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Election 2000 |
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The email and article you are about to read was sent to me by my little brother's best friend. We lost my brother in September 2000- he was 46. But Tank and I still keep in touch - and I am proud to count him among my friends. His wisdom and insight helped me survive that horrible time. GOD BLESS TEXAS & TEXANS |
| I just
got through with your links regarding the West Virginia situation and am
reminded of a conclusion I came to years ago...
none of us actually own
our land/property, we just "rent" it from the government.
If you don't believe me, try refusing to pay your "rent" (aka
taxes) and see how fast you're evicted from your property just like any
other tenant. I don't like it but its been going on for more
generations than I care to count. I guess that's why I appreciate
Texas private property laws. They're not perfect but they are
generally stronger than those found elsewhere. Many of them were
created just after and as a result of the federal government's policies
during reconstruction after the Civil War. My ancestors got an
early taste of what was coming in these "modern" times.
We just wink and say "told you so"! We never disclose
what our reaction may or may not be to a given situation beyond a very
close circle of friends and family (another reconstruction lesson).
The rest of the country never heard terms like "brain police"
or "thought police" until the publication of Orwell's
"1984" and, later, Frank Zappa's Mothers of Invention
song about the brain police. It was a fact of life here 130-135 years
ago and the lessons were passed down through the generations. The following is an article by a local historian that I found interesting. The original can be found at: http://www.hearstrip.com Tank THIS IS THE ARTICLE HE SENT ME: "The will of the people, not a hyper-technical reliance upon statutory provisions, should be our guiding principle." - From the Florida Supreme Court decision on hand recounts, Election 2000 "Tiberius urged the Senate not to oppose the law, but in vain. Now he had either to accept defeat or resort to unconstitutional measures...he adopted the latter course. He proposed in the popular assembly an unprecedented step--that the tribune should be removed from office for betraying the popular cause." - M. Rostovtzeff, Rome It is one thing to read about the successive dictators who destroyed the Roman Republic - by asserting the "popular will" in most cases. Rome after all was, like, in another galaxy long ago and far away. If Caesar ignored the technicality of the law by crossing the Rubicon with an army, that's ancient history. However, when I heard and read the tortured logic that attended the certification of the Florida presidential vote, I had an attack of Roman Republican fever. Either a nation and people abide by constitutional law or they do not. Historically, fiddling with the law leads to the abyss. I was discouraged by the Florida high court, which acted as if the issue, Bush vs. Gore, justified messing with established state and federal statutes. The game itself was never worth that candle - the nation could live with either Bush or Gore, but not without strict observance of constitutional law. But then many American lawyers behave like Red Queens: "Words mean what I say they mean." If a law is inconvenient they find a way around it. Fine and dandy - but this destroys our supposedly sacred principle of the rule of law. What does the "rule of law" mean? First, it does not mean the rule of lawyers, nor jurists. It has little to do with the "will of the people," or equity or public welfare. The rule of law means observance of law as properly constituted, in short, the agreed-upon rules of the game. If such law is bad or unpopular, the people have proper ways to amend it. The rule of law is the bastion of republican government, requiring citizens, officials and magistrates to follow it without quibbling over those "nice sharp quillets" of which Shakespeare wrote. Now this is a hard view, but I am convinced it's the best one for the ages. The rule of law separates well-functioning societies from constitutional chaos. It is no accident that today every rich, democratic nation obeys the rule of law, while most of the impoverished world lives in a constitutional and legal morass. The rule is more than a mere concept. It is our foremost safeguard of political, property and individual rights. This is why we enforce covenants once made, and why our Bill of Rights is basically a list of things our government may not do no matter who wants to do them. I think few honest, non-ideologically involved constitutional lawyers would deny that the Florida Supremes attempted post-facto to amend (to them) inconvenient "technicalities" of state and federal law. In short, they tried to break new ground for counting votes. The Bush argument was that the pre-existing rules of the game must be followed. Of course, by these Bush won every count - but it was far more important that the laws be upheld than who won or lost. Presidents are ephemeral and the nation will survive them; the Republic is not. Nothing short of divine intervention should trump constitutional law as adopted by due process. In this case, the U.S. Supremes trumped Florida. Both were bad precedents: Judicial disorder breeds disorder and contempt for law itself. Noticeably, even the U.S. Supreme Court majority could hardly bring itself to enforce the law simply by stating it is the law. God hate 'em, lawyers always have to make some legalistic argument rather than state plain fact. The Roman Republic collapsed when its laws were set aside by willful men. Roman law was and is a marvelous structure, but the time came when Roman jurists stated "Princeps solutus est"- the law is what the ruler says it is. Thus law originally made by the people regressed into the rule of men. |
| Thanks for the above article Tank |
