Breakdowns in the Rule of Law

and how the media is contributing to them

Historically, when the rule of law has broken down, it has often been because the public has gone into rebellion against law-makers who are failing in their implicit contract to make laws in a reasonable and just way. Examples are the American War of Independence, and Gandhi's exhortation that “we have a moral obligation to obey just laws, and a moral obligation to disobey unjust ones”. Today however, a very different situation is developing. Moves toward a breakdown of the rule of law are being led not by a rebellious public, but by elements of the state itself, aided and abetted by the media.

Earlier this month, Baroness Claire Fox pointed out that the UK Civil Service is now, at times, inclined to ignore instructions from the government.¹ That problem moreover, is mirrored in the United States, where there have been recent examples of state legislatures ignoring rulings issued by the Supreme Court. Both are clear indicators that the rule of law, in leading Western nations, is on a slippery slope: What we are beginning to see are signs of breakdown between different levels of the state itself, with regard to laws correctly made by 'due process'.

Another problem, standing somewhat in contrast to that, concerns circumstances in which the state has actually violated due process, has broken its contract to act in reasonable and just ways, and yet has suffered no difficulty or dissent internally, and only to limited degree from the populace. Let's qualify 'limited degree' however: The part of the population which over the past five years or more has been in open rebellion and active, vigorous protest, on a range of issues, could be as high by now as ten or fifteen percent. Relative to normal circumstances, that's a really big number – and it's both growing and intensifying. 'Limited' then, is very relative. That dissent however, so far as possible, has been rendered invisible by the media.

On the way to instantiating my argument about the appalling behaviour of the media, and those who control it, let's now look in more detail at some of the specifics of what has been happening. The issues are sensitive ones, but the partisan positions and diverse opinions which may be evoked are not my concern here. Neither one way nor the other. I am focused only on making some observations about the rule of law:

In the USA, state-level defiance of Supreme Court rulings has mostly had to do with the overturning of 'Roe vs Wade', a case closely connected with the impassioned question of abortion. That is an immensely difficult issue, in which it must be clear that all sides have some valid arguments and moral concerns. My point actually has nothing to do with the arguments for and against abortion, and its complexities with regard to timing and circumstances. It has to do with the processes of law. Both the 1973 'Roe vs Wade' ruling, and it's overturning in June of 2022, had as much to do with where abortion laws are made, as they did with what those laws are. In effect the original ruling moved such decisions from the state level to the federal level. And the 2022 decision essentially moved it back again. The detail is of course more politically complicated, and accordingly passions are stirred. Today, some protagonists may feel that they shouldn't have to accept this more recent ruling because 'Trump appointed three conservative justices to the Supreme Court' and Trump was 'not my President'. But without taking any position for or against Trump, the fact is he was elected by due process. And US presidents have always made appointments to the Supreme Court. Nonetheless, the media fed the storm and aside from state-level governments in some places ignoring the ruling, 'pro-life' clinics were set on fire and one of the justices responsible for the ruling was subject to an assissination attempt.²

What about the UK? I'll be more brief with this one. Disobedience within the UK civil service pertains mostly to issues connected with 'Brexit' – another very divisive issue. But, and this is the key point, it was another which had been determined by due process. Enough said for now.

One kind of breakdown then is represented by those cases where due process has been followed, but internal elements of the state itself refuse to accept the outcome. Such things are presently happening on a level which is unprecedented for modern Western democracies. Next however, we come to a case where the state actually violated due process but did not experience similar internal disobedience. When governments violated due process on matters pertaining to the pandemic, public passivity and non-action was systematically encouraged by the media. This took place in the face of both actual law-breaking and government and commercial deception. Courts in a variety of countries judged 'lockdown' measures to have been illegal. Highly inaccurate claims were made on vaccine effectiveness, regarding the prevention of both disease and death.³ And while vaccines have been mandated before, experimental ones have not. Unlike the cases of 'Brexit' and 'Roe vs Wade' however, while parts of the population (and many medical experts, again rendered invisible by the media)⁴ rebelled, internal elements of the state apparatus itself did not.

