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Traitors, One and AllBenjamin Franklin founded the University of Pennsylvania in 1749. It was our nation’s first non-sectarian institution of higher learning as well as our first true university. William Smith, Penn’s inaugural Provost, gave the school its moto: Leges Sine Moribus Vanae -- four Latin words borrowed from the Roman poet, Horace. I attended Penn starting in 1969. You couldn’t miss those words. They were smack dab in the University’s coat of arms. And the coat of arms was plastered everywhere – on signs, letterhead, paperweights, t-shirts, even underwear. I wasn’t into wearing Penn on my sleeve. But I was into the moto. It bothered me. I’d studied Latin in high school, but still wasn’t sure what it meant. Leges means laws. Sine means without. Vanae means in vain or useless. But moribus? There are many English meanings. Morals is the primary translation. But Laws without morals are useless didn’t and doesn’t feel right. A law’s immorality didn’t render it useless. All manner of immoral laws, including those enforcing slavery, existed in Horace’s day. They were certainly useful in achieving the state’s goals. Horace knew this all too well. His parents were slaves.I focused on a different reading of moribus – conduct. Laws without Conduct are Useless. Did this really make more sense? Laws circumscribe conduct, not the other way around. If we all behaved properly, we wouldn’t need laws. On the other hand, law-abiding conduct is essential to the rule of law. A law that no one obeys is impossible to enforce and is, therefore, useless. We need overwhelming majority commitment to societal norms to identify and prosecute the minority who’d violate them. I wrestled with Penn’s moto each semester. I liked my interpretation – conduct, as in behavior. But it didn’t roll off the tongue. By senior year, I’d settled on Laws without Custom Are Useless. It sounded venerable. Most important, the re-translated moto had a message. Laws codify customary behavior. If you violate customary behavior, you teach others to do the same. In so doing, you produce so many examples of insurrection that society eventually fully flips from obeying to disregarding norms. In short, you undermine the rule (custom) of law. Our fundamental custom is not the Constitution. It’s Democracy – the principle for which Franklin and all our forefathers risked their lives. The Constitution is simply a set of instructions to maintain Democracy. Hence, when the President and members of Congress swear to preserve, protect, and defend the Constitution, they are swearing to maintain the custom/tradition/habit/acceptance of Democracy. Taking public actions to undermine Democracy is, in our country, the ultimate act of treason. Those that commit treason are traitors. This year we woke up and remembered that fact. And in one city and town after another, we hauled down Confederate statues – statutes that were as antithetical to our country as figurative ones of British kings. Traitors is a strong word. Treason is an even stronger word, reserved in the Constitution for engaging or assisting in physically overthrowing the state. President Trump has yet to commit formal treason, although he has publicly contemplated declaring marital law and taking extrajudicial control of the country. But he is a traitor, indeed one of our country’s foremost traitors. Benedict Arnold acted on his own. The President has recruited over 100 members of the House of Representatives and over a dozen members of the Senate, led by Senators Hawley, Cruz, and Johnson, to overturn our Presidential election. His grounds? Simple. He didn’t win. The fact that Trump and his band of traitors won’t succeed is immaterial. Their legislative attempt to thwart Democracy by groundlessly contesting Electoral votes cast, not randomly, but against our would-be-king, provides future would-be autocrats a clear roadmap for how to succeed in stealing elections. The President and his co-conspirators act of treason raises the underlying warning of Leges Sine Moribus Vanae. Compared with tyranny, democracy is fragile. This is why the history of world government is one, in the main, of autocracy, not democracy. Demcracy requires custom/tradition/habit/acceptance and, when stressed, collective action, to defend. The appropriate collective action required today, and in the years, ahead is to publicly shame the President, Senators Cruz, Hawley, and Johnson, and their foul co-conspirators by calling them collectively by their chosen name – Traitors, One and All. ................
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