Behavioral Matters

One of the breakthroughs of the Jews, as I understand it, was declaring that even the king was subject to the law since the law came from God. This was a huge step. It's hard for me to imagine it wasn't the deciding thing enabling civilization as we know it--in opposion to barbarism, tribalism and every kind of inhumanity.

It's equally hard these days to think that humans aren't fatally flawed and incapable of meeting this standard and thereby doomed to self-annihilation, what with Trump. Trump is the triumph of the assertion that behavior doesn't matter and the law doesn't matter and that power is everything and character nothing.