On April 26th of this year, the largest organized protest since Tianamen Square was held in China. The 10,000 protestors in attendance represented the spiritual Falun Gong movement. The protestors demonstrated peacefully and represented no political threat to the government.

They simply wanted the government to recognize their spiritual following. But the government remains unwilling.

Since April, the Chinese government has been increasingly critical of Falun Gong. The government has jailed many of its followers and suppressed its demonstrations. Evidently, Chinese authorities believes that order must come at all costs, even at the cost of denying the civil liberties that we take for granted.

Naturally, citizens of the United States react with outrage to such powerful examples of arbitrary oppression. But many Americans also unwittingly endorse policies that disrupt the very foundation upon which a government that respects rights and rules without arbitrariness is built.

This foundation is the rule of law. In being critical of Chinese government policy towards the Falun Gong, and of their human rights record in general, we must turn the lens back on ourselves and make sure that we are not guilty of the same sin in a different form.

The idea of the rule of law began over 300 years ago. Its ideals and theoretical origins were embodied and played out in the enlightenment and enshrined in our constitution during the founding and the American revolution.

The rule of law exists to protect citizens from the exercise of arbitrary power by government. The rule of law, as a concept, means that individual should only be ruled by public laws that are decided upon by representatives of the people or the people themselves.

It is meant to contrast rule by men, where the discretion of officials acts as the law, and is imposed at will, sometimes without reason.

These days, we take the rule of law for granted.

But we should not. And the experience of the Falun Gong in China should remind us that we need to be jealous of our liberty and revisit the reasons that enlightenment thinkers and the founders believed so strongly in the rule of laws and not men.

Although the US government does not abuse its citizens so openly, US citizens must be cautious of a more veiled threat to the rule of law and our liberty. For America too is rejecting the rule of law, slowly and incrementally, but surely.

Freedom, if we take its meaning seriously, must at least mean freedom from arbitrary use of force or power. The rule of law assures this.

When government officials are bound by the rule of law, they are by definition not allowed to use their discretion. They ignore the rule of law when they do use their discretion in place of law.

This is the reason that we ought to object so vehemently to what the Chinese government has done to the Falun Gong. China’s leaders have proclaimed that the Falun Gong represents a dangerous threat to the security of their country. Such rhetoric ought to remind us of McCarthyism, and it ought to remind us of the injustices that accompanied it.

But the underlying reason for the oppression of the Falun Gong seems to be that they represent a threat to the ruling party.

The Communist Party expects absolute allegiance from all Chinese nationals. Allegiance to any other person or ideal is perceived as subversive and represents a threat to Communist rule.

If this is true, then it becomes clear why the rule of law is so important and why its preservation is essential to liberty. The security and safety that you and I enjoy should not be made subject to a political debate.

It must be taken off the table. Yet we put that very security in danger when we do not hold government to the rule of law.

So, we must constantly pay attention. If we do nothing to uphold this important ideal, we might one day find that our government is beyond our control. The price of our freedom and security is that we must constantly fight to maintain it.

Notice that this is a price that the Falun Gong would accept in an instant. We must recognize our incredible good fortune, and also recognize that it will take eternal vigilance to preserve it.