They write and talk funny to perpetuate their own careers. If they used plain english, there wouldn’t need to be so many of 'em.
Well… so much for maintaining a halfway civil tone. The lawyer decided to be a jackass. What a fucking surprise.
Maybe in Anaxogoras-land, but out here in the land of ordinary English usage it has no such meaning. Indeed, I defy you to find one example of such usage by any reputable source – a dictionary, a news article, an op-ed piece, a speech by a non-crazy person, anything better than some bloviating message board poster.[/quote]
Emphasis added by yours truly. Honestly, Damien. We’re not as think as you drunk we are.
Umm… guess what? “the legal profession is ethical” is a positive statement. To put it another way, “the legal profession is about as ethical as any other profession” is just as affirmative as “the legal profession is less ethical than most other profession.”
You haven’t taken much epistemology, have you?
So you consider, say, defending the fourth amendment rights of a guilty defendant to be mere sophistry?
Not necessarily. I didn’t say that all things lawyers do is mere sophistry. Merely that much of it is. Are you denying that the lawyerly profession is encouraged to focus on the letter rather than the spirit of the law?
Reading comprehension. Please. I didn’t say “he’s doing an unethical job”… I said he’s doing a job. As in an ethically neutral job. It’s possible that the lawyer is fighting an ethical fight, (I have high amounts of respect for ACLU lawyers) it’s possible the lawyer is finding a loophole in the law to get their client off, (an unethical action by most people’s standards) or it’s possible he’s just paying attention to the law and arguing his case. (ethically neutral)
Ignoring the village idiot’s second statement, which misses the point as usual, he kind of has a point with his first statement. I misphrased it. The distinction between the two objections that I was trying to draw (and probably failed somewhat to do) is the difference between someone who is just getting defensive because he doesn’t understand what’s going on (Objection #1) vs. someone who will nitpick and actually obfuscate things. (Objection #2) One is an ego thing, (subjective) the other is a technique thing. (objective) If that distinction doesn’t make sense to you, then ignore the distinction… it’s not terribly important.
double post
Oh, come now. My tone may be a little sharp, but by internet message board standards I’m practically Miss Manners over here.
Besides, I’m visiting my in-laws and thus am posting from a dial-up account. I have good reason to be cranky. :)
Well, I stand corrected then.
I think fair debate also requires giving folks the benefit of the doubt. The default position should be that lawyers, or any profession for that matter, are ethical. If you advanced the proposition that “most Jews are stingy,” I could counter that with an equally positive statement: “most Jews are generous.” I don’t think any fair-minded person would consider the burden of proof in that discussion to rest on my shoulders.
And, BTW, I could construct an argument in favor of the proposition that most lawyers are ethical. I could point to the fact that all lawyers are trained and tested on their ethical responsibilities. I could point to the fact that most lawyers don’t have complaints brought against them, and for those that do, the overwhelming majority of those complaints are meritless. I could point to the fact that, in my experience, I have never met a lawyer who didn’t care about his ethical responsibilities (though they surely exist). In short, I could point to a lot of tangible things that certainly support my position. You, on the other hand, cannot. I think those things shift the burden to you even if you think the burden didn’t rest with you in the first place, and I don’t think you can meet that burden with anything approaching substantive evidence.
Actually, yes, I do deny that. Indeed, much of legal training involves learning how to argue the substance of the law – the whys of why a given text should be interpreted in a given manner. If you want someone who will just regurgitate text, hire a paralegal; if you want someone who can explain the rationale behind the text and construct an argument as to why that text does or does not apply to the facts of your case, hire a lawyer.
Like I said to Anaxagoras, I think fairness also requires giving the subject in question the benefit of the doubt. Lawyers, broadly speaking, should be assumed ethical unless shown otherwise, just as Jews, broadly speaking, should be deemed generous unless shown to be stingy.
Which as you just posted, how you COULD have replied. But instead, being the bitchy lawyer instead, you chose to take 50,000 words to get around to not actually saying it, just letting us know you could have.
So much better than actually just posting your rebuttal. I rest my case.
Chet
Chet, I’m sorry you find me insufficiently concise. But that’s hardly a response to my actual argument, is it?
Well Lawyers choose to be lawyers and are trained to be lawyers, and must take a standardized test to be lawyers. You can assign them generalized attributes and it isn’t racism or bigotry becuase lawyers aren’t a race. It’s generally accepted that having pre-concieved notions about professionals is a good thing because it then assumes they should live up to thier professional ethics, and you can judge them by that.
Somewhere along the line lawyers have begun to be judged as being sleezbags. The responsibility for changing that assumption is on the Lawyers’ shoulders, not society’s.
As for your “Jews should be deemed generous” nonsense; It’s no less ignorant or racist than the other statement. Racism is having pre-concieved expactions based on people’s innate (non-chosen) attributes, good or bad. The trick is to judge people by how they act or what they choose to do… Like becoming a lawyer, for example.
Damien, why do you hate small-word-using middle America? 8)
Chet’s little campaign against Firing Squad’s article length apparently wasn’t just being an asshole, he’s really just not a fan of words, apparently.
Chet, to whom do you think you are appealing to with your twin pronged attack on Damien’s 1) caring about the truth and 2) his posts being over 2 paragraphs in length? What demographic nods along with those particular allegations?
Anax- What you fail to grasp it that getting someone off on a technicality is protecting our rights. Does it matter if Jose Padilla is guilty? You can’t rail against the abuses of Ashcroft and unethical lawyers getting the guilty off on technicalities at the same time.
Andrew- That’s a powerful argument, the argument from standup comedy cliches. You must have been in Anaxagoras’ “epistemology” class.
