Humpty Dumpty nation
First thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers.
“The test of a first-rate intelligence,” wrote F. Scott Fitzgerald, “is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function.” As dumb statements from America’s most overrated writer go, this one is not quite on a par with “there are no second acts in American lives,” but it’s right up there. Indeed, it might better said that the ability to hold two contradictory ideas in one’s head and thinking you retain the ability to function is the test of a ninth-rate intelligence, and in fact explains many of the problems that currently plague this third act of American life. Here are three:
Follows, an examination of Fucking D卐M☭CRAT Roostervelt’s tottering, inherently unsustainable Social Security system, even now crumbling in slow-motion before our very eyes as its bureau-weasel administrators scramble desperately to find some workable means of shoring it up (read: draconian tax hikes). Next up, the item that provided the primary impetus for this post.
Lawyers and politicians: a classic racket.
Now that I’m back on Twitter/X (@theAmanuensis), I ventured this observation yesterday:No one with a law degree should be eligible to stand for public office, ever. Having the same people who benefit from the legal system be in charge of it is the very definition of conflict of interest.
We like to boast that we are “a government of laws, not men,” but that’s only partially true. We are a government of laws written, voted on, and interpreted by lawyers for their own benefit. This is why, no matter whom we vote for, nothing ever gets done, no house ever gets cleaned, no swamp ever gets drained, no “reform” is ever worth the paper the lawyers print it on. To do otherwise would upset the racket known as the Government/Lawyer complex.
Lawyers have become a secular priest class, the guys who claim expertise in the workings of our legal system and who while running for office promise to “fix” it. But they only fix they know is the one that’s already in. Banning lawyers from ever running for office would have several salutatory effects, among them returning the government to the non-Ivy League law school graduates who make up the vast majority of real Americans, as well as de-“professionalizing” politics, eliminating its legalistic jargon, and, eventually, attaining a Supreme Court entirely devoid of lawyers. A government of laws, run by non-lawyers with common sense, would be more like what the Founders envisioned.
I like it, I like it a lot. Of course, being more in line with what the Founders envisioned makes such reform less likely, not more, that it will ever actually come to pass. Walsh’s grim closer:
As Humpty Dumpty tells Alice in Through the Looking-Glass, “When I use a word, it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less.”
“The question is,” said Alice, “whether you can make words mean so many different things.”
“The question is,” said Humpty Dumpty, “which is to be master— that’s all.”
Like the big egg, however, we’ve fallen and now have lost our ability to function. And all the king’s horses and all the king’s men can’t put us back together again.
Ahh, but should we even want it put together again? Or should we instead consider a radical change of course, in the direction urged on us by those selfsame Founders? I know not what course others may take…
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