A fourth example (we'll leave aside for now the issues of politicisation of the judiciary, and police from time to time enforcing laws which don't exist) emerges from a conversation I recently had with a director of a global energy company. He spoke to me of 'the energy transition' – a massive, globally co-ordinated program in which virtually all governments and virtually all energy companies are actively participating – and which though not yet far advanced is already contributing to serious energy shortages. That program, he said, is proceeding on an entirely political basis. There is no economic evaluation, and the public are not being told what is happening. There is, in his words, “no evaluation of who is going to pay for the party - which means that the public and the shareholders are going to pay for it”. Well, for companies to act against the financial interest of shareholders is illegal. But that is being completely disregarded.

Some might argue (and I'd certainly be one of them) that 'profits for shareholders' as the sole imperative of all commercial activity is very damaging and needs to change. But it is curious that what is happening is that rather than changing that law, or the system of which it is part, is that a collaborative strategy has begun to emerge between governments and big companies based on leaving the law in place and (selectively) ignoring it. In an entirely similar way, some of the entertainment giants have recently inflicted huge losses on their shareholders by prioritising political ideology over business. They so overloaded their entertainment programs with propoganda messages that vast number of viewers became sickened by it and just baled out.

In principle there is nothing wrong with driving society forward by means other than legislative. I have argued for it myself. So have many others: In 2011, former British diplomat Carne Ross developed an impassioned argument⁵ around the idea that 'normative social values are more effective than laws'. I don't disagree. But rolling back levels of regulation whilst having new social norms emerge through the empowerment and participation of the population is one thing. Leaving all the laws in place and developing a culture of ignoring them, driven by super-powerful interests and their control of the media, is entirely another. One of those paths leads in the direction of genuine progress for humanity, and the other toward unmitigated disaster.

Gandhi's exhortation (the “moral obligation to disobey unjust laws”) should be understood as a last resort of action in the public interest. What is happening today, by contrast, is that legal process is being undermined in support of the agendas of powerful interests: When, on one side, government law-breaking is taking place uniformly from the top of the system to the bottom, in support of agendas with which the owners of the media agree, then the media systematically encourages the public to remain either ignorant or at least passive. Where the public does neither, the media instead does its best to make that part of the public invisible. When, on the other hand, some higher part of government occassionally makes decisions which are not in line with the agendas of those who control the media, the media systematically stir anger among the public and seek to create an environment in which disobedience by other parts of the state apparatus can be presented as justifiable. In short, we are witnessing the beginning of the breakdown of the rule of law, and the problem is inseparable from the virtual reality created systematically by the media.

There are people, for sure, who are aware of at least some of what is happening, but freely declare that they don't care. They don't care because they agree with the agendas which are at work, and feel strongly about them. Those people however, will for sure start to care when later the problem affects issues on which they don't agree. And that is guaranteed to happen if the problem is not addressed.

What do we do about it? First of all, see it. As psychologists and therapists working at an individual level are often inclined to say, you cannot turn your mind toward possible solutions for a complex problem until you have first confronted and accepted that the problem exists. We face the growing possibility of a collapse in the rule of law. And the main driver of that is a widely-institutionalised media disdain for both truth and democratic process.

1. Baroness Claire Fox, Unherd TV, 9th July 2022

2. Nicholas Roske was charged with attempting to murder Justice Brett Kavanaugh at his home in June 2022.

3. There is no ambiguity here. Many governments gave assurances that anybody taking the shots would not get infected and would not die. It was not true - to the point that the US Centre for Disease Control felt obliged to retrospectively change its definition of the word 'vaccine': Until 2022, the CDC's long-standing definition of 'vaccine' said it was something that would 'produce immunity to a specific disease'. Since the summer of 2022 it no longer says that.

4. Professors Sucharit Bhakti, Jay Bhattacharya, Sunetra Gupta, John Ioannidis, Martin Kulldorff and Paul Marik, and Doctors Geert Vanden Bossche, Vernon Coleman, Simone Gold, Pierre Kory, Tess Lawrie, Robert Malone and Peter McCullough are just a few of the highly qualified people who have been smeared, attacked or actively censored for sharing their professional views and research. Go to Wikipedia or the press if you want politicised opinions on their work. Otherwise go directly to the credentials, papers and reports of the scientists themselves.

5. See ‘The Leaderless Revolution’, Carne Ross, 2011.