In Shakespeare’s Titus Andronicus, the antagonists ruthlessly follow retribution’s golden rule—do unto others as they have done unto you—until by play’s end, the stage is dripping with chopped-off tongues, amputated limbs, severed heads, and murdered children baked and served to their mother for dinner.

But is retribution always foul? In Measure for Measure, another Shakespearean revenge play, the good prince gives the bad prince a taste of his own medicine, and by the play’s end, all is well with the world.

Regardless of whether we’re headed for Titus or something less dark, it’s clear the president of the United States is intent on exacting revenge.

He has called for the prosecution of all who prosecuted and persecuted him. His administration has pressured a private company, Disney-owned ABC, to suppress speech just as the Biden administration pressured private companies (Twitter, Facebook, et al.) to suppress speech—the difference being that Biden’s efforts were far more successful, and provoked not a hint of disapproval from the legacy media. He is attacking universities whose faculties attacked him, and in this attack he’s doing exactly what the Obama administration did: using antidiscrimination investigations and threats of defunding to force them into compliance with his political agenda. (In Obama’s case, it was a no-due-process, we-believe-survivors, redefine-sexual-assault agenda.) His supporters, meanwhile, are urging employers around the country to fire people who say the wrong things—just as the left did, with impunity, not long ago.

Watching all this unfold, Trump’s critics see Titus Andronicus; they predict the end of the world. “If you guys think that we can survive another three and a half years of this, I think you’re delusional,” said Joy Behar on The View. By contrast, Trump’s supporters see Measure for Measure: Justice is being done. “It is an eye for an eye, and I hope we win,” said Jesse Watters on Fox. “[T]hey arrested him, they arrested his campaign manager, his campaign adviser, his lawyers. . . . And not only that, they spied on him. . . . tried to bankrupt his company, leaked his tax returns, and then couldn’t protect him from a sniper. So what are you supposed to do?”

Who’s right?

Many people of good will are struggling with this question. Given that Trump’s enemies already shattered the rules, does he still have to follow them?

This is a very difficult problem—morally, legally, and politically—with no black-and-white answers. But it seems worth more than a little attention, since the fate of the nation may be at stake.

Morality doesn’t categorically require one side to play by rules the other side doesn’t. True, “right is right even if nobody does it,” as Chesterton said. But there’s another, equally venerable moral precept: Don’t be a sucker.

If you stand in line while everyone else rushes for the door, you’ll never get in. If you’re playing football and the other side keeps blatantly tackling your receivers when the ball is in the air but the refs never call pass interference, you better play the same way. No moral principle mandates following a rule that doesn’t exist.

Watching all this retribution unfold, Trump’s critics see Titus Andronicus; they predict the end of the world.

Moreover, if you have a responsibility to protect others under your leadership, being a sucker—following a rule the other side doesn’t—can be plain wrong. As Yale professor John Fabian Witt explains, George Washington, committed though he was to the humane treatment of prisoners, announced at the beginning of the Revolutionary War that he would “treat British prisoners by exactly the same ‘rule’ the British adopted for Americans.”

Consider the gravity of that pledge. Washington was saying: If the British starve or execute their prisoners, so will I. But this was not just tit for tat. Washington was acting to protect his men. If instead he’d followed humanitarian “rules” the British didn’t, the British would have had no incentive to treat American prisoners humanely.

In some circumstances, a rule can be “broken” not only in the sense of being violated, but in the sense of being rendered inoperable, like a broken watch—which is hardly a watch at all, since it no longer keeps time. If you’re in a country where no one pays their taxes, you’re not violating a rule if you follow suit, because there is no rule.

Today’s right-wing cancellations are a good example of a broken rule. If the left could acknowledge that its past cancellations were wrongful—if it could credibly commit not to do the same again in the future—then maybe a rule might be created or restored, and the right would have an incentive to stop their cancellations.

But at present there is no such incentive. There is no rule the right can be condemned for breaking.

The law, however, is different: It does require the party in power to follow rules even when the other side didn’t.

In an important opinion late last week, federal district judge Waverly Crenshaw (an Obama appointee) found a “realistic likelihood” of “vindictive prosecution” in the Trump administration’s decision to indict Kilmar Albrego Garcia on charges of smuggling other illegal aliens into the country. (Albrego Garcia, of course, is the illegal alien improperly sent to El Salvador in March.) While definitions vary, in general a defendant claiming vindictive or selective prosecution has to show that he is being retaliated against for exercising legal rights. If Garcia can make this showing—and Judge Crenshaw has ordered discovery to give him a chance to do so—his indictment will be dismissed.

And here’s the point: It won’t make any difference, legally speaking, whether Special Counsel Jack Smith vindictively prosecuted Trump. Or whether New York attorney general Letitia James or Manhattan district attorney Alvin Bragg did the same. Or whether Trump allies such as Stephen Bannon and Peter Navarro were vindictively prosecuted by Democrats during the Biden years. The law doesn’t care.

