Most of my editorial letters end with a reference to Jesus. This time I'm starting with one. When Jesus was in front of the Sanhedrin, a worldly way of looking at the situation would be that the people who were the judges of right and wrong were going to judge this single itinerant rabbi. But in order to keep their power and exterminate this fellow who kept healing the commoners, they had to break some of their own rules to do it! Some of the broken rules: Capital punishment trials were not supposed to be held at night or before the sabbath but this one was. Jesus' testimony was not considered. Charges should be constant but here the charges kept shifting: blasphemy before the Sanhedrin, insurrection before Pilate. It was blasphemous for a high priest to tear his garments, Caiaphas tore his. Judges were supposed to be impartial but these judges conspired against Jesus. In other words, instead of judging Jesus they have actually judged themselves and proved they were unworthy of holding the power they sought.
Why bring this example up? Because Montana jurisprudence is proving the same thing. By now many of you reading this should have received your follow-on tax bill for the extra property taxes you owe on the property tax you paid last year. Don't blame the county commissioners though. When the property tax hike came through Musselshell was among 37 counties voting to keep your property taxes the same. However, the Montana Supreme Court voted to override your elected commissioners and hike property taxes. So you have an extra bill to pay this month. And next year. And the year after that.
"Well what can we do?" you might ask. "There ought to be a law." And so we get to the crux of the problem. If a law limiting taxes were to be passed one week, it could be rescinded the next by a court. Section 1 of Article II of the Montana Constitution states "All political power is vested in and derived from the people. All government of right originates with the people, is founded upon their will only, and is instituted solely for the good of the whole." Patently untrue. We are not a people under rule of law, we are under rule of lawyer. The instability of law was understood thirty five years ago. So when a movement was started to limit tax increases (and the growth of government those taxes fund) a constitutional initiative approach was taken, reasoning that the Montana Constitution isn't as vaporous as a simple law. The initiative was CI-75 and the will of the people was to approve it. The Montana Supreme Court then quietly rewrote the Montana Constitution (Section 11 of Article XIV) in order to strike down CI-75 and the will of the people. The entrenched interests were able to get the people to vote down CI-66 & CI-67. But CI-75 & CI-116 were upvoted by the people, and then struck down by the court. The most recent attempt, CI-121, was struck down even before the voting happened. All these newer initiatives have proved that we are in the same position as Jesus in front of the Sanhedrin, standing in front of a court and an elite that is willing to break its own rules to get what it wants. The Supreme Court (and by implication all the courts downstream from it) are proving that they are unworthy to hold the power they seek.
What to do? Jan 6 should prove that insurrection is out, they would crucify us for that. Besides, Jesus used help not hurt to get what he wanted. As a practical matter, a good first step for us is to recognize that government power doesn't flow from the will of the people anymore. We live in a system that tells US how to live, not the other way around. Maybe a second avenue of action would be to adopt the mindset of an average soviet citizen in days of yore: "We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us". Lastly, if we were willing to put up with pain, maybe we could stop demanding free stuff from the government and start to work on providing it ourselves. The approach would require the faith that God will help us of course. Nah, that wouldn't work. Like faith, self reliance is just too painful.
Robert Wayman
Musselshell
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