The law of opposites

This is an excerpt from the letter read in the “The Ox-Bow Incident.”

“A man just naturally can’t take the law into his own hands … without hurtin’ everybody in the world, ‘cause then he’s just not breaking one law but all laws. Law is a lot more than words you put in a book, or judges or lawyers or sheriffs you hire to carry it out. It’s everything people ever have found out about justice and what’s right and wrong. It’s the very conscience of humanity. There can’t be any such thing as civilization unless people have a conscience, because if people touch God anywhere, where is it except through their conscience? And what is anybody’s conscience except a little piece of the conscience of all men that ever lived?”

This has a real meaning for our country. We live in an age when curses are prayers, and lies are truth. Braggadocio masquerades as courage, and money trumps everything. Success is measured by anything you can get away with, and law is twisted until it becomes nonsense. Corporations are people without any of their responsibilities. Oaths are spoken into a vacuum and are silenced by the void.

David Webb

Spokane