In general, people in a society follow what is known as the rule of law. In other words, they subscribe to a system of rules and laws that are supposed to protect them, and maintain the function of a society, whatever it may be.
It should be known, at least to this author, that rules and laws are subjective, are human created, and are prone to blind spots. Some laws are made to protect and enshrine what are considered human rights. Some laws, on the other hand, were made entirely based on the idea that some humans were more equal than others.
Just because something is legal doesn’t make it ethically right. Just because something is illegal doesn’t make it ethically wrong, and while ethics are also subjective, at some point we have to hold on to some kind of structure or else there is no guidance and we get the end of the world, cats and dogs living together, mass hysteria.
I like to trot out the old no swimming example:
Suppose you were walking by a lake, and you saw a sign that said “no swimming,” but you also saw a boy out in the lake drowning, calling out for help. What would you do? Do you obey the rule that says “no swimming,” or do you break the rule to save a life?
Many people would opt to break the rule and save a life, because many people have the empathy and self-awareness to understand that in the context of the situation, the rule isn’t protecting anyone who isn’t already being harmed, and that while breaking it comes with the risk of drowning (as in you drowning while trying to rescue the boy), following it guarantees the harm of another person through inaction.
Legalism can be beneficial to keeping a society in line. Moses fell back on legalism when the Ten Commandments were used to give the people of Israel a foundation upon which to build their society and their culture.
The slightly lesser known but far more influential Hammurabi’s Code defined a complex system of order that gave structure to build a society upon a legal framework that echoes through to our own modern day legal systems.
Even though these ancient law systems made civilization more likely to flourish through the regulation of military organization, trade, and civil guidance, I think many of us can agree that they were deeply flawed in many ways.
Coveting your neighbor’s wife shouldn’t lead to stoning, for example.
Of course, all of this comes to a head in our modern political structure, especially in the United States, where religious fundamentalists have used their legalistic faith to set a dangerous precedent, one that puts millions of innocent human beings at risk.
For those of you outside the US, you may not realize just how deeply religious it is, how much of its roots are buried deep in religious sentiment and tradition. For those who don’t know, there are major factions in the US who want to make “Creationism” a class in public school.
What is Creationism? It’s the Evangelical Christian belief that God created the world in 6 days. It also goes by the name “Intelligent Design,” which is the weasel word way of trying to get it into schools. It is, simply put, religious dogma being masqueraded as a science, as an actual field of study, when it’s just a collection of myths that one group of insecure people want to force upon an entire population of children.
That is just a symptom of the greater cause.
The United States was built upon the foundation of legalism, upon the belief that while “all men are created equal,” some were quite clearly more equal than others. To be more specific: white, wealthy, land owning men were the true power behind and in front of the government.
Our police system is built upon runaway slave patrols. Slaves would break free from the plantation, head north via the Underground Railroad (a network of abolitionists who would use their homes and businesses to hide slaves as they traveled north), and these slave patrols would be deputized to go out and find them.
Those same patrols eventually became our police force here in the United States.
That same mentality still exists, and it’s why so many black people are imprisoned compared to white people, despite more white people committing crime. We are a deeply racist society, and we hide that racism, like all empires, through our laws.
Have you ever heard a Republican talk about the rule of law? Democrats do it, too, but Republicans like to call themselves the party of law and order. That legalism, that dedication to the rule of law, is exactly what I mean. The laws used against the poor, against black people, against women, against immigrants, are grossly unjust.
Bigots like to hide behind those laws as they provide cover for that bigotry, it lets them pretend they have a sense of high morality (as opposed to black folks who were accused of having low morality back in the Jim Crow days).
Legalism is a cover, and it lets the nastiest, most corrupt people hide in plain sight.
All of that is to say that I don’t subscribe to legalism. I do not follow laws I consider unjust. I ignore rules I believe are detrimental to me and beneficial to people in power. I have no interest in being a person who follows the rule of law, because I consider the rule of law to be a safe haven for scoundrels, much like organized religion (though certainly not all).
Some people would call that immoral, unethical, but I’ve seen how willingly they follow the law to eradicate entire groups of people, and to exploit the weakest and poorest among us in order to build their own fortunes into the realm of obscenity.
It’s why legalism doesn’t move me when someone says “this person broke the law!”
Well, okay, they broke the law. What law did they break and why? What is the context surrounding the need to break that law? Was it a victimless crime like corporate theft? Was it something more serious that truly does harm others? That has to be noted. Just because someone broke the law doesn’t make them deserving of death, or even scorn for that matter.
When I watch a conservative get angry because a group of protestors spray painted a police car, they’re livid because a piece of public property was damaged. Me, I just want the protesters to get out alive because I know the cops are going to beat the shit out of them and maybe even kill a few of them.
There’s a reason I believe in black liberation, in intersectional, proletarian feminism, and that’s because the rule of law was made for wealthy, comfortable white men who had amassed property and now needed protection against the very people from which they stole it.
So miss me with that “they broke the law” shit. I don’t give a fuck. Did they actually harm someone? Now we can work it out, but if it’s just a line of code on a page, something just as made up as capitalism, then I truly do not give a flying fuck.
If the laws aren’t feeding the hungry, healing the sick, giving shelter to the homeless, protecting the rights of the exploited, and reigning in the powers that be, then those laws are useless and deserve to be ignored. They deserve to be mocked.
Mock the fuck out of that legalism bullshit and start embracing humanism instead.
.Red
