The division in our nation has grown to the place of treason in some of the highest positions in the land. The people see this more clearly than those in government seem to. Why do the people see such things more clearly? A major reason could be that the people, at least for the most part, are not lawyers. The justice system in the country, and lawyers who are educated and function in it, have now been conditioned to win using technicalities rather than seeking justice and discerning right from wrong. Thus, there is hardly any ability left to discern justice or right from wrong.
Alexsandr Solzhenitsyn, one of the great prophetic voices of the 20th century, warned the U.S. about this condition in his stunning speech at Harvard that rocked the nation during the Carter Administration. His speech was entitled A World Split Apart and was so powerful that it was published in almost every newspaper in the country. President Carter tried to defend against such a damning evaluation of our increasingly legalistic society that buried truth and justice under the pretense of legal technicalities. Yet, Solzhenitsyn’s words were so powerful that they made the President look silly.
Legalism can be a major platform for lawlessness as the moral standards of what is right and just are overlooked. Getting away with something does not make it right, or wrong if we cannot afford the lawyers slick enough to defend us in the present system. This is not to say that there are not lawyers and judges who are deeply committed to justice and truth, but they are becoming increasingly rare because the system is increasingly against them.
China was one of the poorest nations in the world in per capita income as it labored under the impossible yoke of socialism. When it decided to implement just a few free market principles, its economy roared ahead so fast that in just a couple of decades it threatened to surpass the United States as the strongest economy in the world. There are a number of reasons for this spectacular success, but a big one is that China produces eight engineers for every lawyer, and the United States now produces eight lawyers for every engineer.
Engineers live to get things done. Lawyers and the legalism they produce are often the biggest hindrance to getting things done. Presently the “deep state” bureaucracy that the U.S. federal government has become is issuing about one hundred thousand pages of new regulations each year. The three thousand page bill called “The Affordable Care Act” came with about sixty-five thousand pages of regulations that the healthcare industry had to understand and implement. It seems most of these regulations were written by staffers and lawyers who knew little or nothing about healthcare. So The Affordable Care Act did not make healthcare more affordable, but nearly doubled the cost of it while reducing the quality. That is the kind of madness our country is now trying to sludge through.
If a major purpose that we have is LIBERTY, then we must get free of this legalistic bondage to survive, much less prosper. To make matters worse, the Supreme Court, in one of its most unconstitutional decisions, gave the authority of law to regulations written by bureaucrats. The Constitution is clear that only Congress can make laws, but our Supreme Court gave this authority to bureaucrats who are not elected by anyone and who may not have a clue about what they’re doing or how their seemingly good ideas can muck up the works for an entire industry.
How did the Supreme Court do something so blatantly unconstitutional? By assuming that they are now the supreme law of the land instead of the Constitution. They can say that regulations are not really laws and just have the power of law, but that’s the kind of twisted language and thinking legalism leads to.
Lawyers are trained to think legalistically. Their answer to virtually any problem is going to be to make another law. Leaders don’t think that way. A leader will think more like an engineer. First we must define the problem, determine its causes, and then devise solutions that don’t create bigger problems in other parts of the system.
Truth sets us free. Legalese is the language of Babylon, and Babylon means “confusion.” Legalese is why contracts are twenty or thirty pages when they would be two or three if written in plain English. Why do lawyers not want contracts in plain English? It’s called “billable hours,” so they can bill us for ten times more than they could otherwise. If they write a contract in legalistic code, then you will need another code breaker to read it and counsel you on whether you need to sign it or not.
Legalese should be outlawed as a crime because it is stealing. When over 90% of our Congress is made up of lawyers, how much of a chance do we have of seeing that done? How much of a chance do we have of getting real tort reform to rein in the outrageous lawsuits that now add up to 30% or more to the cost of almost everything we buy?
When we think of LIBERTY as a main purpose, we must think of all of the ways that bondage has come upon our land and resolve that we will be free in every way we should.
