VIGILANCE IS WHAT WE NEED, NOT VIGILANTES
"The price of liberty is eternal vigilance" is a famous phrase, often attributed to Thomas Jefferson – though it seems doubtful that he actually said it. But a similar sentiment has been repeated by many others since – perhaps no more powerfully than by the abolitionist Wendell Phillips, who gave the proper context for the expression in a speech to the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society in 1852: "(because) power is ever stealing from the many to the few."
And that is the story of human civilisation, right there. If all power corrupts and absolute power corrupts absolutely, then the only way to free ourselves from the atavistic law of the jungle – that "might is right" – is to enact laws that restrict what those in power can do. Why does that matter? Because societies can only grow effectively through the open exchange of ideas in an environment free from fear and discrimination. Tyranny can never provide that.
That equation – the restriction of power through law – is the ladder up which humanity has slowly climbed through history, imperfect and inadequate as our progress still may be. And at the top of that ladder is the framework created in 1945 at the end of World War II: the UN Charter. It's a crucial milestone because, for the first time ever, the whole world came together to recognise that war between nation states is no longer an acceptable means of settling disputes – not least because of the terrible power of the weapons available to us.
And yet despite that overarching framework, we have not been sufficiently vigilant in maintaining and enforcing the peace and freedom from war that the Charter was designed to give us. Though we have had no more unrestrained 'world' wars since 1945, ongoing attempts to settle disputes through violence continue to scar the conscience of the world; it seems we are not brave enough to stand up for the principles we have all signed up to.
That's a recipe for abuse. For if the international community is not prepared to vigilantly police the rules it has put in place to ensure a world free from war, the door is left open for opportunist action and vigilantism. And these are the things we now see flourishing in the world around us, even as they threaten to escalate to terrible levels of destruction. Worse, we see the most powerful countries aiding and abetting that lawless violence.
Watching from a safe distance, we may perhaps feel it has little to do with us. But no-one is immune from its effects – we are all part of this. Without an insistence on the letter as well as the spirit of the law, we slide back into a world where the strong dominate the weak. As Frederick Douglass so eloquently put it: "It is in strict accordance with all philosophical, as well as experimental knowledge, that those who unite with tyrants to oppress the weak and helpless, will sooner or later find the groundwork of their own liberties giving way."
We see that in the gradual shift to the right across the developed world. Without vigilance, vigilantes are emboldened and come to the fore. And without pushback, that slowly eats away at the rest of our civilized norms. Russia has no business attacking Ukraine, a sovereign country. Israel has no business violating the international and humanitarian law it so perversely claims to champion. But unless our leaders stand up for these principles and hold transgressors to account, the future of liberty remains at risk.
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