The essence of freedom

Interesting passage from a novel I'm currently reading:

"...would you like to know the most significant event in the history of freedom?"

"The American Revolution?"

"A defensible choice, a close second even, but not mine. I would choose the moment when the Roman plebians required the patricians to write down the twelve tables of the law and put them where everyone could see them--and thereby proclaimed the law supreme over the politicians. The rule of law is the essence of freedom."

I believe there's a lot of wisdom here. The Magna Carta, Mayflower Compact, the U.S. Constitution -- all were predicated on the idea of equality before the law; that no one, regardless of social status, was exempt from authority. Lex rex, as the Latin goes ("the law is king").

The powerful are rarely content with limits for long, however. Despite the Roman example above, we all know the Republic fell into Empire and despotism. Later, King George III refused to consider the colonials as equals under British law, and the American War for Independence resulted.

And now... now we live in a land where a Speaker of the House can cast a dumb look at someone who asks if their proposal is permissible under the Constitution and reply "Are you serious?" Yes, I realize her replacement directed the current session of Congress open by reading the Constitution. Honoring the forms isn't the same as perpetuating their substance. There's been a sense for some time that the influential in America are treated much differently than the "flyover people" who make up the heartland those elites disdain. After all, not every American can avoid paying their taxes until selected for a Cabinet post.

I'm no utopian. In any society, there will be those who manage to secure privilege. But these can, for the most part, be constrained in a society that is serious about accountability and equality before the law. Either the law rules, or men rule. When men rule, accountable to none but their own conscience, there is no freedom.

"You know what's wrong with the world today? People done gone and put their Bibles away. They're livin' by the law of the jungle, not the law of the land..."