The U.S. relies on its heavily armed police force to enforce "law and order." This is a direct consequence of the liberal assumptions that undergird the American order. We are indeed seeing the fruits of something systemic. https://twitter.com/realDonaldTrump/status/1300428396493758464

Classical liberalism holds that we are, by nature, lawless creatures. Law is merely the constraint we agree that needs to restrain our natural lawlessness. In its absence, there is chaos and violence. Liberal humans internalize this belief, viewing law as wholly conventional.

Progressive liberalism shares the view of law's conventionality, but adds to it the deep suspicion that it largely exists to advantage property owners over those it oppresses. The law is seen as weapon of the oppressed to overturn the rule by oppressors.

Both reject older theories that the law is based in nature, that good law - like the teachings of a loving parent - corrects and perfects. We instead internalize the ideals of self-governance, rather than the effort to escape the law's arbitrary authority under liberalism.

The more a society is devoted to the idea of "liberty" as a condition free from law, the more it will require highly visible external power to enforce law. Whereas, as Aquinas relates, the more natural law is internalized, the more the role of custom governs our daily affairs.

We are, in a sense, seeing a debate unfold largely internal to liberalism: more imposition of power by police, or its replacement by expanding government authority to replace the oppressors by the oppressed. As we are all seeing unfold before our eyes, neither bodes well.

We should instead attempt to avoid embracing either "team" that we are being told to root for. Instead, people of good will should work on changing the way in which we understand "law and order" from root to branch. This is the only path to avoid the cataclysm that we now face.