The theme of these articles is pretty basic: why are we still losing in Illinois? Why is this state still so screwed up? After all, Illinois has so many smart, talented and previously successful people increasingly engaging in the political arena.
Last time we outlined why business success rarely prepares someone to save our state and country.
Let’s take a moment to define success in politics. It is not getting elected to a government or party office. Nor is it holding onto that office for years. It is not becoming a celebrity pundit or running some donor funded entity that never truly has much to show for all of its expenditures.
Success in politics is participating in efforts that can be definitively proven to have contributed to winning governing majorities that then effectively enact good public policy.
My focus here is why lawyers usually do not succeed in politics. Like those in business, much of it is their previous lives created mental barriers which prevent them from grasping the ground war and information war realities of politics.
Pulitzer Prize winning author David Mamet published a book in 2011 about politics and culture titled The Secret Knowledge. Thumbing through my much-underlined copy reminds me that it is still an excellent read. But here is a spoiler alert: on the last page Mamet writes this: “There is no secret knowledge.”
From my experience, the biggest problems for those with law degrees is that too many of them believe they possess secret knowledge. I have been to law school so I know the absolute fact that they do not. One classic book on the trouble with law schools and the legal profession is Philip K. Howard’s 1994 The Death of Common Sense. Ilya Shapiro just weighed in on the topic this year with his new book Lawless.
If you believe you are already in possession of the secret knowledge, there is not much else to learn.
Those who have personally experienced the basic stupidity that goes on in many legal cases probably are not surprised that people with law degrees lack what it takes to win majorities and enact change. My wife and I just spent 15 months embroiled in a legal case that my now late mother-in-law was dragged into against her will.
A long series of articles could be written about how it involved the participation of lawyers and judges either incapable of, or unwilling to see the simplicity of the case. The need for short working hours on the part of the judges, and the need for billing hours on the part of the hired gun attorneys, left the obvious and simple facts of the case completely ignored.
Those of us who attended law school and figured out quickly that we were not being given secret knowledge are also not surprised about what has been going on with the national injunctions being issued by district court judges.
I hate to say it but many lawyers are confused about the U.S. Constitution because they were not taught the U.S. Constitution in law school. They were taught Supreme Court decisions, which are not the same thing.
There would be a lot fewer problems with our legal system if American kids were taught the law in high school as a requirement. More people would then know for sure that often the legal games that go on are not legitimate.
Again, having been to law school I can say that most of what’s taught there can be understood—and should be understood—by every citizen of our country.
Am I arguing that everyone should be a practicing attorney? No. There can be a six month or maybe a year long licensing process that would make someone then a member of the “bar.”
To close, a few links that make my point. The first three are from the humorous Babylon Bee, which capture nicely the idiocy (and confusion) of some people in the legal profession:
Federal Judge appoints himself president
Federal Judge Orders Astronauts Be Returned To Space Station
Federal Judge Orders Price Of Eggs To Go Back Up
There have been several articles written in recent days about how leftists are misusing the courts. Here is just one from today:
The Judicial Insurrection Is Worse Than You Think
I had to add this video of Mark Levin that I saw after this article was posted…scroll down inside the article:
Lastly, years ago we assembled a mini course about what the role of the courts are in American government. Here’s a hint: we are not governed by the courts—not even the U.S. Supreme Court. We are governed by three co-equal branches:
Judicial Supremacy: Not in the U.S. Constitution, Not the Intention of the Founding Fathers
Image credit: The Babylon Bee.
