There are two essential functions of government.  One is defense, defense against threats from other societies.  The other is Law and Order, the imposition of rules to protect our rights against threats from within our society.  Over the millennia, governments have taken on other tasks, but these two are essential.  Other functions may be nice to have, or, far too often, better to do without. 

Here I wish to write about Law and Order.  Without L&O no society can survive. 

If I plant a crop to feed my family, and my neighbors help themselves rather than planting their own, I will soon give up and quit planting, and we will all starve.  Or perhaps I will go live in another society, and let this one die. 

If my neighbor wants my bow, or my plow, or my livestock, or my wife, or my house, he can bash in my head and take it. This may lead to reprisals from my family members, and my society will no longer have my productivity. 

Thus “antisocial” activities must be forbidden, and the prohibitions must be enforced.  Any successful culture in all of history will fulfill the need for Law and Order. 

We may have lost all record of most ancient cultures, but we do know about some even in the furthest past in which we have writing.  Around 2370 BCE came the earliest known written laws in the Code of Urugagina.  About 1750 BCE came the better known Code of Hammurabi.  Around 1300 BCE God gave his Ten Commandments to the Israelites.  Such codes define prohibited acts and prescribe punishment for violators.  All legal codes, including those we have today, define individual rights, prohibit their violation, and prescribe punishments for violators. 

A code of laws, if it is to be the basis of a successful culture, must allow to each person the right to produce goods and services and to use them as he sees fit.  And the Law must protect the rights of each person from his envious neighbors. 

A few excerpts from the Ten Commandments: 

• Honour thy father and thy mother.
• Thou shalt not murder.
• Thou shalt not commit adultery.
• Thou shalt not steal.
• Thou shalt not bear false witness against thy neighbour.

No society, from a nuclear family to an empire, can survive without such laws and their enforcement.  Thus, a society must enforce Law and Order by whatever means necessary.  Failure to do so will lead to the dissolution of that society, imposing greater suffering on the members of the society than even the greatest tyranny that might do the enforcing. 

Thus, we have the tradition of “Martial Law”, or “Suspension of the Bill of Rights” when absolutely necessary to save the nation. 

And we need to suppress with great vigor he rioters, looters, vandals, and other organized criminals who, left unchecked, will have to be allowed to destroy our society and its culture, or will have to be suppressed with greater violence as our indifference allows them to enjoy immunity at the beginning of their crime spree. 

Let me repeat again.  Law and Order is absolutely essential.  If necessary, we must suspend constitutional rights to secure Law and Order.  Acting right now, or, preferably, last year, to get and keep Law and Order is the way to avoid having to forget about our rights.