this post was submitted on 13 Mar 2025
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Leopards Ate My Face
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I'll continue to explain this as long as it's still relevant: People hear words differently based on their beliefs. We hear "law" as rules that everybody must follow. They hear "law" as state power, or agents of the state who wield that power, like in "the law is at the door."
That means we hear "rule of law" to mean that even the powerful have to obey the rules like the rest of us. They hear "rule of law" as the exercise of state power by its agents (police, ICE, ATF, et al.), and they prefer it to be exercised vigorously against outgroups.
I don't know I've though about "rule of law" quite that way before. I'll have to add it to my list for when it comes up. There are several other terms that mean different things to different people (I wish I remembered a specific one to demonstrate). Its one of the reasons its hard to have political discussion online. You have to determine what the words your using mean, before you can start arguing the points.
This notion isn't one that's new to me, but for some reason, the way you've phrased it here is evoking some interesting reflection for me: I think that some of my most productive online arguments have been when the contention is what words mean. For example, when a transphobic statement is made by someone who is actually just an oblivious cis person, I've found that a "semantic calibration" can get at the root cause of their problematic statement (the hard part is discerning whether a person is genuinely engaging in good faith vs. being an asshole with plausible deniability. I don't always get it right, but people usually reveal quite quickly whether they're worth engaging with).
There have also been times when I have had the outsider's view of someone else's discussion as involving people talking past each other by using the same words to mean different things. Sometimes, I've found it possible to wade into an ongoing discussion and diffused a lot of tension by clarifying these definitional problems.
On the flip side, it's often not worth it to engage in political discussions online if it's apparent from the outset that it would just be too much work to clarify everything because you recognise that you're coming at the topic from a completely different direction than the person you're considering talking to.
That's a really interesting insight. So in other words, when they say that they're the party of law and order, they literally mean that they want authoritarianism
authoritarianism is another word that can mean different things to different people. It can be used to mean the government enforcing any rule that isn't liked. civil rights protection? authoritarianism. job protections? authoritarianism. minimum wage? authoritarianism. etc...
Also related is "small government". I think people who use it mean (at least when not in control) "small federal government", the state however should control everything about peoples lives.
I almost think its the laws they support are black and white and unchanging. If something is wrong with a law, it doesn't matter, that's the law. The solution to an issue isn't to change the law, its to enforce it harder, or make it more restrictive. The "rule of law" also applies to individuals and actions. Money crimes, fraud, "the state" are not subject to the same "rule of law" because those laws "don't make sense" and if we look above are a result of "authoritarianism".
Is there a solution to get people to use language that can be agreed upon? who knows, but it would certainly help clear things up. I hate trying to guess what someone thinks a word means to attempt to refute their points.
The only law is that which one holds in ones heart. It is not the law that binds us against fulfilling wicked deeds, but ourselves.
So those that seek to become the law or say they champion it, do so as a way to protect their cowardly hearts: for they only see the law as a means to shield their transgressions from consequence and substitute their lawlessness for law.