Does that sound stupid? Good, because it is moronic.

Yesterday morning. I watched a video by one of my favorite sites, TL;DR News. To say I was disappointed is an understatement. TLDR is left leaning but has always tried hard to be fair in its reporting. Fair enough, you can’t ask for more than a good faith effort. Yesterday’s video wasn’t even close and the sad thing is I doubt they realized it.

Well, if they see my comment, they’ll know. Can’t expect better if you won’t put in the work to provide both constructive criticism and praise for work well done. Effective activism for the win!

So why am I mentioning it now? The problem is pervasive on the political Left both here in the US and in Europe. Somehow, it became rational to the Left to justify flagrant violations of law and of the democratic principles they sometimes vehemently claim in the name of ‘righting’ someone else’s wrongs.

Didn’t anyone ever tell you guys that two wrongs don’t make a right? Moral negatives don’t become positives – they’re always additive, never multipliers.

For those who can’t remember basic algebra, adding or subtracting two negative numbers does NOT change the sign; the answer remains negative. But if you multiply two negatives, you get a positive. Works for numbers, not morals.

Multiplying moral negatives just makes a MUCH bigger mess. Don’t do that.

The political Left has not gotten this memo.

The issue TLDR was taking on was Poland’s recent political disruptions following a new leftist coalition government. So far, so good, nothing wrong with covering a major story that needs coverage. The problem occurs when TLDR mentions every scandal in the right leaning party’s past and never mentions even one from the leftist party now in power. Worse, TLDR uses accusations of past misdeeds and a current questionable act to paint the outgoing right leaning party as the sole cause for the demonstrations launched in response to the heavy handed actions of the new leadership.

Basically, TLDR glossed over the very questionable intervention in the Polish national press by the leftist government and blamed the former government exclusively.

At best, that’s amateuristic nonsense but TLDR isn’t a new channel. No, it’s pure bias, plain and simple.

This matters for two reasons. First, it is misleading and confuses the issue. I don’t know which party did what when and I don’t know which side is correct. The right leaning party could be total jerks and deserve to be prosecuted. That’s not what’s going on, however and muddying the waters by making excuses for either side in what is supposed to be objective reporting is just malpractice.

The second is the important one. The rule of law is meaningless if it can be discarded on ANY whim. Doesn’t matter that you’re trying to ‘fix’ the system because what you’re actually doing is destroying the system of justice.

Unjust law and unjust enforcement of the law undermine the legitimacy of the rule of law. Period. Doing the wrong thing for the right reason just adds up to the wrong thing ninety-nine percent of the time. Done unilaterally, it’s wrong 100% of the time.

The rule of law doesn’t mean a country has laws – every tinpot dictatorship does that. The rule of law means that the laws apply equally to everyone. Everyone, from the President to your grouchy self stands equal before that law. Who you are doesn’t matter, rule of law means every single person is entitled to being treated equally to every other person when they walk into a courtroom, whatever the reason.

It means more than even that. It means that the rights guaranteed by a country are guaranteed to each and every citizen of that country. No one is ‘more equal’ than anyone else. Everyone is entitled to their rights and when necessary their day in court to defend themselves. The poor widow has the right to sue the wealthy man when she believes she has been wronged. The court looks only at the facts, not the faces.

That’s what ‘justice is blind’ is supposed to mean.

Taking those rights from anyone in the name of ‘fixing’ the justice system destroys it. The deal citizens have with their country is that they will obey laws, protest to their legislators if those laws need to be changed and that the country will apply those laws fairly across the board. No matter what.

If you violate the rights of another or violate the laws of the land in order to fix the system, you’ve broken it, probably beyond repair. The rule of law only works if the people trust their government to keep up its end of the bargain.

No one will respect an unjust system. Once that respect is lost it’s nearly impossible to regain. A public that has no trust in the justice of their country will actively work to undermine it. Why not? It’s inherently unfair or worse, capricious.

The results are never pretty.

Being treated unfairly didn’t make you a better kid when your parents or teachers were unfair – did it? Why would things improve if you multiply by a million?

There is no such thing as instant in international relations or in domestic policy. Even in totalitarian systems it takes time for decisions to not only be made but also implemented. It also takes time for people to react. A few will react quickly; others will take longer to realize that they need to react. Groups, no matter how well organized, don’t react instantaneously.

Even well trained, well prepared military units have to get their boots on when trouble comes unexpectedly. Humans don’t really do ‘instant’ when in groups.

Point being that just because people don’t immediately rise up against injustice doesn’t mean that there isn’t going to be a backlash. One straw too many, one step too far and the balance tips. May take a bit, but the backlash does come and it comes hard.

How bad depends. In a democratic republic like the US there will be a LOT of very loud noise in the political space and congressmen who want to have jobs will make proposals and author bills. Then there will be a whole lot more noise in the halls of Congress. After a ton of fussing and fighting, something gets done. The system is supposed to be slow and messy and it occasionally overdoes the slow and messy part, but it works.

Changes are made, or investigations done. Because the system does respond, even if it is annoying, people continue to support it. If the changes aren’t good enough, they keep right on pushing for change until either it is good enough or the opposition convinces enough folks that the status quo is already best. Messy, but it gets the job done.

In totalitarian systems, people lose faith, try to escape or rebel. MUCH more messy and usually results in some level of collapse. Not always fast but those are even worse – the longer folks have to stew over how mistreated they are by their justice system, the nastier the backlash will be when it finally becomes impossible to stop.

It doesn’t matter that the government or faction thought it was doing what was best. When the laws don’t apply to those in power the laws can no longer protect those without power.

Yes, the Left so frequently thinks it speaks for the powerless but in putting ends above means, the Left usually strips the powerless of the protection they are entitled to – equality under the law.

We humans are really bad about only caring about injustice when it affects us directly. Oh, we get plenty upset when we see the story on social media, but then we keep on scrolling. Really caring means not just feeling, but thinking and acting.

Not by becoming the very monster we hate, but by picking up that phone and giving our congressman a call. Working in the slow, messy, inefficient system because the laws apply to us no matter how right we think we are to change that injustice. To see justice done, even if it is slow.

For the rule of law to mean anything it has to apply when we don’t want to observe the rights of others because we believe they are guilty. We only come in size human and we are all too eager to jump to conclusions. Sometimes, we’re just plain wrong.

That’s why everyone has the right to a fair day in court. That’s why rights matter for the guilty. If the guilty – whether criminal or in the justice system itself – have no rights, then neither do the innocent.

Justice is all or nothing.