> Then we do not live in a democracy with a rule of law. Why have the constitution at all?
The concept of checks and balances is an attempt to mitigate this problem. The "higher authority" is the other branches of government. But even that only goes so far.
Ultimately the entire scheme only works because individual humans agree to abide by the implicit social contract to live within the system of laws. To the extent that large number of people come to not feel bound by the social contract, well at some point you have some sort of haphazard and generally unjust system, insurrection, or even civil war.
I'm tempted to make some comments about recent events in the US, but suffice to say there are definitely some people who seem to think the current social contract isn't worth saving. And I'm not just talking about those taking action in the streets. There are plenty of people in elected positions of power who are behaving in that way also. It would be nice if those who feel like it isn't worth working within the system to improve things had any sort of an alternative. Unfortunately it is orders of magnitude easier to dismantle and destroy than it is to create and build. I hope we don't have to learn that lesson the hard way.
> If not, then those people might actually be correct.
This doesn't seem reasonable to me. The amount of misery and injustice that would accompany any sort of dissolution of civil society would be enormous and with no path towards something better.
To the extent that some people who think the current system is broken beyond repair make an effort to explain what they would do different it basically amounts to "everything will be better if we just give all the power to my preferred group of people", which sounds a lot like fascism to me.
The expanding scope/power of national government (all branches) is a huge part of our problem. Accelerating that trend but with the "right people" in place is not an attractive solution from my point of view. It doesn't matter to me if the "right people" have a (D) or (R) after their name, expansive national government is a bad idea.
It isn't the expansion but the loss of control. Large government is fine as long as it serves the people. Large government doesn't also have to mean millions of rules.
Civil society also doesn't have to be tied directly to government. America's biggest problems is that we are shedding norms faster than we acquiring them.
I had a conversation with a business ethics professor, and every one of her students for the most part want to work at Amazon and they have favorable opinions about Amazon's means and methods. Corn pone and all that. The lust for money has too large of an effect on our society.
The concept of checks and balances is an attempt to mitigate this problem. The "higher authority" is the other branches of government. But even that only goes so far.
Ultimately the entire scheme only works because individual humans agree to abide by the implicit social contract to live within the system of laws. To the extent that large number of people come to not feel bound by the social contract, well at some point you have some sort of haphazard and generally unjust system, insurrection, or even civil war.
I'm tempted to make some comments about recent events in the US, but suffice to say there are definitely some people who seem to think the current social contract isn't worth saving. And I'm not just talking about those taking action in the streets. There are plenty of people in elected positions of power who are behaving in that way also. It would be nice if those who feel like it isn't worth working within the system to improve things had any sort of an alternative. Unfortunately it is orders of magnitude easier to dismantle and destroy than it is to create and build. I hope we don't have to learn that lesson the hard way.