By the way, I’m pretty sure that means something other than what he used it as. Isn’t epistemology the study of knowledge, not logic?
As council for Dimwit Flathead, let me just say that we protest vehemently the assertion that our verbosity is in any way anathema to enlightened discourse. Beeyatches!
I never claimed it was bigotry or racism. I simply said that in a fair and civilized discussion, a given group ought to be given the benefit of the doubt.
Having preconceived notions about a given profession tells us nothing about how those professionals actually act unless those notions are based on substantive reasons. Preconceptions in general are useless unless they are based on actual facts.
That judgment is, in many ways, the byproduct of lawyers acting in defense of larger principles on behalf of an unsavory client. In short, it is, perversely, the byproduct of ethical behavior. The popular public perception of the legal profession should not be deemed true just because it is popular. It is fallacious – based more on cute lawyer jokes than actual facts – and that should be pointed out at every opportunity.
The legal profession writ large has nothing to apologize for. It is, for the most part, a body of dedicated, honest, conscientious professionals, and a group with which I am quite proud to be affiliated.
ga ga goo goo
Ironically, I figured that verbose, polysyllabic rhetoric would be more the province of the Democrat-voting urban sophisticates in blue-state America, and thus right up Chet’s ally. Imagine my surprise to discover he prefers the short words presumably favored by the Republican-voting rural midwestern rubes of red-state America. :)
That crazy Chet – he’s more George W. than John Kerry.
Edited to Add: Wow, and his last post really brings that point home, doesn’t it?
While Ben is confused by all posts, Damien you know what you are doing. To evade the actual subject at hand, you debate the form of the argument, not the argument itself. And that of course requires you to post long winded tangent posts of no value to the main discussion. Of course actual word size etc has no importance, it is the subject of your posts. I didn’t expect ben to understand that, so i tried to meet him on his level of comprehension.
Chet
How is it that so many simple concepts fly so completely over your head?
This, of course, is utter bullshit. I routinely directly address the subject at hand in threads in which I participate.
Proof? Go back and read your own fucking OP in this thread, and my first post in reply. Now come back and explain how that first post “evaded the actual subject at hand.” You can’t, because it clearly and directly addressed the very topic you raised.
Indeed, it was you that first evaded the topic in this thread, when, instead of addressing my actual response to the OP, you decided to start bleating about my posting style. And, of course, even those bleats were inaccurate. And the whole “ethics of the legal profession as a whole” hijack wasn’t started by me, but rather by quatoria.
You simply aren’t capable of substantive debate, Chet. You’re the message board Rhesus monkey, shrieking nonsense and flinging your own feces at those who dare dissent from your simplistic, us-versus-them, black and white worldview.
That’s a great characterization of Chet’s behavior Damien, spot on. I think he does it quite deliberately, and effectively, just to watch people freak out in response. Vileness on the Chet level must be studied, I doubt it comes naturally.
P&R is a circus, any rational debate gets drowned out by the screaming back and forths exchanges between unthinking dogmatists… I really wish PhPBB had an option to filter out posts of less than 50 words, excluding word counts from quotes. That would filter out about 90% of the P&R posts while filtering out almost none of the ones worth reading.
That’d just get you the 1000 word incoherent diatribes.
Ironically, I figured that verbose, polysyllabic rhetoric would be more the province of the Democrat-voting urban sophisticates in blue-state America, and thus right up Chet’s ally. Imagine my surprise to discover he prefers the short words presumably favored by the Republican-voting rural midwestern rubes of red-state America. :)
That crazy Chet – he’s more George W. than John Kerry.
Edited to Add: Wow, and his last post really brings that point home, doesn’t it?[/quote]
It may or may not be interesting, but there’s only been like two words so far in this entire P&R forum that I have had to look up for lack of understanding. I imagine that is the case for most of the intelligent people here (no matter their political leanings). The words are large but generally used correctly and clearly.
<Koontz like diatribe>
The most bizarre thing in my view of the P&R forum as a whole is the constant stream of cliche. And I don’t mean normal English language cliches, I mean in developing our own cliches, such as the “X hates America” as someone pointed out earlier (possibly in another thread). So that even after years of discussing the same topics with the same people who generally never change their views, every single possible dead horse gets kicked over and over, while every possible slight that was ever made in the past gets dredged up again and again as if somehow one can be villified properly and for all time, while teeming masses of silent readers of this forum will suddenly be swayed to the “proper” point of view.
Damien, you could right now change your entire outlook, posting style, and even career and it wouldn’t matter one bit. You, my friend, are pigeon-holed forever. Same thing with me: someone called me a neo-con (despite my calling Clinton decent or posting fanboy zealot Libertarian points of view) because I dare to dispute the editorializing of many articles quoted here. Jason McCullough will always be the QT3 uber-posting bleeding heart even if the rest of us bypass his 8000+ posts and vote the HRC/Sharpton ticket next election.
In this fashion, you and Ben and me and others can probably expect nothing but sarcasm and mockery from Chet, word definitions from Anax, pointless eight word posts from Midnight Son (spanning no less than 40% of every single thread), and doubts about professional ethics and objectivity from Andrew Mayer, forever. It doesn’t make them bad people, that is simply their niche, just as you have yours, I have mine, and everyone else has theirs. Hell, I even entitled this section “Koontz like diatribe” fulfilling this very notion that everything said here must be labelled and pigeon-holed for easy digestion by everyone else (who are always lesser than the person doing the speaking).
Buck up, dude. Welcome to the “enlightened” corner of the internet. :lol:
</Koontz like diatribe>