Citizenship Exam Question 12: What is the "Rule of Law"?

Free Republic ^ | 8/6/2016 | PoconoPundit

[poconopundit]

Yesterday was a day of celebration at my house because my wife of 34 years became an American citizen!

My daughter was at the swearing-in ceremony in Atlanta where 165 immigrants from 65 individual countries took the oath, said the Pledge of Allegiance, and sang the national anthem.

My wife was proud of her accomplishment. She's from Japan and though her conversational English is very good, she worried about the oral exam and spent many, many hours memorizing the 100 possible questions the immigration office could ask from the Civics Test.

As I turned out, answering the 5 or 6 civics questions was the easy part. The hard part was understanding the heavy Southern accent of the woman immigration officer! My wife spent all of her 3 decades in states like Massachusetts and Pennsylvania, so the new dialect threw her for a loop.

My wife was the only Japanese in the new citizen group. There were many from Mexico and apparently a few from China.

But it was the grandmother of a new citizen from Bhutan (a country in the Himalayas) who took the cake for the person with the most interesting national costume at the ceremonies.

While glancing at the questions in the exam, I ran across one particular question that I thought would be particularly challenging for future citizens, because it goes against what they are seeing on the nightly news.

The question is: what is the rule of law? And there are four acceptable answers:

• Everyone must obey the law.
• Leaders must obey the law.
• Government must obey the laws.
• No one is above the law.

And yet in the last few weeks we've seen some striking examples of events that go against these civic rules:

• A President was found to have secretly money laundered $400 million and sent it to the terrorist- supporting state of Iran.
• The Democratic nominee for President has been proven to have deliberately broken the law and jeopardized our national security; and
• The head of the FBI has casually bent the law to violate the rule: "No person is above the law".

Let's hope that in 50 years, our ancestors will look back on the election of 2016 and say: that was the time that Americans went to the ballot box in great numbers to restore the rule of law and defend the principles enshrined in the Citizenship Civics Exam.

[Vendome]

[ameribbean expat]

Have to say, my first single malt was Laphroaig. Did not impress me, or my brother — who always joins me for a snort on my birthday.

The next year we did a shot-like sip of Talisker, from a bottle someone had given me at Christmas.

There are two times I can say I have had great booze— one was a 12 year old California Paso Robles Cabernet Sauvignon while vacationing in Santa Cruz, the other was the first time I tasted Talisker single malt.

Everything else is crap.

[V K Lee]

Ms. Poconopundit,
Congratulations in your choosing the Best nation in the land in which to reside. Though you are unable to see US at our finest at this time, we were once a Godly, lawful nation which inspired many great dreams and many great people, citizens such as you who saw US as something special. Something in they wished to be a small part. May you find your dreams and achieve in this great country your potential as an outstanding individual. Welcome to the UNITED STATES OF AMERICA!

Regards,

[Cboldt]

The first rule of law club, is don’t talk about law club.

[Talisker]

Lol, what a treat of a post! Thanks, I very much agree. It’s too expensive to drink very often, but a little goes a long way. And for those who don’t care for it, I never say a word - more for me!

[nevergore]

Congrats!

[ntnychik]

I welcome your wife as a fellow citizen. I trust she’ll vote as though the president’s appointments to the Supreme Court are of utmost importance, for the reason you gave. Congratulations!

[YogicCowboy]

“They stood by and watched a man who told us he was born a British subject take the oath of office which he is Constitutionally prohibited from holding.”

Yes.
It is for that reason that I despise - I cannot use strong enough language to represent my true feeling - Mark Levin and Rafael Cruz: two self-appointed and self-aggrandizing (so-called) Constitutional Legal Experts, who, along with all of the RNC - there is no GOP - refused to go to battle for the Constitution, choosing instead to castigate those of us who saw the fraud, and to ignore or corrupt the issue so as to promote their own ineligible candidates of choice (and concomitantly neuter the Constitution further, which is what they secretly want).
When I first heard Levin denounce so-called Birthers as being “stuck on stupid,” I knew he was a neocon liar; he has since proven that more and more frequently and graphically.
(There are other, truer, Constitutional experts who expose Levin’s proposed Amendments as being neocon Trojan Horses to actually damage and weaken the original intent of the Framers.)

[mumblypeg]

Wait a minnit— does the test really have NO wrong answers? So any answer you circle is acceptable?
Sheesh.

[poconopundit]

Hey V K,

I read your wise post to my wife, and she said thank you!

I really liked your phrase: "May you find your dreams and achieve in this great country your potential as an outstanding individual."

Yes, that's right. "Achieve your potential" really is what America is about, isn't it?  It's truly what separates the dependent class from the hard working; and the virtuous from the corrupted.

It hurts the gimme-dat and crooked types to say out loud: "I'm proud to be an American" out loud because they know they didn't earn the right to say those words. And maybe that's one reason we saw zero American flags on the DNC stage until Trump complained about it.

Being a true American is about self-sacrifice and hard work in the pursuit of something excellent -- something that expands the common wealth, the common good, or the common brotherhood.

[HLPhat]

>>”Achieve your potential” really is what America is about, isn’t it?

It used to be - until the cancer of self-worshiping collective demoralization took hold.

 http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2015-06-25/how-companies-are-using-pip-humiliate-and-get-rid-workers

Meet the "culture"'s new gold-medal "normal":

[Athlete with No Womb or Ovaries but Internal Testes Will Compete with Women in Rio]
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-bloggers/3457155/posts

Hos 12:7-9
7 The merchant uses dishonest scales;
he loves to defraud.
8 Ephraim boasts,
“I am very rich; I have become wealthy.
With all my wealth they will not find in me
any iniquity or sin.”

9 “I am the Lord your God,
[who brought you] out of Egypt;
I will make you live in tents again,
as in the days of your appointed feasts.
NIV

The “Rule of Law” is that which governs the nature of things.

I think American “culture” is gonna wish it had a tent to live in after its done devouring itself.

[poconopundit]

It's scary. I have some relatives who have swallowed the corruption and love what Obama is doing.

Sometimes the only thing that make me believe America is not totally lost is to read FR.

We mustn't give up hope. Go Trump!

[V K Lee]

:-)

We’ve but one life, live it to your full potential and consider each day a blessing.

[HLPhat]

>>We mustn't give up hope.

"It is rather for us to be here dedicated to the great task remaining before us—that from these honored dead we take increased devotion to that cause for which they gave the last full measure of devotion—that we here highly resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain—that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom—and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth."

--Abraham Lincoln, Gettysburg, Thursday, November 19, 1863,

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gettysburg_Address

Charlie Mike, FRiends!

[poconopundit]

Thank you for closing this thread with these stirring words of Honest Abe.

My favorite part of the Gettysburg Address is:

But, in a larger sense, we can not dedicate, we can not consecrate, we can not hallow this ground. The brave men, living and dead, who struggled here, have consecrated it, far above our poor power to add or detract.

And Lincoln must have been moved that he delivered the address only four months after the bodies of thousands lay bloodied on that hallowed ground.

But I take heart that Donald Trump is a candidate who is giving his "full measure of devotion" to this campaign with his relentless rally reach out to WE THE PEOPLE.

[HLPhat]

>> rally reach out to WE THE PEOPLE.

Yep. In contrast to using a white noise generator...

http://www.google.com/search?q=hillary+clinton+white+noise