No One Is Above The Law: James Comey Sacrifices Justice, National Security

Dr. Alan Keyes

by Dr. Alan Keyes:: When she served as secretary of state, Hillary Clinton occupied a position imbued with great responsibility for national security. She now seeks the presidency, wherein that responsibility is greatest of all. Whether or not she is indicted for her violation of the law, common sense insists that the facts, as FBI Director Comey has presented them, prove her unfit for the duties she aspires to assume. Moreover, according to Director Comey, those facts include false statements intended to thwart investigation of her dereliction. Did that deceit hinder the timely discovery of serious breaches of security occasioned by her laxity?

The failure to bring Mrs. Clinton's dereliction to trial has direct implications for the integrity of our nation's national security apparatus in the years ahead. On a factual basis, there is serious reason to conclude that she carelessly disregarded national security rules and regulations she was responsible for enforcing in one department. As president, she will be in overall charge of that responsibility in every department. Supporting her election to that position is so irrational it suggests insanity. In November, will a majority of the American people act so as to justify this suggestion?

Many things transpiring in our society, government, and politics these days suggest that voters will, at least in part, do so, because the balance of the public mind is so disturbed that most people will believe they have no choice. This statement is not just about their reaction to Hillary Clinton's derelict and perjurious actions. It's about the mentally and morally divided, injuriously self-conflicted character of the American people. Hillary Clinton's breaches of national security are just an instructive case in point.

There are vital precepts of justice many Americans still profess to believe in, and even take for granted, but which they themselves are also helping to eviscerate and discard. One of those precepts says that "No one is above the law." But even a cursory perusal of human history suggests that this is a statement generally contradicted by human experience. To illustrate this fact, one has only to remember the once equally well-known precept that "The king can do no wrong." This made sense because the kingly power of an absolute monarch made him the sovereign judge, jury, and executioner in every cause, but most especially his own.

Though our present ideological blinders make it difficult for us to see, this is, even now, practically the case for every government action. At the moment of implementation, the legislative, judicial, and executive powers are supposed to coincide. What makes our government's Constitution different from absolute monarchy is the division of decision-making authority, such that the coincidence of the government's powers is not brought about by one individual or group, acting on their sole authority.

Our system has worked up to now because the formal division of powers established by our Constitution has been enforced by the generally effective observance of an oath to support the Constitution. Thanks to this oath, the individuals charged with responsibility for deploying the different powers of government (legislative, executive, judicial) observe the constitutional rule that makes them distinct. However, for some decades now, the effective power of this oath has been on the wane.

As president, Bill Clinton violated it, perjuring himself with the intention of thwarting investigation into his conduct. When a majority of senators refused to remove Mr. Clinton from office, some relied on the notion that doing so would go against the "polls," which supposedly reflected the will of the people. These senators were rightly refuted with the argument that "No one is above the law," including the people of the United States. Now the people, in their collective capacity, are the sovereign authority that ordains and establishes the Constitution – which law is the Supreme Law of the Land – but even the people themselves are not above the law. The law to which their sovereignty is subject has a source higher than their own authority.

Throughout most of our existence as a nation, this conclusion was literally regarded as self-evident. From the beginning, America's patriots acted in light of the self-evident truth that human law is no law at all except as it respects and conforms to the will of the highest sovereign, the Creator, God. His self-determined rule informs the very nature of all Creation, including human nature. This is the primordial premise of the Declaration of Independence, in which Americans first articulated the logic that establishes their just claim to self- government.

In the Declaration, the people claim that the "laws of nature and of Nature's God" entitle them to assume sovereignty over their own affairs. They reject the abusive rule of monarchic absolutism, on the grounds that every human sovereign power is subject to the sovereignty of the Creator, including the sovereignty of the people. But though many Americans still hold to this logic, which acknowledges and respects the sovereignty of God, most of our elites appear to have abandoned it.

These elites have embraced the notion that human will and passion supersede the empirically obvious authority and intention of God's natural law when it comes to marriage and the family. Thus, they have cast aside the evident natural rule that directly informs human procreation. They are seeking quickly to make any resistance to this violation of natural law a criminal offense. But if there is no higher law that disciplines human judgment when it comes to the most obvious common good of all humanity (the perpetuation of the species), what sense does it make to pretend that such law exists at all?

Natural law is enacted by the Creator in order to preserve and perpetuate human nature. The Constitution's separation of government powers serves much the same purpose. It is intended to secure the God-endowed unalienable rights that arise with the obligation to pursue that purpose. But since there is no effective human law without the proper separation and balance of human governmental powers, how can it be lawful to systematically hold in check those powers, as the U.S. Constitution seeks to do, except there be a higher law that governs human nature, the law by which God takes account of the requirements of our distinct existence.

But if the law of God is not in effect in human affairs – indeed seemingly does not exist in them – what sense does it make to pretend that human power is effectively limited, in respect of our humanity, by any law at all? Why are human beings any different than stones or stalks of corn?

As they have throughout human history, people who think they already possess sufficient power to impose their will upon the rest of us are now increasingly acting to do so in the United States. It is the age-old story of government of, by, and for the elitist few, acting for their own advantage and indulging their own passions. Because of America's particular historic circumstances, these elites were content to maintain the illusion of "democracy" until they waxed strong enough to dispense with it. But their disregard for any rule but power itself becomes more evident every day.

Director Comey's sacrifice of both justice and national security to Hillary Clinton's ambition is a case in point. But so is the imposition of "gay marriage" by judicial fiat; the enforced abandonment of sexual propriety in our public toilet facilities; and the disregard for the retained right of the people (the Ninth Amendment) and the reserved powers of the states respectively, or the people (the 10th Amendment), when it comes to the defense of innocent life. Is it just a coincidence that, not long before becoming FBI director, James Comey joined in a brief supporting gay marriage, submitted to the U.S. Supreme Court as it considered the Obergefell decision?

The problem isn't just contempt for the rule of law. It's the elitist faction's commitment to the age-old lie that there is no basis for law or justice except the possession of power. Above all, it's their rejection of the self-evident truth that God's superlative authority and power constitute the ultimate rule of law – the rule by which He made us free so long as, in our use of freedom, we respect the specific natural law that obliges us to take care of our humanity.
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Alan Keyes served as Asst Secretary of State for International Organizations and as Ambassador to the United Nations Economic and Social Council under President Ronald Reagan. He ran for president in 1996, 2000 and 2008, and was a Republican nominee for the U.S. Senate for Maryland in 1988 and 1992, and for Illinois in 2004 against Democrat Barack Obama. He also writes for Renew America where he first shared this article and blogs at LoyaltoLiberty.com.

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