In the days of kings and queens it was not easy to remove the king by assassination. The king didn”t care what the people thought of him. He was ruler by birth, commissioned by God. To provoke his assassination required no less than the revolt of his entire people.
Nowadays, however, after two centuries of basking in a cultural concentration of individualism, freedom, democracy and free enterprise, a president”s life is not worth the trip to the polls. Anyone who can make a million dollars thereby is ready to shoot the president. Or, more likely, have it done; for now we have a handy organized crime system for hire.
And the current political situation makes it easy, for the candidate”s campaign gains quality by his showing faith in the people. He wades right out among them and shakes as many hands as he can. He tries to impress the people as just one of the boys and the more equal he can appear to the voters, the less money it would require to get him killed; for we Americans are an enterprising people and when profits climb into the six-digit range, the value of human life falls into the nihilistic area.
What we need now is a rule who has both immunity from sneaky assassinations and the unassailability of a written law. The latter alone, in fact, with congress to interpret, would cover.
Dean Sparks
Lucerne
