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To my friends in the rural town where I grew up: I am going to the No Kings march, and I will be carrying my American flag and my sign that says “Defend the Rule of Law.”
When you start seeing the propaganda videos and claims that protesters are anti-American or worse, please think of me.
Like you, I grew up aware of the shadow of the authoritarian Soviet Union. We all were glad we didn’t live in an oppressive system like that, where there was no freedom of speech, political opponents were imprisoned, books were banned and journalists could be arrested for doing their jobs.
What we had, and the Soviet Union didn’t, all boiled down the rule of law. It just means the government can’t put you in jail without having to prove, in a court of law, by vote of a jury of your peers, that you broke a specific law at a specific time and place. The rule of law requires that we have a professional police force charged with upholding the law, where corrupt officers are thrown out. The rule of law requires professional prosecutors who bring charges based on the evidence — not political vendettas. All of the other things that make us a free people rely on that — like freedom to speak our minds without government censorship and the right to vote for our leaders using an exemplary election process.
When I was in college in 1983, I had the opportunity to travel to the Soviet Union with a college jazz band on a peace tour. A refugee from the Soviet Union had given the band leader a stack of about 15 books to give to friends back home who couldn’t get them because they were banned. The titles included the U.S. Constitution and two George Orwell novels. As it happened, attempts to deliver the books fell through several times, and I was asked to try during one of our last days in Moscow. Being young, and foolishly unafraid, I agreed.
I delivered the books to our friend in a large public square. While I was waiting for my friend, I was approached by another man. After determining that the only language we shared was English, he asked me a lot of questions, like where I was from, who I was meeting and what was in the bag. I became nervous and instinctively spoke in broken English, indicated that I preferred German, and deflected his questions. After my friend arrived, the man questioned him, too.
