In a recent American Thinker article, Are ‘White People Committed to Being Villains’?, Raymond Ibrahim addresses a very important issue: there is a societal movement to place the blame for the ills of society on white people and racism. The theory is that white people are evil because they are white. Ibrahim argues that when white people behaved as oppressors, it was because they had the power to do so, not because they were white. Per Ibrahim:

Europeans did not defeat and uproot American Indians, enslave Africans, and colonize the rest because whites lived according to some unprecedented bellicose creed innate to whites and alien to nonwhites.  Quite the contrary: they did so because they — as opposed to natives, blacks, etc. — were able to do so.  That is the fundamental difference.

It is about who has the power. In a perfect world, people in power could decide to be moral and good. Power does not automatically lead to abuse of others.

The problem is an innate depravity of men combined with power. Men are not basically good. Left to their own desires and wants, they will take what they want from others because taking things by power is easier than working for them. It is the purpose and value of religious and moral teaching throughout life to override that default setting and build a desire to be good.

That is the role of  “the rule of law” in a successful society. When the rule of law breaks down, the natural depravity rules.

Ibrahim writes that mortal failings are the sources of societal woes; it is not because one race is inherently evil. It is because in the ebb and flow of history, people of similar backgrounds gaining power over others would act outside of moral law to gain the upper hand. It is not about the race. It is about who has the power. Without a system of enforced law against the immoral use of power to control the lives of the people, those in power will take that control.

Immoral people in power will find ways to use the law itself to support and expand immorality. The rule of law only works to create a better and more moral society if the laws reinforce that good behavior. If the laws create incentives for antisocial behaviors, then those behaviors will become more common and society will suffer. Our Constitution was designed to prevent this perversion of the law, but these constitutional restraints are ignored because the law of men overrides them.

From its beginning, our country has been mostly white. The framers sought to create a system in which the political power was concentrated at the lower levels to protect the rights of individuals, and thereby diminish the ability for a big government to immorally exercise power over the people. It was not perfect, but it was a good start. Mostly white people fought a war that resulted in ending slavery. Ending slavery may not have been the reason that the war was started, but ending slavery was certainly one of its outcomes.

However, mostly white people also began efforts to pervert the law to their own liking and to give themselves more power. It was not because they were white. It was because they were in power and happened to be mostly white. This perversion of the moral restraint of law has continued with little interruption.

We are approaching an inflection point. The law is now being used to change who has the power and there seems to be no stopping this change. The race, or sex, or ethnicity of those who will become the new powerful does not matter. Those in power will use the law they have created to abuse those without power. It is the natural order without restraint. The slavery of perverted law will continue, and only the masters will change.  

Can we reset to the course our framers created of individual liberty and limited government? That is the system that led to a defeat of the previous slavery. All it will require is the desire our framers had, to live in a country defined by moral law and restraint rather than a system in which immoral desires rule. The race of those in power won’t matter.

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