This one is for J. Brice Kerr, who not only knew this, but lived it.
Law exists to restrain force, not to express virtue.
Let’s slow this down and really open it up.
1. Law vs Virtue: A Deliberate Divorce
Many political systems assume:
- If rulers are virtuous, justice will follow.
- If citizens are virtuous, law can be light.
The Constitution assumes neither.
This is a post-idealistic document. It does not try to make people good. It tries to make it hard for bad people to do irreversible damage.
Virtue is internal and fragile.
Force is external and permanent.
So the Founders chose the only lever that works even when souls fail: constraint.
2. Why Virtue Was Distrusted
This skepticism wasn’t abstract. It came from history.
- Kings claimed divine virtue and murdered anyway
- Churches claimed moral authority and abused it
- Revolutionary mobs claimed righteousness and executed dissenters
Virtue, once weaponized, becomes permission.
That’s why the Constitution almost never uses moral language. No “good.” No “evil.” No “righteous.”
Instead you get:
- “Congress shall make no law…”
- “No person shall be…”
- “Shall not be infringed…”
It’s all negative space. Boundaries. Fences.
3. The Roman Warning Revisited
Romans learned this lesson the hard way.
They believed mos maiorum, ancestral virtue, would hold the Republic together. When virtue failed, strong men stepped in “for the good of Rome.”
That path ends with Caesar.
The Founders knew this story cold. They concluded:
Any system that relies on virtue will eventually be ruled by those who claim to embody it.
So they designed a system that functions under moral drought.
4. Law as Counterweight to Force
Think in terms of physics, not ethics.
Force:
- Is immediate
- Is asymmetric
- Favors the strong, rich, armed, organized
Law:
- Is slow
- Is procedural
- Gives the weak leverage over time
The Constitution doesn’t try to eliminate force. That’s impossible. It tries to box it in, slow it down, make it expensive.
Due process exists so:
- The state cannot act at the speed of fear
- The powerful cannot act at the speed of anger
Delay is mercy, institutionalized.
5. Why the Law Must Bind the Strong First
This is the Magna Carta insight, sharpened.
Magna Carta didn’t protect peasants directly. It restrained the king. Everything else flowed downstream.
Same pattern in the Constitution:
- Executive constrained
- Legislature fragmented
- Judiciary insulated
Why? Because if the strong are bound, the weak don’t need to be virtuous to survive.
That’s a brutal but compassionate realism.
6. Hobbes, Locke, and the Hidden Consensus
Even thinkers who disagreed shared this point.
Thomas Hobbes feared chaos and wanted strong authority, but even he insisted law must tame violence.
John Locke insisted that when law becomes an instrument of force rather than restraint, legitimacy collapses.
The Founders sided with Locke but designed as if Hobbes might be right about human nature.
That tension is everywhere in the document.
7. Arthur Reappears, Quietly
Arthurian myth comes back here, subtly.
The sword is not holy because it cuts.
It’s holy because Arthur doesn’t use it arbitrarily.
Once force becomes self-justifying, the king becomes a tyrant.
The Constitution takes the sword away almost entirely and replaces it with:
- Procedures
- Votes
- Appeals
- Jurisdictions
If you want, next we can:
No hero. No chosen one. No savior clause.
8. The Uncomfortable Truth
Here’s the sharp edge:
The Constitution does not trust good intentions.
It does not care who is right.
It cares who is prevented from acting unilaterally.
That’s why it feels cold. That’s why it frustrates people who “just want to do the right thing.”
From the document’s perspective:
The right thing, enforced by violence, is indistinguishable from tyranny in hindsight.
9. The Model Statement (Formalized)
We can now state precisely:
Law is a braking system, not a compass.
It exists to slow power, fragment authority, and give time for correction.
Moral direction must come from culture, not coercion.
When law tries to become virtue:
- It accelerates
- It moralizes
- It punishes dissent
- It becomes force wearing a halo
The Founders wanted none of that.
Random Acts of Eccentricity 
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