Shakespeare Was Right About Lawyers

ChronWatch ^ | 06 June 2003 | Doc Farmer

[Ronin]

Funny Doc.

[wimpycat]

How much do we get for killing a blasted columnist?

[dilpo]

I am a lawyer. My career has been devoted to defending small business and trying to preserve property rights against oppressive government, unconcerned judges, and other arrogant and greedy lawyers. Are you ready to kill me?

[meisterbrewer]

I am a lawyer, too. Well, I will be if I pass the bar this July. I am a former Navy submarine officer who decided to go JAG when my hearing failed. I'll be returning to the Navy as a JAG officer and intend to fight for the rights of sailors wherever possible - voting rights, child custody battles, etc.

Are you ready to kill me?

Oh, and I find it a little ironic given the current debacle at the NYT that a journalist would be questioning the integrity of lawyers. Something about someone "throwing stones in glass houses."

[Notwithstanding]

People are jealous of lawyers because lawyers speak a secret language and know the secret code that applies to everyone.

This unnerves many people in our hyper-egalitarian society.

[patton]

Ummmm..... how do you feel about the 2A?

[meisterbrewer]

Seems to be a lot of envy going around lately - class warfare is founded on it.

No doubt there are corrupt lawyers - but to think the legal profession has a monopoly on bad people is naive. There are dishonest people everywhere - car mechanics, doctors, journalists, etc.

[archy]

I am a lawyer. ... Are you ready to kill me?

In Will Shakespeare's time and argot, a lawyer such as yourself would have been called a barrister or a solicitor at the very least. The creatures named by Mr. Shakespeare are what we in thios country would call legislators.

So far as the killing goes, I am indeed ready to do so should it come to that, as I have been since my teenage years when others first tried to kill me, with happily limited success. Others in your trade have been among those I've stood by when such things came their way, and so far they're still around as well. And though I do not know you well, if others would try such short pleasures with you, I would be glad to stand with you too, and make it a bit more difficult for them than they might have imagined.

But I would not be surprised to see a few of those legislator creatures hanging from public utility poles or lying in crumpled heaps alongside the corners of buildings, as befell Nicolae Ceaucescue of Romania in 1989. And I do not think I'd bother to similarly come to their aid.

-archy-/-

[Ajnin]

As the local Jack Booted Thug, let me help you out here. You're going to have to grow a thick skin if you want to weather all these general accusations. LOL!

[dilpo]

I have more guns in my house than forks. Does that answer you?

[freedumb2003]

>>I am a lawyer. My career has been devoted to defending small business and trying to preserve property rights against oppressive government, unconcerned judges, and other arrogant and greedy lawyers. Are you ready to kill me? <<

Do you speak for your profession? I am waiting for the one case, ONE, that is so henious that they could not get a lawyer to represent the accused. It has never happened. There is NO CRIME TOO LOW that a bottom-feeder won't represent them. 9/11? Lawyers up the kazoo for Jonny-bin-walker and Mohsdda-whatsisface. Domestic Terrorism? McVey had them lined up around the block. Pedophelia? Killing children? Lawyers lick their chops.

Don't hand me the crap about "innocent until proven guilty." That just means the judge would have to appoint representation and a representative can and should be designated by the court. I am waiting for a high-profile case where the judge HAS TO appoint a lawyer, and even then I would expect persons of conscience to refuse to serve evil. Such a case has never happened and never will.

You sleep with dogs expect to wake up with fleas.

[Notwithstanding]

...yes, but since you are a lawyer it is safe to assume you eat all your meals with chopsticks.

[Notwithstanding]

yours is a hideous view of justice

hideous

no due process

a vigilante-fest

tyranny of the majority

SUCH A VIEW IS UNAMERICAN

[Notwithstanding]

the middle portion of your name is apt

[patton]

So what? I have more guns than an infantry bn.

Ask around.

Meanwhile, on another thread, a french COL slapped a french reporter silly on TV, and my brain has locked up trying to figure out who surrendered. LOGIC IS A MEADOW OF PRETTY FOLWERS...THAT SMELL BAD...THAT DOES NOT COMPUTE....LANDREW, GUIDE US...

[drlevy88]

One of the chief good purposes that defending a "scum" serves is to force the government to play by the rules. If the government won't play by the rules there might as well not BE rules.

[William McKinley]

'tis funny. But people misunderstand Shakespeare's line. As described here,

Falling into camp "I resemble that remark," here's a bit of history on one of the worlds' most common epithets against the legal profession. While this remark has been reduced to a slogan or jingle, placed in context, the line makes a profound statement on the conflict between rule of law and anarchy (or, perhaps more relevant today, the conflict between rule of law and a police state). As eloquently employed by Justice Stevens below, "Shakespeare insightfully realized that disposing of lawyers is a step in the direction of a totalitarian form of government."

Henry VI is the son of much beloved Henry V, and his legacy includes the bloody Wars of the Roses, embroiling England in generations of civil war. Described as "a high-class soap opera," throughout its three parts, Henry VI sees the beleaguered king faced by threats from within his court, from the nobility, from the French and from uprisings among the common people.

One of these uprisings was led by Jack Cade. Cade and his men wished to present grievances to the king. The king received their petitions and then gathered an army to destroy them. Cade's men then routed the troops sent to subdue them and ended up capturing London. Although Cade was initially welcomed into London, his men soon engaged in selective looting and pillaging, and executed Lord Say for encouraging literacy.

This provides the backdrop for the statement by Dick the Butcher, "The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers," to which Jack Cade replies, "Nay, that I meant to do." Shakespeare adapted this statement from Holingshed's Chronicles, where it is reported that John Ball exhorted the people "that they might destroy first the great lords of the realm, and after the judges and lawyers, questmongers, and all other whom they took to be against the commons."

Shakespeare's Stratford-on-Avon was not spared from the revolutionary fervor and some local nobility were killed. Taken in context, Cade's men sought not a utopia without lawyers (compare to Sir Thomas Moore's Utopia) but rather to eliminate government and the rule of law. Thus Dick the Butcher was a precursor to Sex Pistols.

[Notwithstanding]

thank you for the sanity check

[Bogolyubski]

All kidding aside, one of the reasons the country is in such sorry shape is because many decent, conservative families discouraged their kids from entering the legal profession back in the 1950s and 60s. The leftists have managed to take over the law schools and thus influence generations of law students with their poisonous and corrupt ideology. Alan Sears of the Alliance Defense Fund has commented son the fact that the left has been agressively seeking to control the law for decades while conservatives have only recently started fighting back in the courts.

We need conservative lawyers to help stem the onslaught of leftist judges and organizations like the ACLU and SPLC. Conservatives need to realize that this is a war that must be fought. If we fail, the USA will cease to exist as a free nation. We'll be left to the tender mercies of tinpot totalitarians like those running things now in Europe and Canada. Sure, the sleazy ambulance-chasing Democrat trial lawyer is an easy target of ridicule. Such scumbags need to be countered by people of intergrity who are willing to fight the good fight.