OH PLATO! WHAT WORK IS THIS . . .

Joseph Tiraco

In the Fourth Century AD, the Emperor Julian shocked the polite world by proclaiming, a man will henceforth be innocent until proven guilty. Who will ever be found guilty, objected his advisors, if all that is needed is to deny? Julian snapped back, and who is ever innocent when all that is needed is to affirm? Julian, the nephew of Constantine, had spent his youth absorbing philosophy at the schools of Athens, tucked safely away while his uncle, and then cousin, ruled the Roman Empire. Power, by nature, is invidious, and Julian's cousin, tormented by phantoms from the aphotic abyss of mind, ordered his sole surviving relative from the ivy halls of academia into the front lines of battle on a suicide mission. The courtiers and dandies cracked jokes as his long scraggly beard was shaved, and tattered philosopher's cloak exchanged for military garb. They laughed him out of the palace on his way to certain doom. Solidity of character, annealed by abnegation and rigid self discipline gave Julian an acute clarity of mind rare amongst men, and he triumphed completely. A rumbustious army of veterans, sharing his values and virtues, and fully against his will and protestations, thrust a crown upon his head. Providence, in ludic quizzicality, smiled on humanity, and elevated this disciple of Diogenes to the purple. Never has the world, before or since, been in more capable hands. He cleared out the palaces, slept on the floor, kept his chambers unheated all winter to inure his body to the cold, ate meager vegetarian meals, and wore out teams of secretaries working marathon shifts while their emperor tirelessly administered power and virtue - one and the same in his hands. He shrank taxes on the poor, and counseled sharing the wealth with all men, even the wicked: "for it is to the humanity in a man that we give, and not to his moral character;" he enlarged the libraries, strictly enforced licencing of doctors, forgave accumulated debts with the leniency of a philosopher, and rescinded the onerous tribute exacted from the jews. Julian considered games frivolities he could ill afford. One day, while hastily performing some public ceremony at the circus so he could quickly return to his administrative duties, a secretary pointed out that he had transgressed the function of a minor magistrate. Julian immediately fined himself ten pounds of gold, uttering words that reverberate to our own time, "No Man is Above the Law." The world's sovereign claimed no exemption or extraordinary right before the majesty of law.

Who then, places themselves above the law? What ambitious rapscallion dares snatch a patrimony that transcends by centuries even the American Republic? Is the multitude no more then itinerant flocks for herding by the privileged to put wool on their backs and mutton on the table? Can this generation be more incredulous, more timid, less vigorous, less vital then all the proceedings generations to let their most valuable possession slip through trembling fingers?

The rich and powerful have reached a state in our society where they imagine their interests to be above the law, reserving a special caste for themselves, claiming exemptions from law and tradition, using a device they call, "As of Right?" Apparently, politicians have sold them our birthright to raise vast sums for their private campaigns. To entice the favors of fortune, they gamble away our homes and communities like so many Monopoly pieces on a game board, casting lots for our very lives, as if the commodities they trifle away were theirs to do with as they wish.

We recognize no circumventions of the law; nor ambages around its granitoid girth. The law spans this continent, plain and simple, the length and breath of the land; the piers of society sunk deep into established order; to erode the law is to hazard society, least the impatient ruling elite prefer their inclinations to their duty.

Society has a heart. The mawkish masses hold a certain empathy for the little guy. In a gesture to help raise up small business within residential communities, a special dispensation was granted, relieving shop keepers from the burden of complying with statutes intended to restrain the rich and powerful from disfiguring those communities. But, goodness became a weakness, the statutes, wrenched and contorted by powerful elements, were changed into, instruments of destruction to erase the small business they were supposed to aid, and a tool to pry open Pandora's box, which the zoning laws were carefully crafted to keep shut. A gentile dispensation to help the small guy was transformed by the rich and powerful into an unassailable fortress above the law, and named, "as-of-right." The usurpation by big developers of a simple expedient to pass the sardines and filter out the sharks now threatens untold mischief - a feeding frenzy - a wounding and scarring some communities will not survive, falling victim to this new lawlessness, and their own too good-heartedness.

There is no greatness in this enterprise, no sop to the public, and for all the grandiose political vaticination, not the slightest hint of magnanimity, merely pretermission for profit; a tramp along the same dreary path bared brown and baron by public officials anxious to perform some service for the rich and powerful. The vast body of humanity referred to as, "the people," has been defamed by the learned, who characterize the huddled masses as, incredulous and capricious, selfish and violent, but there were a few - a minority of precious distinction - who loved us despite our wicked ways, who, elevated by character and reflection, deed and fortune, reached exalted heights, and stooped low at their peril to bestow benefits on the masses: Washington who would not sell us out for a throne, Jackson who protected us, Lincoln who freed us, Roosevelt who cared for us, King who gave us the strength to overcome; we know sacrifice from pretense. So assault our rights and dilute the law with as-of-right lawyers' tricks, despoil our communities, encumber our land, devalue our homes, and inflict cruel cuts to our lifestyles, but do not bore us with platitudes of menial jobs for our own good, and cite consolidations towards efficiency, when you mean obsolescence of the small guy, mean hampering the intrepid souls who dare strike out on their own, mean holding out shackles for would be masters. No, there is no greatness here, just an ordinary exchange of money for favors. Notwithstanding all the foibles of the inconstant multitude, there rests within, perhaps a gift from our maker, the basic shrewdness to distinguish a twisted countenance in blind pursuit of power, from the radiant face of beaming providence.

December 23, 1997