Right or Crime?

by Groff Schroeder

Since the dawn of written history, societies have created and enforced laws to encourage stability, advance justice, and protect themselves from crime, war, and internal and external attack. About 4000 years ago, the Sumerians authored the Codes of Ur Nammu and Hammurabi and established impartial courts. The Greek state ensured laws were public and were applied equally to all some 1200 years later by overturning "Draconian" laws favoring the wealthy. Rome's "Twelve Tables" set court procedures and established summonses - but prohibited plebeian/patrician marriage and allowed creditors to "divide the [debtor's] body among them." The 1215 Magna Carta reined in monarchies, and created the idea of due process of law. In 1791, continuing evolution of law led to the United States Constitution and its “Bill of Rights,” which forbid bribery and established a free democratic republic exercising four founding legal principles: no one is above the law (supremacy of law), all accused experience independent processes designed to acquit (due process of law), and government treats everyone equally (equality under law) rather than serving wealth and power (rule of law).

Although written law and the legal principles it evolves transcend human life expectancy to found free societies, history shows that bribery, dishonest leaders, and war are the enemies of both law and freedom. War brutally sacrifices law, lives, and national treasuries on the altar of power, profiteering, and violence. Bribery is subtle, economical, and precise, and thus much more profitable. But politicians who exploit their positions of responsibility to exchange government power for personal profit not only turn their government against their People, they also expose their nation to attack.

Therefore, it is a serious federal crime for US corporations, organizations, and individuals to bribe foreign businesses, governments, or politicians via "campaign donations," contributions, products, travel, services, etc. Meanwhile, inside America, "deregulation" (legalizing the illegal) means providing "campaign donations," contributions, products, travel, services, etc. to candidates and elected Representatives of the People of the United States is not a crime, but "free speech" - even through "campaign donations" are neither free nor speech, and even though secrecy can conceal "quid pro quo." This discontinuity in US Law appears to be the life's work of Paul Manafort, whose lobbying firm Time Magazine in 1986 called "the ultimate supermarket of influence peddling" and "institutionalized conflict of interest." Mr. Manafort's recent indictment suggests that since about 1977, he greatly enriched himself by creating modern American "pay to play" politics - a self fulfilling system of corruption which recently legalized unlimited, unregulated, and secret bribery in US elections. As a result, a successful campaign for elected office in the US is impossible without accepting "donations" that are criminal in virtually every other context, creating not only the appearance of and opportunity for bribery, but also serious national security threats.

History suggests the price of freedom is eternal vigilance, and it appears freedom's most dangerous enemies have already leveraged legalized bribery to attack American government from within. Thankfully, those attacking our nation, our Constitution, and elections worldwide are becoming swamped in legal quagmires created by supremacy of law and equality under the law. Due process of law, America's respected legal system, and honest everyday government employees (a.k.a. the "deep state") offer hope that the rule of law will prevail, and that bribery will soon be "re-regulated," not as a right, but a crime.