Let's Talk About Death and Destiny

I wrote this in 2012 when working as a guard, one thing about that job is it gives you a lot of time to think.

First of all let's get it out of the way, EVERYBODY'S going to die, no choice, no excuses accepted, we all start dying the day we're born. Most everybody is terrified of it, and have the hope they'll live forever by denying the truth, and "taking care of themselves," i.e. eating "right", following the advice of their doctor, going to the gym and working their bodies to a sweating frazzle, etc.  Most everybody freaks out when a friend or relative dies or is killed saying he/she went too young or had so much to live for or some other drivel. In movies, TV, and books as well as in the law and everyday life the biggest fear, the biggest terror, the biggest punishment is death. Remember we all start to die the moment we're born, but nobody dies before their  time.
The truth is  dying is like stepping through a door into another room, or changing stools at a bar, it's no different than that. Prior to birth we each determine with the help of others when and to whom we'll be born, the general path of our life, and when/how we'll die. Of course, we don't as a rule remember any of this, there are exceptions, a few remember previous lives, or pre-birth into this life. But most don't.
To those people or those of us who have acquired knowledge but without true experience, the fear of death itself is erased.  To us it seems amazing that the average person goes through life fearing the inevitable, to the point that the prospect drives some mad.
It's everyone's destiny, there is no escape. There is no such thing as going too young or before your time. Your life is pre-destined but there is a belief that we're give free will, which can shift the outcome of your life, or not. It's kind of like timeline theory, meaning what if the South had won the Civil War, or what if the Nazi's had won WW II, or what if you leave for work 10 minutes late, or what if anything you can think of. The timeline changes.
Let's say you're in an accident on your way to drop off your kid and go to work when you left late and the kid was killed. If you'd left on time 10 minutes earlier the car that hit you wouldn't have been there, and your time line wouldn't have changed and there'd have been no accident, your child would still be alive. But if the child's destiny was to die at that age and at that time and your destiny was to have an accident it's going to happen unless freewill intervenes again.
My family moved from a small town to a farm when I was a kid, I know that changed my life. At the time I believed it was my parent's decision. Now I know it was their destiny or mine, or simply a change to their timeline changed my destiny. Ultimately we moved to California changing their timeline again and either restoring or changing again my destiny.
Personally I look forward to death, I don't fear it. People say if you're really blessed you'll live a long life becoming elderly. I disagree, for most it entails living on a fixed income, illness of one kind or another, ever growing medical expenses, being taken care of if unable to take care of yourself. I sincerely hope my destiny is to die, like most of the men in my family, I've passed through the late sixties but still have hope for the early seventies, in my sleep or from a relatively painless illness. Failing that is another story.

Lee Murray

Fear is the Answer, Cowardice the Reason

Why Do the Police Brutalize?

 

 



I've posted many times about police brutality, beginning when I found out about the Kelly Thomas murder by 6 Fullerton cops, in 2011. Everybody finds it abhorrent. The focus is on the racial aspects but black, white or purple no one wants to be the next innocent, unarmed child, old person, or whoever to be murdered and the have that murderer claim that he/she was in fear for his/her life, or that murdered reached for his/her waistband and the murderer feared a gun. Those seem to be the most popular excuses. They always seem to be accepted by the administration, and in the rare, very rare, cases that the murderers are brought to trial, are also it seems accepted by the juries.

Jemel Roberson was trying to stop a suspected gunman outside of the Chicago-area bar where he was working as a security guard when he was shot and killed by the police, the authorities said.

CreditCreditZbigniew Bzdak/Chicago Tribune, via Associated Press

By Karen Zraick and Julia Jacobs  Nov.12, 2018

 

Black Security Guard Responding to Shooting Is Killed by Police

 

 

A black security guard at a bar in the Chicago suburbs was killed by the police as he apparently tried to detain a man he believed to be involved in a shooting, the authorities said Monday.

Officers from several police departments had responded to reports of a shooting early Sunday morning at Manny’s Luxury Lounge in Robbins, Ill., said Sophia Ansari, a spokeswoman for the Cook County Sheriff’s Office.

