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The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
In case you missed it, President Trump has issued executive orders targeting two major D.C. law firms that he doesn’t like. The order against Perkins Coie is here. Do read it. If it doesn’t make your skin crawl, you may want to audit a class in civics.
Building and razing the Constitutional Arch
A self-sustaining government is like an arch. (Fittingly, a capitol dome is an arch rotated through 360 degrees.) An arch cannot stand without a keystone. The keystone of our democracy is the rule of law. Without it, government of the people, by the people, and for the people cannot long endure. By attacking lawyers, Trump attacks the rule of law and threatens to end our constitutional government.
The Talmud instructs Jews to “build a wall around the Torah.” By creating rules that are more exacting than those in the Torah, Jews would be sure not to violate the latter. Where the Torah says that a kid must not be boiled in its mother’s milk, the Jewish dietary laws say that Jews must not eat meat and dairy in the same meal. The dietary laws build a wall around the rule in scripture.
No one has yet figured out how to build a wall around the rule of law. The problem is so old that it is most often stated in Latin: “Quis…