There exists a popular misconception that must be corrected before
anything.
In repeating the saying that the democracies adhere to a system
that's governed by the rule of law, a false impression is given to the effect
that the other regimes, of whatever stripe, have no laws to adhere to.
The truth however, is that everybody has laws. In addition, all
are made to sound exemplary on paper when looked at in passing. But differences
between the regimes do appear when you do a rigorous analysis of the entire
code, focusing on the weaknesses, loopholes and contradictions that can be
exploited when the law is disobeyed or disregarded or violated at the time of its
implementation.
Most nations have a constitution that guides the lawmakers in
charge of enacting the statutes that respond to the needs of the moment, and
rescind the laws that become obsolete. The constitution itself is a living
document in the sense that it allows for its own amendment when reality changes
with the passage of time. This indicates that the constitution, as well as the
statutes written in concordance with it, flow from a central philosophy of life
that is a reflection of the society they serve.
When you think of the philosophies of life that may have inspired
the various constitutions — written or passed on from generation to generation
by tradition — you'll find that they boil down to two models.
One model is based on the idea that progress is made because we
are genetically programmed to fight for survival, and that survival is reserved
for the fittest. This philosophy condones the elimination of the weak based on
the premise that it is a good way to save the available resources for the
strong who will go on to produce even more strength for society. And this is a
prerequisite for progress to continue.
The other philosophical model is based on the idea that physical
strength may have reigned supreme when our evolutionary process depended on
physical strength to provide us with the necessities of life; namely
sustenance, protection and reproductive rights. But when the brain expanded
enough to endow us with reason and speech, a qualitative change rendered
obsolete the idea of survival to the physically fit.
Given that reason makes it possible to produce the massive work
known as the complete works of Shakespeare, a product that is meant to enchant
millions of souls — as well as produce the tiny equation E=MC2, a product that
packs a punch destructive enough to kill millions of souls, there is no sense
to even try dressing a hierarchy of physical fitness or any kind of fitness. Survival
for the entire species now depends on the cooperation among all the factions
that define us collectively as thinking and communicating human beings of
whatever physical attributes.
Unfortunately, there are people alive today who still hang on to
the ideas that used to prevail in the late nineteenth and early twentieth
centuries concerning the principle of survival to the fittest. To give the
discredited ideas a sense of viability, these people no longer speak of
physical fitness. What they do instead is conflate the idea of being fit to do
physical combat with the idea of being fit to do moral combat.
For this to work, they identified celebrated warriors of the past,
such as Winston Churchill, and held them up as role models, they urge us to
emulate when deciding how to proceed in our relations with a foreign power. And
this leads us to the article that came under the title: “Things we know that
aren't so,” written by Clifford D. May, and published on March 5, 2019 in The
Washington Times.
What the writer is doing, is demonstrate with the use of examples,
that every approach “we” employed to change the bad behavior of "nasty regimes,” have failed to produce the desired result. Clifford May began with
the assertion, “it's been observed that what gets us into trouble is what we
know that isn't so”.
He went on to say that: modernity, justice, historical
determinism, and the idea that nations evolve to become liberal democracies,
have all been proven false. As well, wealth does not necessarily lead to demand
for political power. And once democratic powers are acquired, they can just as
easily be reversed.
Added to this misery, according to Clifford May, is the reality
that ideology and/or theology can at times trump the appeal of the homo
economicus that’s supposed to burn inside each of us.
What all of this means to Clifford May, is that unless we go on
the offense and preemptively defeat all the nasty regimes out there, and
maintain them in a defeated state at all time, they will rise and defeat us,
and will have no qualms maintaining us in a defeated state at all time. To him,
this is a world of dog eat dog, where you either eat or be eaten.
So we ask the question: Despite its abhorrent construct, can this
philosophy of life be considered solid enough to stand on its own? The answer
is no; it cannot because it disregards the reality that those whom Clifford May
calls nasty regimes, are the ones adhering to the rule of law. And this happens
to be the body of international laws put down by them, working together with
the United States of America.