Witnesses told the police that a fight had broken out and someone had started shooting. After the authorities responded, a police officer shot the guard, Jemel Roberson, 26, who had a gun, Ms. Ansari said. Mr. Roberson died at the hospital.

Witnesses said that people in the crowd had yelled to arriving police officers that Mr. Roberson, who was wearing gear that read “Security,” was a guard. Ms. Ansari confirmed that Mr. Roberson worked for the bar.

“Everybody was screaming out, ‘Security!’,” one witness, Adam Harris, told WGN-TV. “He was a security guard. And they still did their job, and saw a black man with a gun, and basically killed him.”

This episode happened as many Republican politicians, including President Trump, have responded to mass shootings across the United States by calling for more people to protectively carry guns. After a shooting at a Pittsburgh synagogue left 11 people dead, Mr. Trump suggested that people carrying firearms during services would have helped.

 

Image

Mr. Roberson was shot early Sunday morning at a Chicago-area bar where he worked as a security guard.

CreditGregory Kulis

Ms. Ansari said that five people were shot during the episode at the bar. The injuries sustained by four of those people, including the man believed to have initially opened fire, were not life threatening, she said.

An officer with the Midlothian Police Department shot Mr. Roberson, Ms. Ansari said. The Midlothian police chief, Dan Delaney, confirmed in a statement that one of his officers had shot a “subject with a gun.” He did not name the officer.

On Monday, Mr. Roberson’s mother, Beatrice Roberson, filed a federal lawsuit against the unnamed police officer and the village of Midlothian. It alleges that the shooting was unprovoked, unjustified, excessive and unreasonable.

Ms. Ansari said the man who initially opened fire at the bar had not yet been charged. She said he was still at a hospital.

The shooting of Mr. Roberson is being investigated by the Illinois State Police, who did not return a call for comment.

Family friends of Mr. Roberson’s said he had worked as an organist at several local churches and had once dreamed of becoming a police officer himself, according to local news reports. Mr. Roberson had a state firearm owner’s identification card, Ms. Ansari said, which authorized his possession of firearms.

Mr. Roberson had planned to play later that day at New Spiritual Light Baptist Church, the pastor, Walter Turner, told the local ABC affiliate.

“How in the world does the security guard get shot by the police?” Pastor Turner said. “A young man that was literally just doing his job, and now he’s gone.”

A version of this article appears in print on Nov. 12, 2018, on Page A19 of the New York edition with the headline: Arriving at Site of Shooting, Officer Kills Security Guard. Order Reprints | Today’s Paper | Subscribe

 

 

 

Hell Is Empty, All The Devils Are Here

Watching an episode of Route 66, and it had that title. But that's the difference between here in 1962 and here now fifty some years later. Then the devils were still in hell mostly, now they are here among us. They occupy the government at all levels. Devils are throughout the military and law enforcement. Have you ever wondered how someone can deliberately shoot an unarmed person in the back? I have. Are they that evil or just so incompetent or terrified that it happens? How do they justify it, lying about it, to us and themselves?

One conclusion is that peoples bodies have been taken over, whether by devils, or aliens, whatever, it doesn't matter, or perhaps there've been a lot, a lot, of psychotic's born who are drawn to politics, the military and law enforcement. You just need to observe to see this country, this world, and the people in it are becoming more corrupt, more murderous by the day.  

Lincoln was a War Criminal: it’s a FACT!

Found this article online at https://southernsentinel.wordpress.com/lincolnwas-a-war-criminal/
and was so impressed I'm posting it here.

President Lincoln, who is considered by most historians (or at least the politically correct ones) to be the best and certainly the most important U.S. President, wielded power in a fashion never seen before nor since. The fact that he died as a martyr is why history has viewed him in such a kind albeit sanitized light.

During the Civil War, Lincoln continuously circumvented the law and in many cases suspended the Constitution altogether. In doing so, Lincoln denied the rights of citizens he was sworn to protect. He suspended the writ of Habeas Corpus, closed courts by force, and arrested citizens and elected officials without cause. Lincoln also raised troops without the consent of Congress, closed-down newspapers whose writers displayed any dissent to U.S. policy.

