I wrote this post weeks ago and never posted it... Sometimes I just am not brave enough to, but better late than never, right?
Hopefully, this is my last day as a temp worker. The good thing about being a temp is that there is a lot of variety. Today, however, I've been sitting at someone else's desk in an office full of people I do not know and I have been here for one hour and eight minutes and there has been absolutely nothing to do. Don't worry; I am not sneaking around on the Internet. My supervisor told me I could... and here I am writing, hoping that I might say something profound that will impact the world. It is a dream of mine to write as inspiringly and elegantly as our founding fathers. Until I accomplish that, I write here.
Hopefully, this is my last day as a temp worker. The good thing about being a temp is that there is a lot of variety. Today, however, I've been sitting at someone else's desk in an office full of people I do not know and I have been here for one hour and eight minutes and there has been absolutely nothing to do. Don't worry; I am not sneaking around on the Internet. My supervisor told me I could... and here I am writing, hoping that I might say something profound that will impact the world. It is a dream of mine to write as inspiringly and elegantly as our founding fathers. Until I accomplish that, I write here.
Having spent many months away from constant inundation of news and events, coming back to watching the news on television and reading Twitter can be a bit overwhelming. Nothing has really changed, except my perspective on things. Honestly, all the headlines about which GOP candidate has the best chance in 2012, which politician has acted, well, like a politician and cheated on his wife, who said what, how much debt we are in, why Obama is terrible president, why he is a good president, all seems rather noisy to me. In one sense, through studying law for one year, I have broadened my horizons, expanded my mind, but in another sense, I have realized just how simple the issues we face really are.
Certainly these things are important and they have a place in our society, but it all really comes down to simple issues and that is one of constitutionality and returning to the foundational principles and ideas that originally founded this country. Whether or not a candidate has charisma, a good speaking voice, has mass appeal should not matter. What a candidate believes, how he acts and lives his life are the things we should investigate.
Just because the issues are simple, does not mean that the road back will be easy. Is it really worth fighting what appears to be a losing battle? Will my small contribution really make that big of a difference in our nation? To ask these questions, however, is really like asking, is it worth it to have integrity when no one else does? When everyone else is rebelling, does it really matter if I obey?
When we settle for the lesser of the two evils, we are truly settling for evil. There is always another choice. We are not victims of our world. We have certainly created a big problem for ourselves and it will not be easy taking back ground, but we must. If we are to make a difference in this country and if we are to preserve what little bit of freedom we have left, we must be willing to make the hard argument.
One of my law professors has said that several times to our class over the past two semesters. "You must be willing to make the hard argument." In the legal world, which I have grown to both love and hate, I have learned what it means to be a nation of laws and not men. This is only theoretical of course, because so many today in places of authority act above the law and act according to their own whims and fancy. In my conservative law school, I have been taught the way things should be but am also (necessarily) learning how to function as a lawyer and operate within the framework of the way things are. The evolutionary philosophy of case law has led to the slow, but quite thorough corruption of the rule of law and the demise of our liberty. So when even those who believe that we have to be willing to make the hard argument, use bad unconstitutional case law when it is advantageous, even for a "good cause," this is further entrenching the deep flaws of our legal system.
Perhaps I am simple minded, and I know that there are things that I simply do not understand yet, but it is time for lawyers and non lawyers alike, particularly those who consider themselves to be originalists, to be willing to stand no matter what and accept no form of compromise. The hard arguments have yet to be made. Just a little corruption makes a system completely corrupt, just as a tiny drop of poison poisons an entire glass of water.
0 comments:
Post a Comment