Unfortunately we are more prone to ignore the sick spot thus disclosed and content ourselves with calling out more cops.
Lawyers in Politics: Lawyers constitute around half of all our state legislators and congressmen. They hold other political offices way out of proportion to their numbers in the population. Many people take this as a matter of course and it is in fact a logical consequence of certain features of our social structure.
We have already mentioned the fact that a lawyer can run for office easier than most other people and that, in many offices, he can take a bribe in an undetec-table manner. However these are not real objections to lawyers in public life; lawyers are certainly as patriotic and as honest as the average run of men and I believe that they average more intelligent than the general run.
Nevertheless it seems very unfortunate that lawyers should make laws. It may even be argued that lawyers should not be judges. The latter idea is certainly radical, but the profession of judging is by no means the same as the profession of the solicitor or the barrister. It could be a separate profession; the origin of the identification of the two professions seems to go back to Biblical times, when priest, teachers, judges, and lawyers were all one profession. Two of the professions separated out; the other two could be separated just as, in England, the two professions of solicitor and barrister are separate. There is now no legal requirement that the justices of our Supreme Court be lawyers.
But lawyers do their greatest damage in lawmaking. In the first place lawyers speak a language not known to the rest of us; they write laws in that language and then we must hire one of their guild to tell us what the law means. They assert that their special language is necessary, as ordinary speech is not suffitiendy exact. One may doubt this; many semanticians have disputed the claim. A layman is surely entitled to doubt it, even without the special analytical skills of the semantician and without knowing the other language, since lawyers are forever disputing as to what a law means after they have written it.
I wonder what the result would be if one could attack the constitutionality of a law on the grounds that it could not be understood by the ordinary literate adult? The ordinary adult is required to obey the laws-which carries with it the implication that there must be some way of telling him what it is that he must do. How would it be to require that laws be expressed in such terms in the first place?
Even a lawyer cannot require me to rimpf unless he has some way to tell me, in English, what it is I have to dotorimpf.
A foreign language is a minor vice of the lawmaking lawyer, however. Foreign languages can be gotten around, more or less, through interpreters. The worst thing a lawyer brings to the task of lawmaking is a faulty orientation.
You have heard of the Fillyloo Bird? He flies backwards because he does not care where he is going but he likes to see where he has been. Lawyers as a group are strongly related to the Fillyloo Bird, by training, by lack of training, and by association. They look to the past
That's a helluva way to try to draw up a new law to cover a new situation!
We are now confronted with the disheartening spectacle of lawyers attempting to draw up laws on the subject of atomic physics. They look to the past for precedents; there are no precedents - and their own esoteric professional training does not require that they be exposed in any fashion to science nor the methods of science.
The dilemma is not new, it is just more acute. In a myriad ways we permit a group of men who know rather less about the real world than do farmers, engineers, mechanics, or grocers make for us our most important decisions, in accordance with dusty precedents of dead men of their own clique.
The real trouble with lawyers in public life is that most of them don't know anything that really matters.
A Third Party? The emphasis that has been placed herein on the two major parties and the necessity for party regularity and party discipline may lead some to think that I oppose any attempt to form new political parties. If so, I wish to correct the impression.
Party regularity and party discipline are pragmatically necessary and morally correct in any political party if that party is to carry out its responsibilities. This is especially true with respect to unsuccessful candidates in a party primary; no man should offer himself as a candidate in a party primary unless he is prepared to abide by the majority will of the political group he seeks as a sponsor. Running in a primary is a voluntary action, very similar to joining a caucus; it carries with it responsibilities as well as privileges. A candidate need not enter a primary at all; he is always free to run as an independent instead.
In some states the right of a person to participate in a primary may be challenged and he may then be called on to prove his right by taking an oath to support the ticket which results from such primary. Such a procedure is morally correct; if universal it might do much to put a stop to the present eat-your-cake-and-have-h-too attitude of some irresponsible politicians.
Special circumstances arise from time to time when two groups, strongly opposed on basic issues, struggle for the privilege of wearing a party label claimed by
both. In such cases there is usually no pretense that the losing faction will support the winner and there should be none. Consequently no obligation to party regularity exists. But the more usual case is much more like that of the spoiled brat who insists on having his own way in every respect or he won't play.
All of which adds up to this: if you decide to bolt, go whole hog. Leave the party. Join the other party or join a third party. Don't expect either the Republicans or the Democrats to permit you to wield influence if you insist on flirting with the other party whenever the whim seizes you.
The issues involved in forming a third party at this or any time are beyond the scope of this discussion, although it is evident that both parties are now wracked with internal stresses over basic issues which bring each wing of each party closer to the corresponding wing of the other party than are the right and left wings of either party, within the same party. An ideological realignment would appear rational; a third party may be the convenient means to such end.
The practical aspects-our proper business here- depend on whether or not the risk is justified by the objectives. Forming a third party is a highly speculative venture; it fails much more often than it succeeds. But it has been done successfully many times in our history. Mr. Lincoln was elected by third parties for both terms, first by the Republican party and next by the Union party - the latter fact seems to be little known. In 1864 the so-called "Radical" or regular Republicans nominated John C. Fremont, who had been the Republican nominee in 1856. The Union party was a coalition of both Republicans and Democrats.
The Failure of "Reformers": It is a truism in political history that the only thing worse than an officeholder under a corrupt machine is the reformer who replaces him.
Why should this be? Surely most of these reform gentlemen are honestly devoted to the cause of good government and have the best of intentions when they take office. Within my experience practically all of them were, I believe, sincere.
The downfall of some of them can be charged to sheer naivete; they were quite unprepared to cope with the liquor and lady lobbyists, the pressure groups, and the stab in the back. Some of them were cold zealots who could not maintain power because they did not understand what people wanted as well as did the bosses. And some were tragic cases who found themselves unable to live on the miserly stipends which we so frequendy offer as a reward for statesmanship and succumbed to opportunities for graft and bribes.