| So... Kim Davis, County Clerk in Kentucky, Marriage Licenses,1st Amendment, Rule of Law - are these all principles to stand up for? Are they all in conflict? What is this all about? The initial issue is not whether she has the right to act according to her convictions - she absolutely does - but whether it is proper for her convictions, religious or otherwise, to decide which of her elected office’s duties and powers as defined by law, that she will, or will not, choose to carry out - or more simply: Does the nature of her office allow for her to make such choices? But that’s only the first question, and if you pursue no further questions, then any stand you might take, as I suspect she has, will necessarily be a stand for your personal preferences, not a principled stand. |
"There are men, in all ages, who mean to exercise power usefully; but who mean to exercise it. They mean to govern well; but they mean to govern. They promise to be kind masters; but they mean to be masters. They think there need be but little restraint upon themselves. Their notion of the public interest is apt to be quite closely connected with their own exercise of authority. They may not, indeed, always understand their own motives. The love of power may sink too deep in their own hearts even for their own scrutiny, and may pass with themselves for mere patriotism and benevolence. " --- Speeches of Daniel Webster, Member of Congress, U.S. Senator from Massachusetts, and United States Secretary of State. |
Of course, a number of people do start and stop asking questions with only that first question asked, partly because it quickly appears to them as if their principles are in conflict, and that scares them off. But can such principles, if valid, be in conflict?
No. So.... how's that again?
If you have a situation involving several valid principles - such as Religious convictions, Rule of Law, Constitution, etc. - and one or more of them seem to be in conflict with the others, then, assuming your principles are valid and rooted in what is True (and thus complementary), then some other issue is forcing them into an arrangement that has turned them against themselves. And please, if your principles are valid, for God’s sake don't cheer one at the expense of the others – Religious Liberty vs Rule of Law for instance - that can only destroy you as you use one leg to kick the other leg out from under you. Something is distorting the situation, and what you need to do is follow that first question up with others to identify the source of the distortion that is turning you against yourself, and put your house back in order.
If you don’t take care of first things first, then your attempt to take a principled stand, especially where your Principles, or where the idea of Principles as such are questioned or ridiculed, is going to be a dicey affair. In situations where principles are being pushed to the background, if not out of the scene altogether, you quickly find yourself in a pragmatic quicksand of disintegrated interests, and trying to find a reasonable position to take depends more and more upon which details seem more immediately advantageous for you to favor (which is one of the hallmarks and results of positivist, Pro-Regressive law), and it won’t be long before you find yourself either casting away the one principle you were hoping to defend, or repudiating all of the others you live by in defending it - and eventually you will do both, and lose all.
So before jumping on anyone's bandwagon, some work needs to be done on evaluating just what is going on and why.
