Thoughtful point of view - OPINION
Sunday, June 08, 2008
I'd never thought about it this way. I know that not all lawyers are
liberals or members of the Democrat party, Not all conservatives are
business owners, wage workers, or physicans, but this does make a
very interesting point to consider.
Thoughtful point of view
The Democrat Party has become the Lawyers' Party. Barack Obama and
Hillary Clinton are lawyers. Bill Clinton and Michelle Obama are
lawyers. John Edwards, the other former Democrat candidate for
president, is a lawyer, and so is his wife, Elizabeth. Every
Democrat nominee since 1984 went to law school (although Gore did not
graduate). Every Democrat vice presidential nominee since 1976,
except for Lloyd Bentsen, went to law school. Look at the Democrat
Party in Congress: the Majority Leader in each house is a lawyer.
The Republican Party is different. President Bush and Vice President
Cheney were not lawyers, but businessmen. The leaders of the
Republican Revolution were not lawyers. Newt Gingrich was a history
professor; Tom Delay was an exterminator; and, Dick Armey was an
economist. House Minority Leader Boehner was a plastic
manufacturer, not a lawyer. The former Senate Majority Leader Bill
Frist is a heart surgeon.
Who was the last Republican president who was a lawyer? Gerald Ford,
who left office 31 years ago and who barely won the Republican
nomination as a sitting president, running against Ronald Reagan in
1976. The Republican P arty is made up of real people doing real
work. The Democrat Party is made up of lawyers. Democrats mock and
scorn men who create wealth, like Bush and Cheney, or who heal the
sick, like Frist, or who immerse themselves in history, like Gingrich.
The Lawyers' Party sees these sorts of people, who provide goods and
services that people want, as the enemies of America . And, so we
have seen the procession of official enemies, in the eyes of the
Lawyers' Party, grow.
Against whom do Hillary and Obama rail? Pharmaceutical companies, oil
companies, hospitals, manufacturers, fast food restaurant chains,
large retail businesses, bankers, and anyone producing anything of
value in our nation.
This is the natural consequence of viewing everything through the
eyes of lawyers. Lawyers solve problems by successfully representing
their clients, in this case the American people. Lawyers seek to have
new laws passed, they seek to win lawsuits, they press appellate
courts to overturn precedent, and lawyers always parse language to
favor their side.
Confined to the narrow practice of law, that is fine. But it is an
awful way to govern a great nation. When politicians as lawyers
begin to view some Americans as clients and other Americans as
opposing parties, then the role of the legal system in our life
becomes all-consuming. Some Americans become "adverse parties" of
our very government. We are not all litigants in some vast social
class-action suit. We are citizens of a republic that promises us a
great deal of freedom from laws, from courts, and from lawyers.
Today, we are drowning in laws; we are contorted by judicial
decisions; we are driven to distraction by omnipresent lawyers in all
parts of our once private lives. America has a place for laws and
lawyers, but that place is modest and reasonable, not vast and
unchecked. When the most important decision for our next president
is whom he will appoint to the Supreme Court, the role of lawyers and
the law in America is too big. When lawyers use criminal prosecution
as a continuation of politics by other means, as happened in the
lynching of Scooter Libby and Tom Delay, then the power of lawyers in
America is too great. When House Democrats sue America in order to
hamstring our efforts to learn what our enemies are planning to do to
us, then the role of litigation in America has become crushing.
We cannot expect the Lawyers' Party to provide real change, real
reform, or real hope in America . Most Americans know that a republic
in which every major government action must be blessed by nine
unelected judges is not what Washington intended in 1789. Most
Americans grasp that we cannot fight a war when ACLU lawsuits snap at
the heels of our defenders.
Most Americans intuit that more lawyers and judges will not restore
declining moral values or spark the spirit of enterprise in our economy.
Perhaps Americans will understand that change cannot be brought to
our nation by those lawyers who already largely dictate American
society and business. Perhaps Americans will see that hope does not
come from the mouths of lawyers but from personal dreams nourished by
hard work. Perhaps Americans will embrace the truth that more lawyers
with more power will only make our problems worse.
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