Shall we abandon the contract between Americans and their government and let “smart people” tell us how to live our lives without the limits of a Constitution? That’s what one Georgetown law professor suggests. Now he’s whining that the backlash to his suggestion is unfair. Here I pile onto that unfair backlash.
The author of an article in the American Bar Association Journal complains that Louis Michael Seidman has been unjustly attacked because of his “provocative” suggestion that following the US Constitution is not rational and is simply too arduous. And what is Seidman’s reasoning behind this bold assertion? Because it was written by “a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries.”
Apparently Seidman thinks only his opinions, allegations and attacks are rational, so other people’s opinions, allegations and attacks on his opinions must be just mean and irrational.
Because I am a Constitutional scholar like our President, I could easily argue the merits of a constitutional system of government toe-to-toe with Seidman, but that would be lowering myself to Seidman’s level. Instead I have an different observation to make.
First let me say that it is no wonder to me that lawyers are held in so low regard by so much of society. I became a lawyer precisely because I dislike so many of them. It’s not the fact that pompous, arrogant, self-righteous, self-important dufuses like Seidman have wacky opinions that bothers me so much. It’s that those wacky opinions are given so much deference merely because they come from a “law professor” that bugs me so much.
I don’t know Seidman personally. I went to George Washington University Law School, not Georgetown. But I’ve met the equivalent of Seidman many, many times, so I can tell you exactly what ails him. And what I can tell you is that the Seidmans of the legal profession are working hard to overcome massive inferiority complexes…complexes that are almost always justified by real inferiority. So he probably started a long time ago to overcompensate for his real inferiority by pretending that he’s smart. Not only smart, but smart like the smartest guy in the room everywhere he goes. Ergo, res ipsa liquitur (the thing speaks for itself), when Seidman attacks the constitution he’s being rational, but when others attack his opinions, they are being irrational. Only a lawyer with a massive inferiority complex could argue that with a straight face.
The Seidman’s of the world don’t want to be evaluated on their real worth to society because they would be destitute. Instead, Seidman-ites demand that the rest of us be coerced by a government of their choice into doing what they think is right for the world, and they cannot be bothered with restrictions on their powers that would be imposed by un-serious, irrational things like a mere constitution.
I had a law school professor finish out his semester by pompously sending forth us students with the charge that “We have an opportunity to create a society that we want, one better than who we really are.” When you boil out the B-S, what that prof was suggesting was that, because we were to be lawyers, society should simply bow to our wills. That prof was extraordinarily confident that he had converted the entire class into the arch-liberal he called himself. And he was (and is) convinced that arch-liberals are so smart, the rest of society should simply allow itself to be molded into what arch-liberals want.
Let me leave you with this simple observation: If you enter into any relationship without a written contract, you give the other person in the relationship maximum opportunity to screw you. Therefore, if you give “smart” people freedom to mold society into what they think it should be, without imposing any restrictions on their powers, those “smart” people will almost never grant you any of the freedoms found in the US Constitution’s Bill of Rights. Just consider what the “smart” people in the Democrat party think of the Bill of Rights today. By the way, the only exception to my observation about smart molders of society was written by “a group of white propertied men who have been dead for two centuries.”