There’s a sickness in this country
More timely prose from poet Robert L Arnold. Follow him on You Tube and support him on Substack.
On "Law and Order"
Robert L Arnold
There’s a sickness in this country that hides behind two words: law and order.
You hear it from the podiums and the pickup trucks. You see it printed on flags, on bumper stickers, on T-shirts stretched over beer bellies. You hear it chanted by people who think a line of armored vehicles rolling through an American neighborhood is the sound of freedom. They call it “law and order,” but what they’re cheering for is neither.
They’re cheering for fear dressed as safety.
For obedience dressed as patriotism.
For cages built in the name of control.
Because real law and order, the kind Locke and Jefferson and Madison risked their necks for, isn’t about domination. It’s about restraint.
The law, properly understood, is a shield of liberty, not a weapon of enforcement. The founders built a government designed to move slow, to be burdensome, to grind through debate and delay rather than trample the rights of a single soul. That’s not dysfunction … it’s by design. It’s the drag chain that keeps the machine from chewing through its people.
And yet here we are, watching cities turn into occupied zones. Watching no-knock raids and blanket warrants and federal agents with gas masks kicking in doors like they’re in Kandahar instead of Kansas City. Watching entire apartment complexes lit up like Fallujah … all under the banner of “law and order.”
But law and order doesn’t mean militarization. It doesn’t mean storming homes in the dead of night. It doesn’t mean treating the Constitution like a permission slip for tyranny.
The Third Amendment … the quiet one about quartering troops … exists because the founders had already lived through what happens when the government brings war into the home. It’s a line drawn in blood and memory. The state, they said, will not occupy the citizen. Period.
That amendment doesn’t come with a disclaimer. It doesn’t vanish because you think the person inside the home looks suspicious or comes from the wrong part of town. The Bill of Rights isn’t a cafeteria menu. You don’t get to pick your freedoms à la carte.
For every self-proclaimed patriot with “We the People” tattooed on his forearm, clutching a gun engraved with an eagle and a flag … listen:
The Constitution was written to protect everyone from exactly the kind of government you’re cheering for. The knock-and-kick raids. The surveillance. The tanks in the street. That’s what it was written against.
The Constitution doesn’t give a shit if you dislike the person it protects. It doesn’t care if you think they’re a criminal, an immigrant, or an outsider. Guilt and innocence aren’t decided by police, presidents, or soldiers … they’re decided by juries of peers, in open courts, under laws that protect both the innocent and the accused. Because if those protections can be stripped from them, they can be stripped from you.
That’s the part too many of you forget. You think “law and order” means the law for other people and order for Yourselves. But that’s not how liberty works. Liberty is collective, or it’s nothing. It’s all of us or none of us.
The irony is cruel and perfect. You flag-wrapped fools aren’t defending freedom … they’re rooting for their own chains. They’ve mistaken power for protection. They’ve confused authority with justice. And every time they clap for another raid, another crackdown, another warrant signed in the dark … they tighten the lock on their own door.
Law and order isn’t supposed to mean domination.
It’s supposed to mean dignity.
It’s supposed to mean the quiet confidence that you can speak, live, love, and exist without the boot of the state at your throat.
Because the measure of a free nation isn’t how it treats the obedient … it’s how it protects the defiant. It’s how it guards the rights of the people you fear, the voices you’d rather silence, the faces you pretend don’t belong here. That’s the line between liberty and empire.
And make no mistake … America is not just yours, no matter what Ken Duke or Stephen Miller tell you on their flag-wrapped podcasts. The Constitution wasn’t written for one tribe of loud, red-hatted mouth breathers. It was written for everyone … top to bottom, side to side, all colors, all creeds, all classes. And if you think that document belongs to you alone, you’ve missed the point so completely you might as well be reading it upside down.
Those rights you’re so eager to deny. They’re the only thing standing between you and the bottom. And never forget … you’re a hell of a lot closer to the bottom than the top. The system you’re cheering for doesn’t protect you; it just hasn’t gotten around to you yet. You’re not part of the ruling class … you’re the useful idiot that claps while the doors lock.
So go ahead… wave your flag, quote your Bible, tattoo “We the People” across your chest. But understand this: those words aren’t a catch phrase they’re a warning. They mean the people rule … not the police, not the president, not the preachers, not the mob with torches and bumper stickers for brains.
If you want law and order, start by honoring the law and remembering the order:
The People above the State. Liberty above comfort. Justice above fear.
Because when you cheer for power without accountability… when you mistake obedience for patriotism and control for safety… you are not defending America.
You are dismantling it.
Brick by brick.
Right by right.
Until the only freedom left is the one you’ve already surrendered.
And yet … there’s still time to remember who we are.
There’s still time to stand in the light of what was promised.
Because freedom isn’t a gift we’re given by the strong … it’s a duty we owe to the weak. It’s a covenant between neighbors, not a contract with kings.
So raise your head. Stand your ground. Speak when you’re told to be silent. Defend the rights of those you’ll never meet. Because the day we stop doing that … the day we decide freedom only belongs to the people who look and think like us … is the day the Republic dies and the empire begins.
And I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to bow to that.
