What do progress and the rule of law have in common?
This is the question I asked myself recently after hearing an argument on TV that Progressives are not the pioneers of the rule of law. I have paraphrased the argument to the best of my recollection.
The moment I heard it, it went counter to my thinking about the essence of progress and hence what Progressives stand for when they claim to be pioneers of its ideals. This is not about being in favor of one political party over another as a party but about the very definition and understanding of progress and being a Progressive. As a layperson to history, I am in no position to lecture about the idea because I understand that there are far better trained experts about it. I also don't want to sound a broken record about social science in which I have no formal training.
However, as a lifetime student of history, I can't help asking the basis of arguments that are counterintuitive to my basic understanding of the little history that I know.
My understanding has been that one of the earliest milestones in human progress in ancient times was putting down spears in favor of the rule of law. One of the enligtening moments for me was when I saw more than a dozen years ago a picture that depicts this reckoning practiced as a tradition in one of Ethiopia's countrysides.
That reckoning, which possibly predates Aristotle's observation of man as a rational being, may sound simple. Yet, it may be so profound to define much of humanity's history from Classical Civilization to Renaissance to the quest for Progressiveness in America in the 21st century.
Ii is conceivable that without the introduction of democracy in ancient Greece and hence the rule of law, there wouldn't be the Classical Civilization. It is also coceivable that without the Classical Civilization, there wouldn't be the Renaissance movement in Europe, at least in the form and shape that it became a major happenstance in human history. Furthermore, it is conceivable that without the Renaissance movement in Europe, the establishment of the U.S. as an independent Republic, with all its flaws, would not have materialized, at least in the form that its fouunding fathers imagined it. They wrote a constitution for it by incorporating checks and balances in order to govern democratically albeit for their imagined class.
Nearly two and a half centuries later, many people view the people of the U.S. as having achieved highly remarkable progress on top of the progress made during the time of the Classical Civilization and the Renaissance movement in Europe.
If this observation is arguably correct, intuition dictates that Progressives do not disfavor the rule of law. They pioneer it because of the realization that being Progressive is acknowledging a cumulus trajectory of progresses made in human history, including the Classical Civilization, the Renaissance movement, and writing a constitution that aspired to submit to democracy.
The rule of wisdom taught by the Prophets made progresses in their own rights for their follwers. Even as much of humanity celebrated the progresses made through the Classical Civilization and the Renaissance movement, it also celebrated the progresses made through the wisdom of Judeo-Christian-Islam establishment.
Writing a coherent cumulus trajectory of progress out of all these and other progresses may be a daunting task even for trained experts. Yet, the position that what progress and Progressives stand for is not forward looking is a more dauning task to explain, at least in my view.
Forward looking necessarily starts from a reference in the past. If I am not mistaken, the first Renaissance looked back to the cultural and wisdom traits that prevailed during the era of Goddess Athena. Pharaoh Akhenaten lived centuries before Goddess Athena. To that extent, if the movement that looked back to the cultural and wisdom traits during the era of Goddess Athena can be called the first Renaissance, any conceivable movement that can look back to the cultural and wisdom traits during the era of Pharaoh Akhenaten may well become the second Renaissance.
Once again, I am unsure if a coherent cumulus trajectory of progress can come out of studing the cultural and wisdom traits of the two eras. However, I think it is possible, or that it may be at least a step in the right direction.
To begin with, leaders that lived and led during both eras neither spoke the English language and some ungrateful English men pay no homage to them. If I am not mistaken, even the word Renaissance does not originate in the Englsih language.
The current U.S., which I am referring to America in this commentary, appears to stand in paradoxes. Many commentators call it the most advanced country in the world. Evidently, it has shown to the world a lot of scientific and technological advancements in recent times. Yet, even though I do not have data at hand about the number of times laws were broken in the hands of law enforcement delegates and its citizens in very recent times, it appears to be on an evolutionary proportion. One can probably draw easily a montage of achievements and broken laws and depict the paradox graphically.
Therein lies the American Paradox. On one hand, it attempts to showcase examplary achievements in the cumulus trajectory of progress. On the other hand, it has become abundantly clear that at least a section of it or its wild elements appear to be subsconscious to one of the earliest milestones in humanity's reckoning of and taking a step toward progress through the rule of law. Even more, some of its own citizens would have the audacity to argue that Progressives are not the pioneers of the rule of law. I found that argument unconvincing, at least to me.