In 1991, I had the unique opportunity to host three foreign exchange students from the United Arab Emirates at my home in South Florida. It was a fascinating window into a culture fundamentally different from our own.
Having previously served as a Peace Corps Volunteer and Instructor of Biology at the University of Liberia (1972–1975), I was intensely curious about the social frameworks that shaped different civilizations. In West Africa, the traditional system of dispute settlement known as the palaver bears a distant resemblance to a filibuster. Both sides talk, negotiate, and marshal support. The larger and more influential the factions involved, the more likely the matter ultimately rises to a chief or clan elder for resolution.
One evening, discovery came through a casual conversation. One of the students mentioned he had three mothers. Fascinated by the logistics of a polygamous household, I asked what it was like growing up with so many siblings and mothers under one roof.
His answer was strikingly direct.
“It is simple. There is strength in numbers.”
He explained that in the traditional world from which his culture emerged, the group with the greatest numbers usually prevailed in conflict. Maintaining a large family was not merely family planning. It was protection, influence, and survival.
At the time, I viewed his answer as a remarkable piece of sociological insight—a window into an ancient, clan-based worldview. Thirty-five years later, I have come to see it differently.
What my young Emirati guest described was not merely the law of the desert. It was the oldest political principle in human history: the tribe protects its own, and strength comes from numbers.
For most of human history, justice operated accordingly.
The Western concept of justice did not emerge naturally. Greek philosophy supplied reason. Roman law supplied structure. Christianity supplied the revolutionary proposition that every soul stands individually before God. The Sermon on the Mount weakened the ancient logic of clan vengeance by emphasizing personal responsibility, forgiveness, and universal moral obligations.
Over centuries, these traditions converged into something rare in human history: procedural justice.
The central achievement of Western law was not that it made men virtuous. It was that it severed guilt from bloodline, tribe, and kinship and attached it instead to the actions of the individual.
In the Anglo-American legal tradition, justice is stubbornly individual. You are judged by your actions, your intent (mens rea), and your accountability. The law is blind to your color, creed, lineage, and tribal affiliation.
Or at least it was.
Today, we are witnessing a growing erosion of that principle and a gradual return to the logic of collective responsibility.
Consider the precedent established by the prosecution of James and Jennifer Crumbley, the parents of a school shooter. Prosecutors argued that extraordinary negligence justified criminal liability. Whatever the merits of the verdict itself, the broader cultural enthusiasm surrounding the case revealed something deeper: an increasing willingness to distribute responsibility outward from the individual actor to the surrounding social unit.
The emotional desire to hold parents accountable is understandable. Yet every expansion of responsibility beyond the direct actor raises an uncomfortable question: Where does individual accountability end and collective accountability begin?
That question would have puzzled few people in the ancient world.
In tribal societies, responsibility was rarely confined to the individual. Families, clans, and kinship groups routinely shared both guilt and punishment. Blood feuds were fought between lineages rather than between isolated individuals. A crime committed by one member of the group often became the responsibility of the group itself.
Across the Atlantic, Great Britain presents a different manifestation of the same trend. The increasingly selective treatment of political dissenters, online commentators, and citizens who challenge official narratives has exposed a troubling imbalance. Authorities frequently appear more concerned with managing large, organized constituencies than with preserving equal standards of enforcement.
The lesson is ancient.
There is strength in numbers.
Large, cohesive groups possess leverage. Atomized individuals do not.
This logic now extends far beyond the courtroom. Increasingly, citizens are encouraged to think of themselves not as individuals but as members of demographic categories. Status, grievance, privilege, victimhood, and even moral authority are increasingly assigned according to group identity.
The terminology is modern. The underlying logic is timeworn.
Tribal societies distribute protection, punishment, and status according to group membership. Modern identity politics often does the same, differing mainly in vocabulary. One speaks of clans and bloodlines. The other speaks of demographic categories and historical grievances. Both subordinate the individual to the collective.
The irony is that many advocates of this transformation regard it as moral progress. They believe they are creating a more equitable society by evaluating individuals through the lens of group identity. Yet in doing so, they risk dismantling the very principle that once protected minorities, dissidents, and the powerless from the tyranny of the majority.
Blind justice is fragile. It requires an entire society to agree to set aside the tribal flag, enter the courtroom as individuals, and be judged solely by their conduct.
That idea may be the single greatest moral and legal achievement of Western civilization.
We have long assumed that we could abandon its philosophical foundations without consequence. History suggests otherwise. The tribal impulse never disappears. It merely waits beneath the surface.
When guilt becomes collective, justice ceases to be justice. It becomes arithmetic.
And in a world governed by arithmetic rather than principle, the largest tribe eventually wins.
