Some of us in the United States like to believe that we are a nation guided by the rule of law. That works if the populace accepts the rule of law as a fundamental norm of behavior. What happens when the populace abandons norms of conduct that were once widely accepted as the fundamental mode of behavior? Will the rule of law continue to…
Some of us in the United States like to believe that we are a nation guided by the rule of law. That works if the populace accepts the rule of law as a fundamental norm of behavior. What happens when the populace abandons norms of conduct that were once widely accepted as the fundamental mode of behavior? Will the rule of law continue to guide people's behavior? Or will we descend into a messy "might makes right" existence? What would happen if tomorrow 49.5% of the population decided to ignore stop signs and just blow through intersections? We are currently conducting that experiment. The results will be illuminating. But illumination will occur only if we are able to learn, or re-learn, history.
Some of us in the United States like to believe that we are a nation guided by the rule of law. That works if the populace accepts the rule of law as a fundamental norm of behavior. What happens when the populace abandons norms of conduct that were once widely accepted as the fundamental mode of behavior? Will the rule of law continue to guide people's behavior? Or will we descend into a messy "might makes right" existence? What would happen if tomorrow 49.5% of the population decided to ignore stop signs and just blow through intersections? We are currently conducting that experiment. The results will be illuminating. But illumination will occur only if we are able to learn, or re-learn, history.