1 post tagged “right is might”

I never knew my grandfather, but this newspaper clipping about him when he died says a lot. When I read it, I think "Wow, I want to be like this guy and want my children to be like this as well".

Funeral services were held Friday Morning, October 2, 1959 for James Burke, Taneytown’s Postmaster, died Tuesday Sept. 29, 1959 in Annie Warner Hospital, Gettysburg where he had been a patient for the past ten days. The large number of floral pieces attested to the love and esteem of his many friends. Taneytown mourns him, for he was a dedicated man – dedicated to the great American tradition that right is might. His work and achievements for the postoffice in Taneytown were a labor of love on “Jimmie’s” part and that part of him will never die. His tireless efforts to better the postal service in Taneytown will live forever in the annals of the history of the Taneytown Post Office.
 
He had the qualities of humility, patience, forbearance, dedication and kindliness. We feel a great personal loss for he was not only a great gentleman, but also a wonderful friend.

I learned a couple new things while reading this...I have always heard "right is might" but never really thought about it in the terms I found below:

The Rule of Law

There are fundamentally two types of political systems: those based on the rule of persons, and those based on the rule of law. The earliest political systems to evolve were those based on the rule of persons. Essentially, the rule of persons means "might is right"—whoever is strongest wins, and gets to make the rules, dominating those who are weaker. The rule of persons means that the political rules of society are made by persons—those persons who dominate the others through superior physical force—might is right. The various kinds of tyranny, slavery, and cannibalism are all variants of "might is right". In this kind of system, there are no stable, timeless, universal principles of right and wrong—right is whatever the tyrant of the moment decides is right. Political systems based on the rule of persons, on might is right, are systems of institutionalized violence. Societies that live by "might is right" do not live for long—they inevitably destroy themselves. Violence does not work.

Over time, people began to discover a new kind of political system, based on the rule of law. The rule of law means "right is might"—what is right and wrong does not depend on the persons dominating the society through superior physical force. Rather, there are timeless, universal principles of right and wrong that are true irrespective of whether tyrants recognize them or not. In such a society, no person is "above the law"—instead, the law is above all persons. Put another way, persons are ruled by the law, instead of the law being ruled by persons. Under the rule of law, we are not at the mercy of tyrants. Instead, the law is our protector against violence and injustice. When, and to the extent that a society lives by the principles of "right is might", it indeed becomes mighty—in the sense of healthy, flourishing, and prosperous. A society based on the rule of law is a free, just, and prosperous society.

The evolution from political systems based on the rule of persons, to political systems based on the rule of law, is not complete. While we have made tremendous progress, we still have a good distance to go. Even in our freest countries, cases of "might is right", of the rule of persons, are endemic. All modern countries suffer from systemic abuses of power. (See examples further below.)
Observe the relationship between equality before the law, and the rule of law. Thoughtful consideration shows that the rule of law is impossible without equality before the law, and vice versa. We have now observed this mutually corollary relationship between, respectively:
- the rule of law, equality before the law, voluntarism, universal standards, justice, freedom
- the rule of persons, inequality before the law, violence, double standards, injustice, unfreedom