Lincoln’s troops razed the South and doomed to poverty–generations of Southerners for many years to come. General Sherman‘s “March to the Sea” was nothing more than a marauding rampage filled with robbery, rape, and murder. These men were less soldiers on a military mission and more common thugs on a crime spree. Northern armies brought war to women, children, and privately held property as a matter of official policy (rather than as so-called “collateral damage”).

Lincoln ordered the arrest of Baltimore police chief George P. Kane, police commissioner Charles Howard, as well as fellow commissioners: William H. Gatchell, John W. Davis, and Charles D. Hinks. Baltimore Mayor George W. Brown was arrested and sent to Fort McHenry. The men were incarcerated because they dared to publicly disagree with Lincoln and refused to carry-out the President’s tyrannical orders.

Baltimore was placed under federal control and a military police force was formed.

Both the continents of Europe and South America ended the practice of slavery, and unlike the United States government–they did so without murdering 700,000 of their own citizens. The abhorrent practice of slavery could have and would have been ended in this country, without ever firing a shot.

Contrary to popular belief (as perpetuated by government schools), slavery was a national institution, it was not unique to the South. Upon his inauguration, Lincoln could have freed the slaves in the Northern states which would have put severe diplomatic pressure on the South. However, Lincoln besides being a tyrant was also an incredible hypocrite. Lincoln’s multitude of personal letters show his outright disgust for the black man and his truly racist views.

Consider a few rarely spoken facts:

• -Northern General U.S. Grant continued to hold a slave for nearly a year after the war. In fact, it took an act of Congress to finally free the man from Grant’s possession.
• -Northern General Tecumseh Sherman was arrested many times for brutally abusing several of his slaves.
• Conversely, Confederate General Robert E. Lee freed all of his slaves prior to the start of the war. That act by the military leader of the South truly displays that for the Confederacy, the war was only about states’ rights and a just rebellion against tyranny–not about slavery!

Lincoln’s War (otherwise known as the Civil War), was much less about freeing oppressed blacks and much more about the federal government exerting complete control over all citizens. Lincoln’s actions were a direct assault upon the wishes of our founding fathers. Lincoln cared very little for the rule of law, as evidenced by his numerous suspensions of U.S. Constitutional rights.

I believe that had Lincoln survived his second term–his place in this nation’s history would be seen in a much different light. Furthermore, had the Civil War ended with a different outcome, Lincoln and many of his generals would have been deservedly tried as war criminals.

Of course, the victors write the history books–even when they tell lies.

LINCOLN’S CRIMES

1. Lincoln waged a war that cost the lives of 620,000 Americans. Including the murder of 50,000 innocent Southern civilians.

2. He arrested several thousand Marylanders suspected of Southern sympathies, including 30 members of the State legislature, a US Congressman representing Maryland, the mayor and police commissioner of Baltimore, and most of the Baltimore city council. These political detainees were imprisoned in Fort McHenry and Point Lookout without trial, in many cases, for several years.

3. He suspended the writ of habeas corpus without the consent of Congress (as required by the Constitution).

4. He illegally shut down and confiscated the printing presses of dozens of newspapers that had spoken out against him.

5. He re-instated and summarily promoted an Army officer who had been court martialed and cashiered by the US Army for war crimes.

6. He even had an arrest warrant issued for the Chief Justice of the US Supreme Court because said justice refused to back his illegal actions.

7. Chief Justice Roger B Taney ruled that Lincolns actions were illegal, criminal and unconstitutional.

8. He invaded the South without the consent of Congress as required by the Constitution.

9. He blockaded Southern ports without a delclaration of war, as required by the Constitution.

10. He imprisoned without trial, hundreds of newspaper editors and owners and censored all newspaper and telegraph communication.

11. He created two new states without the consent of the citizens of those states in order to artificially inflate the Republican Partys electoral vote.

12. He ordered Federal troops to interfere with Northern elections to assure his Parties victories.

13. He confiscated private property, including firearms, in violation of the Second Amendment; and effectively gutted the Tenth and Ninth Amendments as well.

