail time for, but was given the mercy she denies you and I. Bernie Sanders claimed ignorance when he became embroiled in the House Banking scandal weeks after his election into that office… the list is endless of examples where the elite claimed ignorance of the law and were given the mercy they deny us.
Growing law and our increasing ignorance of it diminishes our liberty wearing it away like water erodes salt. Every day more regulations are written outside the Constitutionally prescribed means in the dark of the bureaucracy and laws are passed without our rulers even reading them. Darkness is rapidly descending on our government and conceals it’s workings more every day. Today it is impossible for anyone to know all the laws, regulations and ordinances we are subject to but we are held to them by an iron fist, and everyone knows and iron fist lacks mercy, it is naked power.
When a people are held to the law, while the lawgivers are not, it is absurd to claim the people live in liberty. Call it what you will but naming a fish a bird does not make it so, their natures are vastly different. Moreover, to call despotism liberty is merely a Machiavellian scheme to create a system of injustice by deceit. The fact is further proven by the fact our rulers demand our mercy for their ignorance without reciprocal mercy given us for ours, despite the fact they pass the law and we are increasingly kept in the dark of it. When a people are subject to laws they not allowed of know, while those that make the laws are not, in a system where mercy is only given the the elite and the people are denied mercy, when justice is for appearances not universal… the darkness of despotism has covered the land, regardless what it is called. It can be said that the quality of mercy is hard and sharp…
Sincerely,
John Pepin
