In history this week:
1993 - Voting for Eritrea's independence.
After a long history of foreign rule and decades of war, the East African country of Eritrea began three days of voting on a referendum to make official its independence from Ethiopia. Britannica
1906 - Russian Tsar Nicholas II promulgated the Fundamental Laws, which marked the end of unlimited autocracy but fell short of the reforms promised in the October Manifesto. Britannica
Law & Order
There are different things people mean when they talk about the words “law” and “order.”
Dictionaries offer several definitions for “law”, mostly either social laws for how a person or group may behave, or natural laws like gravity or entropy. Natural laws apply to everything: social laws can’t change gravity, or that the earth is roundish (which has a lot to do with gravity).
Order is about structure - how things are arranged, and the act of arranging things. Rules and laws can change what an order is like - arranging by the alphabet from the beginning to the end, or the end to the beginning will change what’s first in a list, for example.
Order is about how things are done, and Law is which things are done. Like threads in a woven rug - one direction of threads is the Order, the other direction of threads is the Law. Together, they support the fabric of our society. If the threads are cut or don’t go across the whole rug, it begins to unravel and fall apart.
How laws are applied ( imagine the woven rug with lots of threads in one direction, but few crossing threads holding them in place) can demonstrate a lot about a country. For example, before the USA declared independence, England and its colonies were ruled by a king. The king made laws that did not apply the same way to everyone, and gave the king special privileges that not everyone had. The citizens protested, and were jailed, and taxed even more. The fabric of that society frayed and pulled apart. The early Americans rejected the unfair system, and chose to govern themselves, making their own laws that applied to all the people equally, rather than being ruled by the arbitrary laws of a lord.
The Americans were choosing a hard path and years of war, with England sending battle ships and thousands of soldiers to fight to keep their former colonies. There were both military and also internal battles to sort out how to work as a country, and it wasn’t all smooth sailing at first. Having England as a common enemy made it easier to find and work toward shared goals. Knowing what you don’t want can make it easier to work out what you do want. The Declaration of Independence lists a lot about what the former colonies did NOT want, and what the king and England had done wrong. With the injustices of England fresh in their minds, the new country’s leaders began to work out a government and constitution.
The US Constitution and laws are designed to be the same for all the people, with no king or dictator or nobles having special rights and privileges. Sometimes though, powerful people seek extra advantages, and use bribes of wealth or power to cheat and get a better deal or special laws for them. Every citizen can help fix those challenges to fairness by voting for laws and law-makers that protect fair treatment of everyone. If someone claims that they are above the law, or too big to fail, or they’re so important that they could kill someone and not be held responsible, that’s an example of how the kings of old behaved. You can see them for who they really are; not leaders among people, but arrogant thieves.
To help our country be safe, with laws and order to keep society working, remember to take up some responsibility and help mend the torn places, and vote for government representatives who repair, not tear, the social fabric.
Vote411.org can help you find where and how you can vote in your community.
Support your local newspaper, to get news about your community and what the local government is working to do.
Be kind, repair the tears, and be safe.