Judge Andrew Napolitano Talks To Mediaite About A National Return To Constitutional Sobriety

It’s fairly easy to get lost in the lofty world of philosophy, however, and so the rest of the book makes an effort to tie these principles to the real world as we see it on a daily basis, whether in cable news or voting booths, or the protests that block traffic while we’re on our way to work. The template is applicable to nearly every political buzz issue in our discourse. The dynamic he studies is alien to the Democratic/Republican divide as most in politics see it, and so skimming through the talking points to find the answer doesn’t quite work. He tells Mediaite, as also appears in his work, that the horserace masks the existence of a “Big Government Party” that wins almost all elections:

There’s a Democratic wing that likes war and taxes and assaults on commercial liberties, and there’s a Republican wing that likes war and deficits and assaults on civil liberties. But both parties are populated by people who like to tell others how to live their lives… it almost doesn’t matter who you vote for unless you voted for a Congress of all Ron Pauls.

And therein Napolitano’s book finds at least one concrete avenue through which to reconstruct the unrecognizable face of our government: protest. The solution to this problem is elusive, but Napolitano makes a point of particular poignancy in this day and age, where it feels like the country has been in non-stop protest, whether from the left or from the right, since election season 2007. “It is our duty…” he writes, “to expose the unjust actions of the current American government. Most importantly, we must engage in peaceful civil disobedience of those unjust laws.” He goes on to cite the Tea Party’s impact on the 2010 as an example, which makes the follow-up question inevitable: is Occupy Wall Street an equally legitimate protest movement?

Napolitano’s answer varies little from his answer to most political questions, and herein the philosophical becomes practical: to the extent that Occupy Wall Street follows the natural law in its demands, it is legitimate. He tells Mediaite, “Some of the Occupy Wall Street movement seeks things that are against the natural law, which is to redistribute wealth. Some of the Occupy Wall Street movement seeks things that are consistent with the natural law, which is to end wars which are not defensive in nature.” He notes there are a number of Ron Paul people involved, some ‘Don’t Tread On Me’ flags around” he notes, “but there is definitely a crowd down there that wants to redistribute wealth.”

But the idea of peaceful resistance and adherence to the America America was supposed to be, he concludes, is the right idea. Ironically, however, the biggest challenge for those resisting will be simple human nature: how to find people to elect who won’t be tempted to abuse power, who understand laws as a function of nature and not of their own whims. “The government attracts people to it who think they can use power to tell others how to live. It almost doesn’t matter if you’re a Republican or a Democrat.”