14. He had his Generals attack US cities full of women and children and burn them to the ground.

Still not convinced? Well let’s look at some really really hard facts that will be hard for you to swallow. The follow was written by Thomas J. DiLorenz.

One hundred thirty-six years after General Robert E. Lee surrendered at Appomattox, Americans are still fascinated with the War for Southern Independence. The larger bookstores devote an inordinate amount of shelf space to books about the events and personalities of the war; Ken Burns’s “Civil War” television series and the movie “Gettysburg” were blockbuster hits; dozens of new books on the war are still published every year; and a monthly newspaper, Civil War News, lists literally hundreds of seminars, conferences, reenactments, and memorial events related to the war in all 50 states and the District of Columbia all year long. Indeed, many Northerners are “still fighting the war” in that they organize a political mob whenever anyone attempts to display a Confederate heritage symbol in any public place.

Americans are still fascinated by the war because many of us recognize it as the defining event in American history. Lincoln’s war established myriad precedents that have shaped the course of American government and society ever since: the centralization of governmental power, central banking, income taxation, protectionism, military conscription, the suspension of constitutional liberties, the “rewriting” of the Constitution by federal judges, “total war,” the quest for a worldwide empire, and the notion that government is one big “problem solver.”

Perhaps the most hideous precedent established by Lincoln’s war, however, was the intentional targeting of defenseless civilians. Human beings did not always engage in such barbaric acts as we have all watched in horror in recent days. Targeting civilians has been a common practice ever since World War II, but its roots lie in Lincoln’s war.

In 1863 there was an international convention in Geneva, Switzerland, that sought to codify international law with regard to the conduct of war. What the convention sought to do was to take the principles of “civilized” warfare that had evolved over the previous century, and declare them to be a part of international law that should be obeyed by all civilized societies. Essentially, the convention concluded that it should be considered to be a war crime, punishable by imprisonment or death, for armies to attack defenseless citizens and towns; plunder civilian property; or take from the civilian population more than what was necessary to feed and sustain an occupying army.

The Swiss jurist Emmerich de Vattel (1714-67, author of The Law of Nations, was the world’s expert on the proper conduct of war at the time. “The people, the peasants, the citizens, take no part in it, and generally have nothing to fear from the sword of the enemy,” Vattel wrote. As long as they refrain from hostilities themselves they “live in as perfect safety as if they were friends.” Occupying soldiers who would destroy private property should be regard as “savage barbarians.”

In 1861 the leading American expert in international law as it relates to the proper conduct of war was the San Francisco attorney Henry Halleck, a former army officer and West Point instructor whom Abraham Lincoln appointed General-in-Chief of the federal armies in July of 1862. Halleck was the author of the book, International Law, which was used as a text at West Point and essentially echoed Vattel’s writing.

On April 24, 1863, the Lincoln administration seemed to adopt the precepts of international law as expressed by the Geneva Convention, Vattel, and Halleck, when it issued General Order No. 100, known as the “Lieber Code.” The Code’s author was the German legal scholar Francis Leiber, an advisor to Otto von Bismarck and a staunch advocate of centralized governmental power. In his writings Lieber denounced the federal system of government created by the American founding fathers as having created “confederacies of petty sovereigns” and dismissed the Jeffersonian philosophy of government as a collection of “obsolete ideas.” In Germany he was arrested several times for subversive activities. He was a perfect ideological fit with Lincoln’s own political philosophy and was just the man Lincoln wanted to outline the rules of war for his administration.

The Lieber Code paid lip service to the notion that civilians should not be targeted in war, but it contained a giant loophole: Federal commanders were permitted to completely ignore the Code if, “in their discretion,” the events of the war would warrant that they do so. In other words, the Lieber Code was purely propaganda.

The fact is, the Lincoln government intentionally targeted civilians from the very beginning of the war. The administration’s battle plan was known as the “Anaconda Plan” because it sought to blockade all Southern ports and inland waterways and starving the Southern civilian economy. Even drugs and medicines were on the government’s list of items that were to be kept out of the hands of Southerners, as far as possible.

