Letter: A tale of two tracts

December 31, 2010

Editorial by R. W. Robinson

Understanding our two-party system, the Royalist Party and the Tea Party, goes back about 300 years when ideas were expressed in Latin and short words were in vogue and big oil and high finance were not political factors.

The ideas were in two opposing tracts or books, Lex Rex and Rex Lex. Rex being king, and Lex the law. Is law the king or is the king the law? It was well-expressed in the lex rex document, our Declaration of Independence, which noted we had institutions and traditions that had been arrived at by mutual consent, and were binding on both sides.

The king believed they were living charters and constitutions that he could change by his own perception of needs. The declaration may not be a legal document, but if not, we are still part of the British empire. The declaration expressed ideas that were written into the Constitution.

The idea that the government can make up the rules as it goes along, and nothing is superior to it, made the 20th century the bloodiest yet, with socialist governments killing more people in peacetime than in all the wars of the century.

Acknowledging the mortality of rulers and the humanity of the rest of us broke the cycles of famines that plagued humanity for centuries, an added benefit worth mentioning.

– Robert W. Robinson, Sequim