I understand fully the concept you're trying to get across here. And yes, I'm in favor of it. Notice who gets on juries in this country: retired cafeteria workers, ex-janitors, groundskeepers, part-time MacDonald's "chefs" and others like that (all honorable workers to be sure, but do you want them deciding a complex case involving your stocks, bonds, selling short, and your investments in chicken lips on the monrovian market? I don't think so.)
Why do juries inevitably contain this quality of person? Because this kind of person cannot think for themselves, and that's what lawyers want. They want pliable minds whom THEY, the lawyers, can tell what to think and how to react to any given set of circumstances. Lawyers DO NOT WANT people who can think. You've been called for jury duty? Dress to the nines. Carry a large edition of "The Rise and Fall of the Roman Empire" with the title large enough to be read from fifty yards. Look and act like you know exactly what day it is and aren't likely to be talked out of it. You will not serve.
We are NOT, repeat NOT, being judged by juries of our peers. If I engage in theft via electronic means involving my computer, how can anyone who hasn't got ten minutes experience with a computer going to be a peer in my case and render just judgement? They can't.
And now a word about my favorite juridicial topic: Jury Nullification. If I were on a jury and felt like a law was ill conceived, if I felt like a law was being improperly applied, if I felt that a certain law was being stretched to the limit in order for a district attorney to use in helping himself grease the skids to greater public office, if these or any number of other reasons attached, I'd be in that jury room preaching jury nullification at the top of my lungs. I would be the prosecuting attorney's worst enemy. I'd get my jury nullification of that particular law or there would be no decision. None. Nada. And the judge, who had spent so much time preaching against jury nullification in his instructions to the jury could go pound sand.
And, we keep electing lawyers to state legislatures and they keep passing the most intellectually insulting laws known to man. We insist on putting the fox in charge of the henhouse and then we bitch at the outcome. STOP. Stop electing lawyers to legislatures and we could clean up over half of our problem with laws that looked like they were the result of an explosion in a book factory.
Finally, we have become so disaffected by what's being taught our children, we are as much to blame for the situation as anyone. It's YOUR fault if your child doesn't know his constitutional rights by the time he or she graduates from high school. And by that I mean he or she should be able to sit down with you and enumerate ALL TEN of the first amendments to the constitution, and talk for at least a half hour about why each is there and why. Can your child do this? Can you? Your child should know that we live in a Republic, not a democracy - should be able to compare and contrast the two - and should be able to wax eloquent about why our founding fathers (whom they should be able to name one by one and identify their roles in the revolution and in the framing of the constitution) chose a repbulican form of government.
Yes, Mr. Franklin, sir, you have given us a republic - if we can keep it. And I despair that we can. The long and bloody shadow of the mob, the mob of the democratic form of government stalks our land, and our freedoms cannot help but soon be gone.
It is a shame. It is a damn crying shame what we've let leftist politicians do to this once-great country.
I shall morn it all the rest of my days. And I shall remember ...
francois
Edited by - francois on 6 February 2003 11:52:9