As early as the first major battle of the war, the Battle of First Manassas in July of 1861, federal soldiers were plundering and burning private homes in the Northern Virginia countryside. Such behavior quickly became so pervasive that on June 20, 1862 – one year into the war – General George McClellan, the commanding general of the Army of the Potomac, wrote Lincoln a letter imploring him to see to it that the war was conducted according to “the highest principles known to Christian civilization” and to avoid targeting the civilian population to the extent that that was possible. Lincoln replaced McClellan a few months later and ignored his letter.

Most Americans are familiar with General William Tecumseh Sherman’s “march to the sea” in which his army pillaged, plundered, raped, and murdered civilians as it marched through Georgia in the face of scant military opposition. But such atrocities had been occurring for the duration of the war; Sherman’s March was nothing new.

In 1862 Sherman was having difficulty subduing Confederate sharpshooters who were harassing federal gunboats on the Mississippi River near Memphis. He then adopted the theory of “collective responsibility” to “justify” attacking innocent civilians in retaliation for such attacks. He burned the entire town of Randolph, Tennessee, to the ground. He also began taking civilian hostages and either trading them for federal prisoners of war or executing them.

Jackson and Meridian, Mississippi, were also burned to the ground by Sherman’s troops even though there was no Confederate army there to oppose them. After the burnings his soldiers sacked the town, stealing anything of value and destroying the rest. As Sherman biographer John Marzalek writes, his soldiers “entered residences, appropriating whatever appeared to be of value . . . those articles which they could not carry they broke.”

After the destruction of Meridian Sherman boasted that “for five days, ten thousand of our men worked hard and with a will, in that work of destruction, with axes, sledges, crowbars, clawbars, and with fire…. Meridian no longer exists.”

In The Hard Hand of War historian Mark Grimsley argues that Sherman has been unfairly criticized as the “father” of waging war on civilians because he “pursued a policy quite in keeping with that of other Union commanders from Missouri to Virginia.” Fair enough. Why blame just Sherman when such practices were an essential part of Lincoln’s entire war plan and were routinely practiced by all federal commanders? Sherman was just the most zealous of all federal commanders in targeting Southern civilians, which is apparently why he became one of Lincoln’s favorite generals.

In his First Inaugural Address Jefferson said that any secessionists should be allowed to “stand undisturbed as monuments of the safety with which error of opinion may be tolerated where reason is left free to combat it.” But by 1864 Sherman would announce that “to the petulant and persistent secessionists, why, death is mercy.” In 1862 Sherman wrote his wife that his purpose in the war would be “extermination, not of soldiers alone, that is the least of the trouble, but the people” of the South. His loving and gentle wife wrote back that her wish was for “a war of extermination and that all [Southerners] would be driven like swine into the sea. May we carry fire and sword into their states till not one habitation is left standing.”

The Geneva Convention of 1863 condemned the bombardment of cities occupied by civilians, but Lincoln ignored all such restrictions on his behavior. The bombardment of Atlanta destroyed 90 percent of the city, after which the remaining civilian residents were forced to depopulate the city just as winter was approaching and the Georgia countryside had been stripped of food by the federal army. In his memoirs Sherman boasted that his army destroyed more than $100 million in private property and carried home $20 million more during his “march to the sea.”

Sherman was not above randomly executing innocent civilians as part of his (and Lincoln’s) terror campaign. In October of 1864 he ordered a subordinate, General Louis Watkins, to go to Fairmount, Georgia, “burn ten or twelve houses” and “kill a few at random,” and “let them know that it will be repeated every time a train is fired upon.”

Another Sherman biographer, Lee Kennett, found that in Sherman’s army “the New York regiments were . . . filled with big city criminals and foreigners fresh from the jails of the Old World.” Although it is rarely mentioned by “mainstream” historians, many acts of rape were committed by these federal soldiers. The University of South Carolina’s library contains a large collection of thousands diaries and letters of Southern women that mention these unspeakable atrocities.

Shermans’ band of criminal looters (known as “bummers”) sacked the slave cabins as well as the plantation houses. As Grimsley describes it, “With the utter disregard for blacks that was the norm among Union troops, the soldiers ransacked the slave cabins, taking whatever they liked.” A routine procedure would be to hang a slave by his neck until he told federal soldiers where the plantation owners’ valuables were hidden.

