Enforcing the Rules
The reason why there are rules is to provide guidelines for people who might otherwise misbehave. If everyone agreed to behave, we wouldn’t need rules. So it’s axiomatic that sometimes applying the rules gets in the way of good behavior. That’s why we have judges, to make the exceptions.
Judges are very important because all too often the people in charge of policing are so crippled by a religious devotion to the enforcement of the rules and blindly corrupt by their power that they don’t allow for an appropriate variance.
Such was the case with the California Interscholastic Federation. They ruled retroactively that a foster child who had moved from home to home was ineligible to play on a high school football team. The CIE then declared four of the team’s victories forfeits.
The fact is that the boy was eligible to play for the school, and that it was simply and only a mistake in paperwork filed by the school that implied his ineligibility. That’s right, someone filled in the wrong boxes on forms that probably should never even have been printed, and several counties of school football teams were thrown into disarray.
Thank goodness someone appealed this primitive rule-worship to the courts, where a judge promptly ordered a restoration of reason, and decency. The federation officials reluctantly complied with the judge’s ruling and the games went on as originally planned (if slightly delayed). But the angst and frustration produced by this perversion of the motive behind the rules will fade only with time.
The wrong people are all too often chosen to enforce the rules. They are attracted by the authority they have over others – and the guns and uniforms, in some cases – and that is not a healthy appeal. Society will run much more successfully when rules are applied on the basis of their reason and need, not their enforce ability.
©2008 SetonnoteS
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