We need more doctors, engineers, and businessmen in government -- and fewer lawyers. And a few working stiffs, too. There are truck drivers and pipe fitters who could do the job. How can a government top-heavy with lawyers be representative of the folks?
Lawyers are especially overrepresented in the Democrat Party as Michael Medved observes:
By re-nominating Obama and Biden, the Democrats have selected only attorneys for all six of the most recent places on national tickets, cementing their status as the party of lawyers. Meanwhile, none of the last 8 Republicans nominated for president or vice president has been a practicing attorney.
Though Romney won a law degree in a joint program along with his Harvard MBA, he never joined the legal profession. All told, 14 of the last 18 places on Democratic national tickets since 1980 have gone to attorneys, and if Al Gore had finished law school at Vanderbilt before running for Congress, that would have been 17 of 18. The domination of the party by lawyers clearly connects to its propensity to address every problem with legal solutions—legislation, regulations, and law suits—rather than private sector, business initiatives.
None of the above is lawyer bashing. We need lawyers if we are to have a legal system and the rule of law. (And to defend ourselves against lawyers.) But lawyers, like liberals, have given themselves a bad name by their bad behavior. They are too often the sophists of the modern world. Remember the sophists of the ancient world? They knew how to make the weaker argument appear the stronger.
Martin Luther once vented his misology via "Reason is a whore." But nowadays, when whores are sex workers, the Lutheran pronunciamento has lost its sting much as the oldest profession has lost its opprobrium.
Perhaps in its stead we should put: "Reason is a lawyer."
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