General Philip Sheridan is another celebrated “war hero” who followed in Sherman’s footsteps in attacking defenseless civilians. After the Confederate army had finally evacuated the Shenandoah Valley in the autumn of 1864 Sheridan’s 35,000 infantry troops essentially burned the entire valley to the ground. As Sheridan described it in a letter to General Grant, in the first few days he “destroyed over 2200 barns . . . over 70 mills . . . have driven in front of the army over 4000 head of stock, and have killed . . . not less than 3000 sheep. . . . Tomorrow I will continue the destruction.”

In letters home Sheridan’s troops described themselves as “barn burners” and “destroyers of homes.” One soldier wrote home that he had personally set 60 private homes on fire and opined that “it was a hard looking sight to see the women and children turned out of doors at this season of the year.” A Sergeant William T. Patterson wrote that “the whole country around is wrapped in flames, the heavens are aglow with the light thereof . . . such mourning, such lamentations, such crying and pleading for mercy [by defenseless women]… I never saw or want to see again.”

As horrific as the burning of the Shenandoah Valley was, Grimsley concluded that it was actually “one of the more controlled acts of destruction during the war’s final year.” After it was all over Lincoln personally conveyed to Sheridan “the thanks of the Nation.”

Sherman biographer Lee Kennett is among the historians who bend over backwards to downplay the horrors of how Lincoln waged war on civilians. Just recently, he published an article in the Atlanta Constitution arguing that Sherman wasn’t such a bad guy after all and should not be reviled by Georgians as much as he is. But even Kennett admitted in his biography of Sherman that:

Had the Confederates somehow won, had their victory put them in position to bring their chief opponents before some sort of tribunal, they would have found themselves justified…in stringing up President Lincoln and the entire Union high command for violations of the laws of war, specifically for waging war against noncombatants.

Sherman himself admitted after the war that he was taught at West Point that he could be hanged for the things he did. But in war the victors always write the history and are never punished for war crimes, no matter how heinous. Only the defeated suffer that fate. That is why very few Americans are aware of the fact that the unspeakable atrocities of war committed against civilians, from the firebombing of Dresden, the rape of Nanking, Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to the World Trade Center bombings, had their origins in Lincoln’s war. This is yet another reason why Americans will continue their fascination with the War for Southern Independence.

Thomas J. DiLorenzo is professor of economics at Loyola College in Maryland. He is the author of, The Real Lincoln: A New Look at Abraham Lincoln, His Agenda, and an Unnecessary War.

 

Are Lawyers the Liars We Percieve Them?

Lawyers Are Trained To Lie, Aren't They?

 

 

 

It certainly would seem so, look at Hillary, Web Hubbell, most of all the lying sacks of excrement in Washington, etc. Pretty much proves my case eh? I once told a lawyer that, and to say that he became upset, and told me I was wrong is a severe understatement, to say the least, the very least.  But look around, make up your own mind. But in my mind Perry Mason is dead, and there are no honest lawyers left.

 

Here is an article I found in Justice 4 You Original Article, read it see what you think.

 

MYTHS OF LAWYERS

 

Lawyers today are in a moral crisis. The popular perception of the lawyer, both within the legal community and beyond, is no longer the Abe Lincoln of American mythology, but is often a greedy, cynical manipulator of access and power.

It is important to note that the loss of professionalism is more than merely the emergence of win-at-all-cost strategies and a scramble for personal wealth. It is something more profound-a loss of professional community and soul.

Many lawyers in fact are plagued with addictions -money, alcohol, sex, and drugs-thus many are committing crimes of their own to maintain their status quo.

Lawyers, whether practice or non- practice, are a section of the population that separates themselves from the rest of the lot.

Lawyers have intitlements that no others have and as result they are place in positions where they abuse their power.

If the law profession is to survive it must revive their creative capacities and develop a meaningful, professional mythology-one based on a deeper understanding of professionalism and a broader, more compassionate ideal of justice.

They also must recognize that keeping the monopoly, wherein it is imbedded in law, only makes the rest of the population want to revolt against them.

