J. Edgar Comey

I had intended to use this final column before the presidential election to explain at length why I cannot vote for either Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump and plan to vote for Gary Johnson for president. In a nutshell, big government is our biggest problem. It thrives on more debt, more taxes, more regulations, more war, a secretive deep state and less personal freedom. Both Clinton and Trump would grow the government. Only Johnson would shrink it.

One of the most dangerous tendencies of big government is the generation of a police state — wherein laws, rules and procedures are primarily written and can often be bent to aid law enforcement when it is encroaching on our personal freedoms. We saw a terrifying example of that last week when FBI Director James Comey behaved as if he were his most infamous predecessor, J. Edgar Hoover.

Here is the back story.

In his play “A Man for All Seasons,” Robert Bolt shows Sir Thomas More arguing with William Roper, a colleague, who suggests that government lawbreaking can be justified for the greater good, particularly if the target is the devil (which Trump has called Clinton). More demolishes that argument in a few now iconic lines: “And when the last law was down, and the Devil turned round on you — where would you hide, Roper, the laws all being flat? This country’s planted thick with laws from coast to coast — man’s laws, not God’s — and if you cut them down, and you’re just the man to do it, d’you really think you could stand upright in the winds that would blow then? Yes, I’d give the Devil benefit of law, for my own safety’s sake.”

To my friends who have rejoiced in James Comey’s letter, please take warning that, as More accurately predicted, the tables can be turned. If there is any moral lesson in all this, it is that the history of human freedom consists of paying careful attention to constitutional guarantees and legal protections, no matter the reputation of the accused.

Reprinted with the author’s permission.

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