We were all raised with the notion that the law applied to everyone equally. In fact, the archetype of injustice was the idea that in pre-Revolutionary America and England, the English Lords could do essentially what they wanted to do with impunity. The idea that Lords could do anything they want was so repugnant that the concept of droit du seigner, the right of a Lord of a medieval estate to take the virginity of his serfs’ maiden daughters, became popularized in common literature. Today, leaders like Saddam Hussein and Moammar Gadhafi are viewed as the ultimate bad guys because they did whatever they liked for year without any accountability.

So, when we were kids we all stood up in elementary school and ended the Pledge of Allegiance with the words, “with truth and justice for all.” That’s our heritage.

Unfortunately, that is not the reality we find in America. Instead, we have developed the idea of “too big to jail”… and that means that we have developed the idea that the powerful elite should not be held accountable for their actions for the good of the country, even if they have out and out committed clear crimes. Want a few examples?

• Gerald Ford’s pardon of Richard Nixon for crimes committed in the Watergate scandal.
• Failure to investigate and prosecute the Iran-Contra scandal of the Reagan administration.
• Failure to investigate the torture, illegal wiretapping, and other crimes of the Bush administration.
• Failure to investigate and prosecute the illegal activities of Wall Street that led to the current administration.

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