By: Chuck Colson
The first priority of government is to preserve order. It is time for the President to speak out….
Representative self-government is a fragile balance of freedoms, rights, and order. There can be neither freedom nor enforceable rights in the midst of chaos. Inevitably, any government, any leader, will have to restore order; and the more dire the situation, and the longer they wait, the more force that governments will use to restore order.
Augustine recognized this in his classic work, The City of God. He taught that peace is the tranquility produced by order (tranquillitas ordinis). The first order of government, therefore, is to preserve order, no society can enjoy peace and harmony without it.
So I pray that the President will see the dangerous tipping point that we are reaching, that he will not be silent, he will speak out clearly and without equivocation: We as a free, democratic, and ordered society will not, cannot, tolerate violence in the streets.
Profit has been privatized, debt has been socialized. You reap what you sow. The president's concern, if he is to get to the root of the problem, is not in the streets.
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