.
“Yahweh or the Highway” would make a great bumper sticker.
Constitutional Law
Part 2: “What Were They Thinking?”
Digression: “A History of Government in 6 Revolutions: From the Paleolithic to Philadelphia”
121. Inventing God and Law: Deadly Monolatry
TITLE: Part O: DEADLY Monolatry
Panel 1: A vast yellow plain with orange mountains in the distance. In the middle of the plain is a gigantic inverted pyramid, its apex balanced on a tiny point of light on the ground. The structure is made of many tiers that get larger and larger the higher they go, vanishing off the top of the screen into the sky. (It was supposed to be a whole civilization, with waterfalls and gardens and people, but I got so tired drawing all the little guide lines that indicate its dimensions that I just left it at that. Now looking back at it, it kind of looks AI-generated, but my wrist can assure you that it was not.)
NARRATION:
Yehudan society—and Yehudan identity—thus balanced precariously on a fragile narrative: That they were the chosen people of a sovereign god. Anything that might challenge this narrative was therefore a deadly threat! It could topple society! It could kill a major aspect of their very selves!
NARRATION:
So the scriptures brought back intolerant monolatry… with a vengeance.
VOICE FROM THE PRECARIOUS CIVILIZATION 1:
Worshipping any of the other gods is strictly forbidden.
VOICE FROM THE PRECARIOUS CIVILIZATION 2:
If one of us even suggests sacrificing so much as a pinch of incense to any other gods, we must immediately stone him to death.
VOICE FROM THE PRECARIOUS CIVILIZATION 3:
Yahweh or the highway!
VOICE FROM THE PRECARIOUS CIVILIZATION 4:
It’s basic self-defense, innit? Kill or be killed.
-=-
Panel 2: The same family that was praying at its home altar from page 75, with a hearth fire on top and two parabellum-shaped stones representing gods or ancestors. The father stands in the center, with his wife to his left. Behind them and to his right stand a son and a daughter, and a young child peeks wide-eyed from behind the mother’s skirt.
NARRATION:
Never before in human history had anyone even cared whether you worshipped any other gods, apart from the state gods.
But now, Yehudites would kill each other for doing it!
There was just one problem:
WIFE:
Regular folks had never stopped worshipping all the other gods.
Elites can say what they want. This is how the universe has always worked.
Their scrolls can’t change what we know to be right.
-=-
Panel 3: Three Yehudan elite men. Two stand behind and to either side of a gray-bearded elder, who wears a white turban and white robes over a gold tunic. One of the other two, wearing blue robes and a blue feathered crown, is pointing to the narration box while looking at the other, who is wearing red robes and a red Assyrian-style headdress, and is gesturing questioningly to the elder.
NARRATION:
If you criminalize behavior that people consider fine and normal, you’ll never stop it from happening.
The citizenry will just think you’re punishing good people unjustly.
And if that happens, you can say goodbye to their sense that your rule is legitimate.
BLUE-ROBED MAN:
Good point.
WHITE-ROBED ELDER:
So everyone’s got to realize- no, feel in their heart…
That worshipping other gods isn’t just prohibited, it’s bad.
RED-ROBED MAN:
How the hell do we do that?
How the “hell” do we do that, indeed.
“If you criminalize behavior that people consider fine and normal, you’ll never stop it from happening.”
Not sure that was included in the memo to state legislatures when Roe v. Wade got overturned.
It’s an observation that applies to many aspects of law and policy-making. We’re going to see some variations on this theme in Con Law.
When the law punishes you for doing something everyone understands to be evil, there’s no problem. But when it punishes you for doing something that only some people think is wrong, you’ve got a problem. And when it punishes you for violating an artificial prohibition that nobody could even predict would get you in trouble, it’s the system itself that’s evil. (Remember Trudy and her feathers?)
It’s the cultural norms that matter. In culturally homogenous societies, where laws and regulations reflect common values, it’s not much of a problem. But in multicultural societies where group A thinks an act is evil, but group B thinks it’s no big deal, and group C wants to impose all new rules on everyone… you’re going to encounter seemingly unsolveable problems of crime and injustice.
In communities with a cultural expectation that certain behaviors are simply to be expected—ranging from grafitti to drug dealing to mugging to murder—you get highly disproportionate crime rates. But it goes away in the blink of an eye when cultural attitudes change to “we don’t do that around here.” And it comes back in the blink of an eye once there’s a perception that it’s tolerated. (Note: This is not the same thing as “broken windows” policies, which are all about stepping up the arrests, not about changing attitudes.)
Similarly, early 20th-century laws that criminalized harmless cultural norms of urban Black communities—such as drinking a beer on your front stoop, or smoking marijuana—did not stop the conduct from happening. It only resulted in a lot of Black people getting arrested and harassed. And to the extent it changed hearts and minds, it only engendered a sense that “those are someone else’s laws, not mine, and the system that enforces them is unjust.”
These are conundrums right now in the 21st century. What about Jerusalem in the 300s BCE? They needed to change hearts and minds to accommodate new artificial laws. And they didn’t have armies of sociologists and criminologists telling them how to do it. Kinda makes you wonder what they tried, and whether it worked, doesn’t it?
“Similarly, early 20th-century laws that criminalized harmless cultural norms of urban Black communities—such as drinking a beer on your front stoop, or smoking marijuana—did not stop the conduct from happening. It only resulted in a lot of Black people getting arrested and harassed. And to the extent it changed hearts and minds, it only engendered a sense that “those are someone else’s laws, not mine, and the system that enforces them is unjust.””
Yeah, but that was the point. It wasn’t to change the norms, it was to enforce the will of the White ruling class and reintroduce slavery through the back door. They didn’t want the consent of the subgroup they were governing because they didn’t think they needed it.