If Tyranny is to Rule, First Kill all the Lawyers

I sent an email to a friend of mine the other day asking, amongst other things, whether he was an Obama supporter this election cycle. His response, printed in its entirety below, sums up a fundamental problem in America today.

Good to hear from you Jim.

To satisfy you that I am an Obama supporter, I have copied and pasted below my response to my uncle, an accountant, about his concern that the Pres. and VP should not be lawyers:

I find it ironic that you are concerned that the two Democratic candidates are lawyers. I know you’ve enjoyed poking fun at lawyers over the years, and God knows our profession deserves it sometimes. Almost as much as accountants.

But, in all seriousness, let’s take a brief trip down memory lane. Twenty five of our forty three Presidents were lawyers (admittedly, Richard Nixon was one of them, but he was a Republican, so what do you expect?). Thomas Jefferson, the drafter of the Declaration of Independence was a lawyer. So, of course, was James Madison, the principal drafter of the United States Constitution and of the Bill of Rights. Indeed, by my count, 24 of the 54 signers of the Declaration of Independence were lawyers, by far the most of any profession. By the way, I found no accountants among the signers, although they have been playing a much more prominent role in recent years helping to drive our economy into the ground.

Just think about it: The Constitution. The Bill of Rights. The Declaration of Independence. It must make you crazy that these cornerstones of American democracy were created by good-for- nothing lawyers. In fact, if you think about it too long, you will come to the unhappy realization that these documents are what America is all about. Boring legal documents prepared by boring lawyers! Documents that say no one, not even the President, is above the law, that the rights of minorities must be respected no matter how unpopular they may be, that all men have a fundamental and inalienable right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness. While other countries have since copied bits and pieces of some of these documents, it was American lawyers who created these ingenious documents in the first place. How embarrassing this must be for people like you and Rush Limbaugh!

Oh, I almost forgot. The last state senator from Illinois who became President, Abraham Lincoln, was also a lawyer. Most people agree he did ok. He drafted another important legal document. The Emancipation Proclamation. I don’t think an accountant would have done nearly as good a job. Do you?

So I don’t share your concern about a lawyer in the White House. I’m far more concerned when people with no understanding of these iconic legal documents are in charge. People like Bush Junior who denigrate the legal profession – and thus their work product – at every opportunity.

Wisely, Mr. Madison, Esquire, designed a system of checks and balances to control the power of the various institutions of our government, and particularly the President. He had only to look to the European monarchies to remember why this was a good thing to do! Only the most ignorant of Presidents (e.g., Junior) could have ever imagined the executive branch had the authority to issue warrantless wiretaps, ignoring the checks and balances of the legislative and judicial branches. Only a President with no understanding of American legal history could think it was a good idea to ignore international treaty obligations (the Geneva Convention) and condone torture. (And please don’t tell me waterboarding is not torture! Eight Japanese prison guards were executed after World War II for using the technique on American POWs). Only a chicken hawk President who dodged service in the Vietnam War could think it is a good idea to treat enemy combatants in a way that would allow our enemies to rationalize similar abuses of American soldiers. Yes, I think a little legal training would have been a good idea for Junior.

As it happens, Obama’s and Biden’s specialty is Constitutional law. In fact, both have taught the subject to law schools. What a happy coincidence, after eight years of watching Junior trample the Constitution!

You are concerned about too many lawyers running the country? Obviously, we have lawyers in the judicial branch. And, please recall that the function of the legislature is to make laws. So having some legal training, again, is not a bad thing. Who knows, maybe that’s precisely what Mr. Madison, Esquire had in mind when he drafted the Constitution.

Like it or not, we are a country of laws. This is fundamental to our system. Our best leaders understand and respect our Constitution. Would you prefer a group of Ayatollahs, like in Iran? A former KGB head, like in Russia? An uneducated Army sergeant, like in Venezuela? Or worst of all, an arrogant failed businessman with an MBA from Harvard?

So you had a positive first impression of Sarah Palin? I did too until I learned she believes children in our public schools should be taught a religious doctrine that our planet was created less than 10,000 years ago, that she feels a woman should not have a right to an abortion even after being raped by her own father, and that she wanted to ban books from her town library. Talk about someone who needs a little legal training! But, like you say, she makes a great first impression.

I have just one question for you: In light of the fact that Junior has grown our Federal government by 40% in the last 7 years, that he has wasted ten billion dollars this week (and every week for the last five plus years) fighting to preserve our oil supply in Iraq, that he master-minded the spectacularly bungled response to Hurricane Katrina, and that he decided last week to authorize as much as $1 trillion to bail out lending institutions that everyone now agrees should have been subject to far stricter regulation, what was your first impression of George W. Bush?