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
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| Adam Zyglis |
Our “shock” from the video isn’t from realization, it was from the discomfort of being confronted with an inconvenient truth. Did we really think this was not how it was being done in the dead of the night? But we wanted solutions and we wanted them yesterday. Who, after all, didn’t want to weed out “addicts” in their neighborhood? Who didn’t hate the “bayarang media”? And who doesn’t think lawyers “deserve it”? Besides, why should we care if we weren’t “addicts” or “corrupt”?
But that’s the problem. When you discard the rule of law and favor killing as an appropriate response, you are saying “yes” to a system that respects no boundaries. It was only a matter of time for that very same system to come for you.
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