Tit for tat is not a legal principle. If Judge Crenshaw finds vindictive prosecution, he will properly ignore any argument from the government that “the other side did it too.”

On the other hand, the law makes it extraordinarily difficult to prove improper prosecution. One case holds that “actual vindictiveness” requires the defendant to show the government acted “solely” to punish him for exercising legal rights. A 2024 Ninth Circuit opinion says a defendant claiming selective prosecution must prove that “other similarly situated individuals have not been prosecuted.” Garcia therefore faces an uphill battle, and Judge Crenshaw’s opinion is so poorly reasoned that there’s a good chance he’ll be reversed.

Is it right for the law to require Trump to abide by the Constitution when his opponents systematically violated it? Of course it is—unfair though that may be.

For example, Judge Crenshaw treats as near–smoking-gun evidence the following statements made by Deputy Attorney General Todd Blanche: (1) that the government began criminally investigating Garcia after a federal judge questioned the legality of Garcia’s deportation to El Salvador; and (2) that Garcia was returned to the United States solely “to face justice.” But neither of these statements seems highly problematic. The federal government has no reason to criminally investigate an alien permanently deported to a Salvadoran prison. But if that deportation is found to be erroneous, and if subsequent investigation turns up evidence of crimes, there’s nothing wrong with bringing the alien back “to face justice.”

Former FBI director James Comey, who is also likely to argue vindictive prosecution, is in a similar position. Like Garcia, Comey will face an uphill battle because the burden of proof is so high. But if he can meet that burden, the law won’t care how many unconstitutional charges Democratic prosecutors brought against Trump and his allies during the previous administration. Comey will walk.

But is it right for the law to require Trump to abide by the Constitution when his opponents systematically violated it? Of course it is—unfair though that may be.

Biden may have launched “arguably the most massive attack against free speech in United States history,” as a federal judge put it in 2023, but Trump must still honor the First Amendment, because all our freedoms depend on it. Even if Obama threw due process out the window in his administration’s Title IX regulations, Trump must still abide by due process, because it protects the rule of law itself.

But the reach of the law is limited. Which brings us, finally, to politics—the hardest problem of all.

Retribution is good politics—there’s no doubt about it. When Trump goes after his enemies, his base loves it. For this reason alone he has every incentive to keep it up. The only serious political check is the danger that when the Democrats return to power, they will act accordingly.

Perhaps that’s why Democratic Rep. Eric Swalwell said last week that when his party is in the “majority a year from now,” “we will subpoena. . . private actors” who have done “deals with the administration—college campuses, entertainment companies, law firms. Accountability is coming.” Possibly Swalwell imagined that he was putting pressure on Trump to stop trying to bend universities, television networks, and law firms to his will. Possibly Swalwell thought he might get Trump to halt his promised campaign to subpoena left-wing donor organizations.

The only serious political check is the danger that when the Democrats return to power, they will act accordingly.

But Swalwell’s threat is likely to have the opposite effect. It will only confirm conservatives’ belief that whatever they do, the Democrats will continue to weaponize the justice system exactly as they did before.

From the point of view of conservatives, this puts them in the position of the football team described above, whose opponents keep committing pass interference. Why, the Republicans will ask themselves, should we stop targeting our political opponents when the Democrats won’t?

And of course, that’s what the Democrats are thinking too.

This is the most dangerous feature of the present political situation—the prospect of falling into a constitutional death spiral where each administration matches, or outdoes, the other in unconstitutional attacks on its enemies. Once that cycle takes hold, it’s nearly impossible to stop. But unless it’s stopped, it will be ruinous to our democracy.

For 2,000 years, the West has worshipped two very different moralities: the Old Testament’s “eye for an eye,” and the New Testament’s “turn the other cheek.” The former speaks in the register of retribution and punishment, the latter in that of charity and love.

The eternal debate between these two visions sprang back onto our front pages recently, when, at Charlie Kirk’s memorial, his widow Erika forgave the monster who murdered her husband, only to be followed onstage by Trump, who unapologetically, if partly in jest, declared that he hated his enemies and made plain his desire to punish them.

Predictably, Trump’s critics excoriated him for it. Suddenly the left was all about love and forgiveness—even as thousands were still celebrating Kirk’s murder. For myself, I admired what both Erika and Trump said. A good statesman does not choose once and for all between forgiveness and punishment. Both are rightful; there is a time and place for each.

In his Second Inaugural Address, some 40 days before his assassination, Abraham Lincoln delivered the most famous expression of anti-retributive morality in American political history. “With malice toward none, with charity for all,” said Lincoln, “let us. . . bind up the nation’s wounds; to care for him who shall have borne the battle, and for his widow and his orphan—to do all which may achieve and cherish a just and lasting peace among ourselves.”

Finer words have never been spoken by an American president. But don’t forget: By then, Lincoln already beaten the South into submission. By then, his armies had already burned their cities.

The only way out of our present danger is for a strong, courageous statesman to see, after a string of victories against the forces of destruction, that he has won enough, that it’s time to bind up the nation’s wounds, and to lead us at last toward a just peace among ourselves.