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There is a famous line from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov in which one of the characters asserts that if God does not exist, then everything is permitted. This has been resaid many ways and attributed to many people, but the original is from Dostoevsky, the great Russian novelist. For most of human history, the answer to the question, “Who says?” has been God, maybe the gods or perhaps a holy man who everyone agrees has some connection to the gods.

When someone said you should not do something, that question, “Who says?” was baked into the statement, along with its answer. You should not speak ill of the gids because the gods will exact revenge on you or maybe the authorities, fearing the wrath of the gods, will punish you. The answer to the question of who says you should or should not do something was always the same. it was some concept of the supernatural or its manifestation in the natural world.

In modern times, we do not appeal to the gods. You should not drive your car recklessly in a school zone because the government says you should not do that, and they have men with guns to arrest you if you do it. The answer to the question, “Who says I cannot speed in a school zone?” is the government. Every prohibition in our lives comes with an assumed answer to the question, “Who says?” That answer is almost always the government or its agents.

The government is not a god or claims connection to the gods, no matter what the politicians have to say about it, so who says they have the authority to decide how fast you can drive and where you can do it? In theory, it is we, the people, who decide these things through the democratic process. We created government and the process by which men hold power and they make the laws. The answer to the question, “Who says I cannot speed in a school zone?” is us, the people.

Of course, it does not stop there. If the government enacted a rule that says you must beep your horn when you see an orange-colored vehicle, no one would be satisfied with the answer “the government says you must do it.” It is a stupid rule and people would want more than that as an answer. In fact, some people might argue that the law is invalid because it requires people to do what they would otherwise would not do and for no reason that can be deemed in the best interest of the people.

In other words, the horn beeping law would fail to satisfy the question of “Who says?” because there has to be something more than just “because we say so” as an answer in order to satisfy the question. In the case of speeding around school zones, the real answer to the question is the safety of children. We prohibit reckless behavior around schools because we value the lives of our children. More important, we feel compelled to protect the safety of children.

Instead of something ridiculous like beeping the horn when you see an orange-colored car, pretend the law says you cannot teach women to read. The argument is that once women learn to read, we end up in the Aristophanes cycle. That is a good and valid reason for the law, but some would argue that it is more wrong to deny women the basic rights nature grants all people. Women have a natural right to exercise their minds by learning to read and using that knowledge to improve their lives.

What the critics of the prohibition on female literacy are saying is that it is not enough that the laws reflect the general will and have a practical purpose. There is some universal standard of justice against which the laws are measured. The horn beeping law is not just invalid because it is ridiculous. It is invalid because it unjustly compels people to act for no reason other than the state has the power to force them to beep their horns whenever they see an orange car.

A more serious way to think about this is with the waves of laws being pushed by Republicans regarding prohibited speech and thoughts. It is the official policy of the Republican Party that you should not think poorly of Israel, and you should not be permitted to criticize Israel. In fact, Republicans now think the one group of foreigners that should be deported are critics of Israel. The question they are never asked is, “Who says we should ban criticism of Israel?”

Most people would say it is rude to say mean things about Jews or Israelis, just as it is rude to make fun of fat people or homosexuals. No one suggests we deport people for telling jokes about fat people. In other words, there must be some other reason for the extraordinary emphasis on being rude to Israelis. It cannot simply be that we have all agreed that it is wrong. If there is no reason given, then it must be assumed that no reason exists, so there is no answer to the question.

Obviously, everyone knows the answer here. The massive Israeli lobby is bribing these people to pass these laws. Marco Rubio owes his political career, and thus his luxurious lifestyle, to a Zionist billionaire car dealer named Norman Braman. Rubio has been in the pocket of the neocons his entire career. Most Republican officials have a similar backstory, so this is why they want to strip what remains of your speech rights and ban large swaths of the Christian Bible.

None of that changes the basic problem. This crusade against anti-Zionism and antisemitism have to answer the same question that all prohibitions must answer, which is “Who says?” Being anti-Zionist might be viewed as rude to Jewish people and anti-Zionist are often rude to everyone in their presentations, but whoever says they must be muzzled must answer the question, “Who says?” Who says these people must be silenced and by whose authority are they being silenced?

This is a long trip to the basic question that lies at the heart of the current crisis and that is the question of authority. In the anti-Zionism debate, the problem is the same as with the horn blowing example. The answer to the question of “Who says?” is “the government says so” but that is not adequate because who says the government has the right to police your opinions? The only possible answer to that question is us, the people, and no such authority has been granted.

The question of authority always resolves to two possible answers, which is the collective will or the supernatural. The natural rights crowd will say the authority is nature, arrived at by reason, but that is just a way of blaming God while pretending he is no longer around. Once God is removed from the set of possible answers to the question “Who says?” we are left with our collective will, which means whomever we choose to be the final authority.

In the end, the response to all new demands for censorship and prohibitions against thoughts or actions must be “Who says?” Who decided that being rude to Jewish people is the worst sin? When was this decided? Who says we have to pretend crime is not what it is? Unless and until the scolds can answer these basic questions of authority, they have no legitimacy. An unjust prohibition is no prohibition at all, but merely an invitation to social conflict to the benefit of outsiders.

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