Reflecting on Father’s Day and the 250th anniversary of our nation this summer, my thoughts were drawn to one of its greatest unsung patriots, my father Fred. As a Jewish child liberated from the ashes of Europe by General George S. Patton’s army, and inspired by the “shining city on a hill,” he chose America over a promising soccer career.
Although not a lawyer, he easily could have been under different circumstances. His views were usually calibrated and nuanced, traits that have grown increasingly rare in public life since he passed away sixteen years ago. I always wonder what he would think about our current state of affairs, and the status of the rule of law.
As someone who earned his citizenship, including by serving in the army that rescued him, he expected others to do likewise. He had compassion for those who arrived under challenging circumstances and wanted a pathway for them, but a swift exit for those who did not uphold our laws.
He cared deeply for those less fortunate, having been helped by the American government and its people. But he strongly insisted on equality of opportunity rather than outcome and believed that we should not fight discrimination with more discrimination.
As a serious lifelong learner and strict disciplinarian, he believed that teachers should focus on core principles (“reading, writing, and arithmetic,” as he would say), and that students should be held accountable for their behavior.
He knew that when leaders speak, their words matter. He would be shocked at how our politicians now describe each other and their fellow Americans. He might not have known about the concept of “stochastic terrorism,” but he understood from experience the downstream dangers of dehumanizing rhetoric. Although a believer in free speech, he supported meaningful guardrails against incitement and violence, a view that was challenged when neo-Nazis tried to demonstrate near our Skokie home in the 1970s.
He saw firsthand the consequences when institutional checks and balances collapsed under Gleichschaltung, the process through which the Nazis consolidated German government and society to conform to Hitler’s will. He shared James Madison’s view that “ambition must be made to counteract ambition,” and that no branch of our government should ignore its constitutional responsibilities.
Having been hunted by security officials simply for his faith, he would have been outraged by excessive force from our law enforcement officers. At the same time, he recognized that societal breakdown occurs when people commit crimes with impunity.
He believed in America’s inherent right to self-defense against all enemies, foreign and domestic. But he would be appalled by any application of Nazi jurist Carl Schmitt’s “state of exception” to constrain civil liberties and treat others inhumanely.
In short, he was a radical moderate who wanted an America that rewarded those who played by the rules, firmly addressed those who did not, and balanced our various competing interests. He would have agreed with Thomas Sowell that there are no solutions, only trade-offs, and that we are all in this together to create a more perfect union for everyone. I miss him every day, and I hope that all of us can learn from him, to make our next 250 years better than the first.
This article is part of a series on the rule of law and its importance for business lawyers created by the American Bar Association Business Law Section’s Rule of Law Working Group. Read more articles in the series.