Fear Is Undermining Confidence in the Rule of Law
Criticism of Garland derives from impulses that further destabilize American democracy
After college I fell into a prolonged episode of grief, related to the death of my mother, that was in fact nothing compared to the fear accompanying it. I feared emotional breakdown. I feared failure. I feared insanity. I feared death.
One night on Block Island, I discussed my newfound apprehensions with an artist friend, who a week later gifted me a 3ft x 2ft drawing of a human eye with the word “FEAR” penned at the center of the pupil and iris. The image was therapeutic to me then because it was a daily reminder of my nemesis. Today, it is helping me to understand why so many commentators are undermining the rule of law with their censorious pronouncements about the FBI search of Mar-a-Lago that took place on August 8.
Two recent examples are columns by George Will in The Washington Post and David Brooks in The New York Times. Both of these writers assess the Mar-a-Lago search not from the standpoint of solidarity with the administration of justice but from overwhelming fear of chaos, violence, civil war, and the possible re-election of Trump.
In “Garland Has a Political Duty to Explain the Circus Perpetrated at Mar-a-Lago,” Will calls the FBI search a “debacle” and a “flamboyant exercise of — what? law enforcement?” He insists that the Justice Department must take into account “the social context” of the rule of law, including recognition of the “simmering suspicions of tens of millions of Americans about tentacles of the ‘deep state’ engaging in partisan skulduggery.”
Brooks’ piece “Did the F.B.I. Just Re-elect Donald Trump?” questions the action on grounds that it will either activate Trump’s base to deliver him a second term or, when and if the ex-president is arrested and imprisoned, to engage in “widespread political violence.” Brooks jockeys between the legal reality of Garland’s duties to the Constitution and the volatile political reality of Trump’s America, seeming to give them equal weight in the decision tree of what a good attorney general is supposed to do.
Such writings, energized as they are by fear, do not serve the interests of the nation. They do not reaffirm Americans’ commitment to the rule of law but instead promote panic about law enforcement as a dangerous thing when it comes to ex-presidents who would be kings. Wills and Brooks point their readers down a pathway of appeasement of crime rather than towards necessary first principles of democracy: moral courage and faith in the exercise of justice and the law.
How much better it would have been for the Constitution and the public spirit if Will had written, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself,” and Brooks, “Keep calm and carry on.”
Wills and Brooks are not unique in their equivocations about justice and their appeals to appeasement. They are two of thousands who are writing and speaking still today about the lawful search at Mar-a-Lago from a foundation of fear, fashioning seemingly rational criticisms of Garland while not acknowledging the wellspring of fright that is the true master of their words.
In 1838, in a speech entitled “The Perpetuation of Our Political Institutions,” Abraham Lincoln had much to say about the place of the fearless rule of law in overcoming authoritarian tendencies in American society.
That year, Lincoln was witnessing the spread of what he called a “mobocratic spirit” in the nation. He worried that a fatal contagion of lawlessness would set in, unopposed by the hand of justice. The worst consequence of this neglect, he cautioned, would be that Americans would relinquish their “attachment” to the Constitution and turn instead to a Napoleon, Caesar, or Alexander the Great for rescue and salvation.
The only medicine that could cure this ill state of affairs, Lincoln said, was “reverence for the laws.” Of this universal principle of self-government, he said, “let it be taught in schools, in seminaries, and in colleges; let it be written in primers, spelling books, and in almanacs; — let it be preached from the pulpit, proclaimed in legislative halls, and enforced in courts of justice.”
Today, reverence for the rule of law must be proclaimed in these forums, online, and on television and radio––without fear. There is no way to overcome the traumatic pains brought upon the nation by Trump and his abettors except to pass through them, intrepidly, bearing the torch of justice and law. This faith and devotion of Americans will work, while nothing else will.
Lincoln, who sustained the country through the great trial of the Civil War, centered his hope in this spirit. “While ever a state of feeling, such as this, shall universally, or even, very generally prevail throughout the nation,” he pledged in the 1838 speech, counseling his generation and ours to keep the constitutional faith, “vain will be every effort, and fruitless every attempt, to subvert our national freedom.”
NOTES
https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2022/08/11/merrick-garland-explain-mar-a-lago-search/
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/08/11/opinion/fbi-trump-mar-a-lago-raid.html
Good work here, Eli. It's worrisome, isn't it, when someone like Brooks questions the notion of "rule of law" in holding Trump accountable? Keep it comin'!
Fear is such a great topic to explore. Excellent, thought provoking piece, Eli.