Most people have heard the phrase “variation on a theme.” In storytelling, we can look at “Jaws” as a variation of “Moby Dick,” while that could be argued as being a variation of the biblical story of Jonah and the Whale.
Then there’s Mary Shelley’s famous creation Frankenstein. That one’s considered a variation of “The Golem of Prague,” a tale from Jewish folklore dating back to the 16th century. It’s one of several golem tales, but it seems to be the most famous.
A golem is an artificial creature in human form. In “The Golem of Prague,” Jews in the city were often victims of pogroms. So, Rabbi Loew made a golem to protect the people and, in some tellings of the tale, it also does some manual labor because it’s so strong.
One day, though, the golem went on a rampage harming everyone and destroying property because the rabbi forgot to deactivate for the sabbath. It had to be stopped and the rabbi did just that. He stopped the golem by taking away its power.
What that power was is also a matter of the telling. Some say the rabbi took a scroll from the golem, a scroll that contained the name of God. In another telling, he manages to erase the first letter of a four-letter word. In Hebrew lettering, the four-letter word was truth but, without the first letter, the word becomes death.
If I would write an ending, it would be more along the lines of the rabbi somehow implanting the word Truth onto the creature. But I would liken the golem in the story to governments, in general, but especially national or federal governments.
How many of us were told somewhere along the line that ancient people formed governments to defend against hostile outsiders? But some governments, most if not all actually, have grown to the point of being out of control. Governments hurt people and take their stuff but on a horrid level. Governments kill people, even their own.
R.J. Rummel, in his book “Death by Government,” says governments killed 169,195,000 of their own people in the 20th century. But even when they don’t kill, they’re still destructive. The United States is an example.
We’re told as early as elementary that in the United States no one is above the law, not even the president. Oops. That was before a recent Supreme Court ruling that maybe a president does have some immunity from prosecution for official acts, but not from unofficial acts, and it’s up to lower courts to decide which is which.
So, even though former President Barack Obama violated the due process clauses of the Fifth and 14th Amendments by ordering the U.S. military to kill an American citizen while depriving that citizen of his due process guarantees, that’s OK, courts have said.
There’s also civil asset forfeiture where police confiscate a person’s cash or other property without that person being charged with a crime., let alone being proven guilty. And then there’s qualified immunity for police who violate other rights that people peoples’ rights. They’ve even gotten away with killing innocent people. So much for no one being above the law.
The federal government is the monster that Steppenwolf sang about more than 50 years ago. It has the lyric line “Now it’s a monster and will not obey.” So, like the golem, it should have its plug pulled by the people demanding all those in office obey constitutional limits. Politicians, police, and bureaucrats are not the bosses. They work for the people, that is unless our teachers lied to us. Are we a country of laws, not men? If so, no one should be above the law.
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