Until lawyers do not take a positive stand and continue to participate in the erosion of our democracy, the profession of lawyerism will soon be a thing of the past.

The legal profession is on the brink of fundamental change according to author Richard Susskind, in the book, entitled, The End of Lawyers?

In the first of six draft excerpts from his forthcoming book, Richard Susskind lays down a challenge to all lawyers.

 

THE END OF LAWYERS

 

All of us, whether professionals or not, must decide which master we serve. In the case of lawyers, it is without doubt that their master is money and as a result, there cannot be any honesty with any of them.
Mr. David Marston, who served on different US administration as attorney general, including serving on the administration of George W. Bush as A-G, wrote a book entitled, Malice-Aforethought: How Lawyers Use Our Rules to Get Nch, Get Sex, Get Even, and Get Away Wth It.

Mr. Marston attacks the lack of ethics of the legal profession. He believes that attorneys breaching their professional code of ethics fall into four (4) categories:

i. Lawyers who use their legal training to break the law or commit crimes in the course of their practice.

ii. Lawyers who violate any important ethical rule of the legal profession. Not surprisingly, there are big rules and little rules and lots of technicalities, so the focus here will be on significant professional misconduct, not a minor infractions.

iii. Lawyers who use their legal training to do things they should be ashamed to tell their mothers.

iv. Lawyers who cooperate when they know there is a bad lawyer at work. Such lawyers may go through the steps but will not go up against the system on behalf of his client. These David Marston calls, "Unindicted Co-Conspirators"

It is worth asking ourselves the question as to whether we are also "Unindicted Co-Conspirators" when we choose to not go up against the system when we know the truth.

The following is worth keeping in mind, when we see ourselves fall on the wayside:

Do not participate in the unfruitful deeds of darkness, but instead expose them;

for it is disgraceful even to speak of the things which are done by them in secret;

But all things become visible when they are exposed by the light, for everything that becomes visible is light. Ephesians ch. 5-11 to 5-13

The Sinfulness of Mankind

The following are the myths:

Lawyers are liars.

Untrue. Lawyers are not trained to lie. They are trained to twist the truth. There is a huge difference. You can be caught in a lie.

When you twist the truth, you cannot be caught; it's just a matter of interpretation.

A friend who teaches tax law gives the same introductory speech at the beginning of every semester.

He asks, "are there any accountants in the class?" Two or three hands go up. He says to them, "You're going to have trouble in this class.

To you, numbers describe the truth. In tax law, there is no one truth. You push and pull on the numbers until they say what you want them to say."

If you can make numbers say what you want, are words any problem?

The distinction is important, because we normally decide if someone is lying by looking for psychological cues: shifty eyes, covering the mouth, or dodging questions.

When someone is professionally trained to twist the truth, they don't give those signs.

When you speak to a lawyer, don't worry too much about lies - but always, always remember that you are in the reality distortion zone.
Lawyers are trained to think clearly.

Untrue. Lawyers -in terms of coming to the right conclusion about the real world -are some of the worst thinkers on the planet Earth. Because of their tendency to twist reality, they have a fantastic gift for sounding logical while missing the broad side of the barn.

It is more accurate to say lawyers are trained to think logically within the framework of law -as chess players think within the framework of chess. (There is a very old saying, "The law sharpens a mind by narrowing it.")
Would you go to a chess player for advice on your life? On business?

Somewhere, I can hear somebody answering, "Hmm, well, umm ... if he had a nice pinstripe suit ... if she drove a BMW ...

The main problem with lawyers is high bills.

Completely untrue. The main problem with lawyers is that most of what they do is useless, or actually harmful to their own client. U.S. President Thomas Jefferson -a lawyer himself -said in 1807 that, "It is the business of a lawyer to question everything, produce nothing, and bill by the hour."
Billing, you notice, comes last. And not much has changed with lawyers.

Of the 27,342 lawyer jokes out there, most deal with high bills, lies, and dishonesty.

 

 

Wolfgang Schmidt is a freelance writer and author living in Rock Creek BC Success is a journey...not a destination.