Why Abandoning the Constitution Makes Us What We Hate

“No, we shouldn’t torture people.”

I’ve noticed a troubling trend on the Right lately that, oddly enough, mirrors a long-standing trend on the radical Left: a growing disregard for the Rule of Law and the Constitution (some even calling for its total abolition, as if it is responsible for the chaos within our society—or at best, unfit to deal with it). The brutal murder of the Ukrainian woman, Iryna Zarutska, in Charlotte has only fueled this sentiment. Many now argue that the law is no longer good enough, that only merciless cruelty and raw power (tyranny) is what’s required to stamp out the evil festering in our society.

It’s true that evil must be stopped. It’s true we’ve done an awful job at it. After all, the murderer who strangled that poor, innocent Ukrainian refugee was a 14x repeat offender who was let loose to roam the streets, only to commit this final act of horror. It should have never been. 

Swift justice is not optional—it’s necessary, both to honor the victims and to deter further crime. But here’s the problem: abandon order, and you’re left with mob rule. And what fills that void? The very barbarism we claim we want to eliminate.

As Winston from the John Wick series put it: “Without rules, we live like the animals.”

Rules and Consequences: What the Founders Believed About Justice

The Founders were obsessed with justice—not as raw vengeance, but as ordered fairness under law. They had seen mob rule firsthand in the French Revolution, and they had seen tyranny firsthand under the British Crown. They wanted neither.

James Madison, in Federalist 51, reminded us that justice is “the end of government. It is the end of civil society.” In other words, justice wasn’t a side project of government—it was THE purpose of government. And if justice was delayed or denied, the entire system would corrode. We are witnessing the fruits of that now.

Thomas Jefferson said much the same: “The most sacred of the duties of government [is] to do equal and impartial justice to all its citizens.” Notice his choice of words: equal and impartial. That meant no mob vengeance, no brutalizing one group to appease another, no selective cruelty, or cruelty at all.

The Founders knew the temptation to rule through fear, and how it would appease the often rightful anger we may possess at times, but they also knew such cruelty would erode liberty, the moral fiber of our nation (what liberty is solely depend upon) and ultimately destroy civility itself. So they built guardrails into the Constitution to guarantee that justice would be swift but not savage.

What the Constitution Actually Says

If we want to understand what true justice is supposed to look like in America, we don’t have to speculate. It’s right there in the text:

• The Fifth Amendment guarantees that no person shall be deprived of “life, liberty, or property, without due process of law.” That means the state can punish—but only after a fair and orderly process. Not mob vengeance. Not online outrage.

• The Sixth Amendment guarantees a “speedy and public trial.” The Founders knew that slow, drawn-out trials would make justice meaningless. It was designed to prevent exactly the backlog and endless delays we see today.

• The Eighth Amendment forbids “cruel and unusual punishments.” This was a direct rejection of the torture, mutilation, and gruesome executions that Europe was still practicing at the time. Punishment, yes. Barbarism, no.

• The Guarantee of Habeas Corpus (Article I, Section 9) ensures no one can be locked away indefinitely without trial. Justice must be transparent and accountable to the people.

Together, these provisions draw a sharp line: justice must be certain and swift, but it must never descend into cruelty.

Where We’ve Gone Wrong

The problem today is not that our law is too weak—it’s that we don’t enforce it. We’ve allowed violent offenders to cycle in and out of prisons. We’ve clogged the system with endless procedural games and activist judges who let criminals, including corrupt lawmakers, off on technicalities.

So when Matt Walsh, for one example, says we need to inflict “severe, merciless suffering on violent criminals,” I understand the anger—trust me, I get it—but that isn’t the American solution. It’s unconstitutional. It ignores the Founders’ wisdom—also in line with biblical justice—that cruelty is not justice.

Worse still, some are calling for outright torture, even circulating images of medieval punishments like impalement. That isn’t justice—it’s savagery; a bloodlust that will not go tamed if let wild. The Founders fought to leave that world behind, and so should we.

As one understandably frustrated Twitter user wrote: “Justice is not swift in America.” And, unfortunately, that’s exactly right. But the solution isn’t to abandon the law in response to our failure to uphold it rightly. It’s to return to it. The Constitution already demands swiftness; we just aren’t living up to it.

A Way Back

Prominent right-wing journalist Savannah Hernandez recently claimed this nation isn’t the same nation the Constitution was written for. She’s right—culturally, spiritually, morally, we’ve drifted far from the Founders’ America. But the way forward isn’t to abandon the Constitution. It’s to recommit ourselves to it.

The Founders believed that justice had to be firm, fair, and fast. They built a system that rejects cruelty but demands order. If we lose that balance, we lose everything.

We don’t need mob justice. We don’t need torture. We don’t need to live like animals. What we need is to believe in the rule of law again—and enforce it without hesitation.

The Constitution’s vision of justice is still our best hope for civility in America. Abandon it, and we will not like what comes next.

After all, do we blame marriage itself for divorce or domestic abuse? Of course not.

In the same way, we shouldn’t blame the Constitution when people fail to live up to it. We aren’t supposed to be like the radical Left. We are better than that, as law-abiding/honoring Christians and conservatives. No, we don’t need another George Floyd moment in the wake of this recent tragedy, filled to the brim with reactionary vengeance, calls to violence, and attacks on our national foundation: The Rule of Law. 

The answer is not abandoning the Law, but returning to it, for the sake of evil’s victims—because it remains our strongest guard against becoming the very thing we despise.