Dear Citizen,

Can you see it now?  Can you see the decay and corruption of so many of The Empire’s roots?  ‘Riots in the streets’ and ‘civil unrest’ are short clauses for a shockingly simpler truth: the rule of law has ended.

You may remember the many other times in The Empire’s past where similar disturbances happened.  It is true, there have been many rebellions, uprisings, disturbances, and violent passions played out in our shared history.  Many of them, most of them in fact, were spirited by noble goals corrupted by the lesser demons of humanity.  This phenomenon is as old as civilization, so it is not the violence to which I point.  It is the response.

 The Empire’s greatness came not from its size or influence.  It came not from its diversity, prosperity, or humanity.  It came from its principles, from which all those other characteristics flowed.  All citizens were equal before the law and all of them were equally endowed to the rights of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness.  This goal (as it was promissory and obliviously not reality when written), remained the hallmark identity of the young Empire through its fall.

You may, dear citizen, have been taught that the Empire’s founders had debated that last clause – “pursuit of happiness”.  It was in their philosophical teachings to reference the right to property in addition to life and liberty.  In the end, however, the winning phrase was believed to be an improvement because it was broad enough to include both property and agency over that property.

Regardless, to ensure these rights were not infringed upon by others, the people of The Empire had built a framework of laws to protect them.  Laws that protected the life, property, agency, and lifestyles of the citizenry.  Over the generations these laws were amended many times, almost always in the direction of better aligning equality between citizens.  All the while, the right to live freely without harmful interference from others was the sacred goal.

In the past, violent events were separated from the political movement to which they were attached.  This separation occurred in the private minds and public conversations of the citizenry, the press, and the political class.  The amendable nature of The Empire’s laws made it possible to denounce the violence and prosecute its perpetrators while simultaneously taking serious the grievances of the moment and correcting legal imbalances. 

This separation between violence and grievance is not happening anymore.  The violence is ignored, accepted, or at worst encouraged by sizeable swaths of the citizenry, the press, and the political class.  Those who hesitate to separate violence from grievance no longer believe in minimizing harmful interference by one person upon another.  Burning down someone’s place of business, demolishing someone’s vehicle, physical assault, forced speech, all of them are tolerated not because they aren’t seen as harmful – you haven’t gone that crazy – but because they are seen as justified emotional responses to the political grievance.  The grievance is legitimate, therefore the emotional responses are legitimate, and therefore the actions in the name of those emotions are legitimate. 

The legitimacy of any action in the great days of The Empire was determined by the action’s objective legality.  The legitimacy of any action now is determined by the subjective emotions of the actor.  The rule of law over.  The dual rule of law and emotion has begun. 

This rejection of the supremacy of law occurred in the minds of large numbers of The Empire’s population and will manifest itself in many ways.  Those of us who fled to Terminus saw its early signs, and I regret to inform you, dear citizen, that you will now see it in many other places too.  Harmful interferences by others upon you will now be tolerated so long as they conform to the emotional whims of large populations.  You are no longer equal individuals before the law, you are emotional creatures battling for legitimacy before the public conscience.

Doubtless, some citizens will benefit greatly from the new order and others will be greatly harmed.  These changes in status may even be a welcome reckoning for long periods of inequity, but they will be short lived.  The abandonment of the goal for equality before the law is the destruction of the very principles that made The Empire successful.  As it falls, so too shall the standing of all it’s people, and how different groups of you feel about it will make no difference.

Best of luck my friend,

Terminus