The Patriot Post® · Rhetoric Has No Place in Rule of Law

Thomas Sowell: “Every society has orders and rules, but not every society has the rule of law – ‘a government of laws and not of men.’ Nor was it easy to achieve even an approximation of the rule of law. It took centuries of struggle – and lives risked and sacrificed – to achieve it in those countries which have some approximation of it today. To just throw all of that overboard because of mobs, the media or racial demagoguery is staggering. A generation that jumps to conclusions on the basis of its own emotions, or succumbs to the passions or rhetoric of others, deserves to lose the freedom that depends on the rule of law. Unfortunately, what they say and what they do can lose everyone’s freedom, including the freedom of generations yet unborn. If grand juries are supposed to vote on the basis of what mobs want, instead of on the basis of the evidence that they see – and which the mob doesn’t even want to see – then we forfeit the rule of law and our freedom that depends on it.”