“Law and order” has long been the battle cry of the Conservative Movement. To today that battle cry is just the cry of a group that wants to manipulate and shield themselves from accountability, suppress dissent, and entrench inequality. Conservatism, at its best, was for restraint, tradition, and individual liberties. In recent decades, a form of radical conservatism has weaponized legality, not to uphold justice, but to legitimize harm and what some may view as corruption. Conservatives are great with phrases like “election integrity,” which is cloaked in laws for suppression. They use “national security” to justify the crackdown not only on illegal immigration but also on legal immigration. They use a conservative playbook that relies on legalities to advance unethical behavior. The end of our “Pledge of Allegiance” does not end with the words law and order. It ends with the words “Liberty and Justice For All”. Not just all conservatives. Not just for Republicans. Those should stand for all of us. When one’s group uses the Law-and-Order battle cry and makes it impossible for some to have Liberty and Justice, then it is the law that does not align with the spirit of the Constitution and should be struck down.

Some things are legal, but not just. Writing executive orders and legislation rolling back environmental orders and standards may be legal, but are they just? That is a question that we all have to wrestle with. In some cases, they can be legal but devastating for the people, and beneficial to the people and the corporation that caused the problems. Many regulations are designed to protect people from environmental disasters that corporations have caused in the past and can’t be trusted to prevent. Without rules, those corporations will continue to put profits before the good of the environment and the people. The criminalization of homelessness and poverty through “quality of life” ordinances targets the segment of the population that is suffering and protects the corporate greed that has helped create it. Voter laws that are written under the guise of “voter integrity” are often meant to disenfranchise communities of color or other minority groups. The Brennan Center for Justice, whose function is to defend democracy, reform justice, and protect the Constitution, notes, these laws often solve problems that don’t exist while creating new barriers to those minorities who want to participate.

Conservative policy often operates through legislation and media amplification. There are organizations like the American Legislative Exchange Council that will draft bills and then replicate them across states, legislation like anti-protest laws, to trans healthcare legislation. Then, right-wing media like Fox News try to convince everyone that this is common-sense reform. They will then try to reshape judicial precedent. Think about that for a while. We have think tanks drafting legislation and then sell us through right-wing media on what we should think is important. The whole system just minimizes all of our voices.

We make a lot of comparisons of Trump to Hitler, and rightfully so. In 1989, the Supreme Court ruled that the burning of the American Flag in protest was protected free speech by the First Amendment. Many people, including myself, don’t like to see our flag desecrated in any way, but free speech is more important. The First Amendment is what gives me the right to do this blog, even though it may offend some. “Free speech” and “Freedom of the Press” are in Amendment number one because it gives us the right to criticize our government and the right to protest or promote change. Trump has now written an Executive Order banning the burning or desecration of the American flag. Of course, Trump doesn’t have any problem desecrating the flag himself. Trump signing a flag is, by definition, desecrating it. Trump projection his image on the American flag is desecrating the flag. I have always been turned off by flag shirts, hats, and other apparel. What Trump has done is not about the flag. This is about a direct attack on our free speech. Trump doesn’t care about our Constitution and is hoping his conservative stacked Supreme Court begins to help him take away our rights. I think Trump will try to make the entire Bill of Rights go away because I feel the only rights we will have are the ones that he will control.

Do you think that, according to the German Constitution, it was legal to kill 6 million Jews? What the Nazis did was create a legal system that was a legal illusion, and the courts turned a blind eye, and many times just upheld it.  The term “resettlement” was used for the Jews, and the term “special treatments” was used to hide from the public other horrors that they inflicted, like killing a quarter of a quarter of a million developmentally handicapped people. That is why I am so appalled that the Trump administration uses detention camps in other countries. I can’t help but think that this is to hide the atrocities that he is committing and the ones he wants to commit in the future. He calls it deportation, but deportation is returning a person to their home country. Instead, he is sending people to concentration camps in foreign countries and just ignoring the due process that is guaranteed by our Constitution. Trump and the Republican Party would like the courts to just look the other way, as happened in Germany. The way that he is threatening to send troops into our cities and the way he is talking about the people of the inner cities, I could see concentration camps for Americans in the near future.

I wonder if there will be post-Trump tribunals like with the Nazis at Nuremberg. The defense of following orders was rejected, or that the Nazis were acting legally. There comes a time were the law must succumb to human morality and justice. Crimes against humanity should transcend our laws, and Trump is getting close to committing crimes against humanity. Our Constitution is being ignored and is being replaced by laws that are not accountable to the people, or give the country true Justice.