Kash Patel has been confirmed as FBI director. The New York Times says many Democrats are uneasy about Kash Patel. “Mr. Patel will now oversee the vast surveillance and investigative powers of the F.B.I.” This fearsome apparatus, formerly in Democrat hands, is now controlled by their enemies.
It's important to follow the rule "do unto others as you would have them do unto you" before it becomes "do unto others as they did unto you." What prevents justice from degenerating into vengeance is the law. The law theoretically protects all parties in society. To the extent one side burns it down is the extent that they should fear the uninhibited return stroke. In his play "Man for All Seasons," Robert Bolt put it this way.
William Roper: “So, now you give the Devil the benefit of law!”
Sir Thomas More: “Yes! What would you do? Cut a great road through the law to get after the Devil?”
William Roper: “Yes, I'd cut down every law in England to do that!”
Sir Thomas More: “Oh? And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned 'round on you, where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country is planted thick with laws, from coast to coast, Man's laws, not God's! And if you cut them down, and you're just the man to do it, do you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I'd give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety's sake!”
― Robert Bolt, A Man for All Seasons: A Play in Two Acts
Who or what was cutting down the laws? In a word, it was lawfare. The worst aspect of lawfare is that it undermined the neutrality of the law itself by turning it into a political tool. The activists who promoted lawfare undermined their own protections—and everyone else's. Lawfare occurs when supposedly impartial institutions are deliberately ideologized, infiltrated, and weaponized. Examples abound in "international law" and the open installation of partisan district attorneys. Once trusted, now they are not. The resulting collapse of impartiality leaves only revenge as a tool.
Everyone is potentially at the mercy of his enemies once his grip on power is lost. What Rudi Dutschke failed to realize when he advocated the "long march through the institutions" (German: der lange Marsch durch die Institutionen) was that the parasites would kill the institutions themselves. Lawfare would kill the law, and their conquests would be worthless. Dutschke should have read his fellow German, Carl von Clausewitz, who is said to have observed: "He who would take an enemy capital places his own at risk." Then, no one is safe.
So Kash Patel should have two tasks, which everyone, including the left, should support:
- Visit justice on the malefactors, according to evidence and law;
- Restore the law to acceptable levels of neutrality and nonpartisanship for the sake of all.
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