"This is the State above the Law/ The State that exists for the State alone.”

At Cat Rotator's Quarterly

That sounds all too dreadfully familiar, doesn’t it? The State above the Law, the state that does whatever it “needs” to for the good of the State, however defined. Or acts to impose the General Will in order to free everyone, because true freedom is obeying the will of the People. The little people, the deplorables, the rabble, don’t need to know this. They can’t be trusted to know what’s good for them. They betray their own best interests by voting against their interests. So wise leaders are needed. Just because he was elected doesn’t mean he’s really the president, and we need to get rid of him before he “damages” the State.

The State always knows better, or so devoted loyalists and fans of the State claim. “Only the government should be able to…” is probably a good test question. Once you get past “conduct international diplomacy,” and “wage war,” and “have nuclear weapons,” and possibly “set international tariffs and export fees,” arguments start getting warm. I lean toward “Is it in the Constitution, explicitly in the Constitution? Then probably not.” Others prefer, “If it is not explicitly prohibited by the Constitution, the State needs to do it/should do it/can do it better.” And then I think of Kipling’s lines.

The State above the Law has been in the news far too much recently. By far too much, I mean the very idea of a federal agency’s members discussing forming a group to work against the president in order to end his or her term in office should be unthinkable. But apparently, some employees of the State believed that their idea of the State was above the law and must be preserved from any threat, in this case the head of the executive branch. One is reminded of Communist Party of the USSR members planning how to retire Khrushchev, except without the pension and nice dacha. Because if the President is bad for the State, he is bad for everything else and must be removed, even if duly elected by the people and/or the Electoral College.

You want a revolution, civil war, more Trump ... or a man on a White Horse?  This is how you get it.