[lbo-talk] Horror Stories

Wojtek Sokolowski wsokol52 at yahoo.com
Sat Dec 17 08:13:19 PST 2005


--- andie nachgeborenen <andie_nachgeborenen at yahoo.com> wrote:


> You know I defer to no one in fierce defence of the
> rule of law and even the relative virtues of the
> common law and constitutional democracy. But let's
> not
> get naive and misty-eyed. Go thou and read some
> legal
> realism, Jerome Frank is alwys fun, or Holmes' The
> Path of the Law. Or talk to practicing lawyers.
> There's nothing in our legal system to get
> misty-eyed
> about, even if it's better than many alternatives.

I appreciate, as always, your opinions, partly becaouse they are backed by your experience and partly because you defer to no one in fierce defence of the rule of law. But that is different from demagogues of various stripes trying to stir emotions by hurling blanket accusations of dubious, if any, trustworthiness. I'm pretty sure you concur that what mattrs is not only what was said, but also who said that, and from what position.

Nor am I misty-eyed about our (or any) legal system, and I voiced various critical opinions about it (whether justified or not is another issue) on this forum. I have no illuions about omniscience and perfect rationality of *any* system, legal, economic, social, or political - it is a utopian ideal, certainly worth pursuing, but not humanly achievable. Not even close.

My chief complaint is the anti-institutionalist, anti-government rant that thoroughly permeates the political discourse in this country. On the right, it is the government killing private "entrepreneurship" (read: cheating and looting); on the left it is the government opressing "da people" (read: derelicts and delinquents). Two sides of the same neo-liberal, individualistic, me-firts, anti-social coin - that gets on my nerves lately almost as badly as fundamentalist religion does.

Obviously, complaining about the right-wing variety of this anti-institutionalist rant on a left-wing list is barking at a wrong tree - but the left-wing variety is a fair game here. This is not meant to be personal (hence my "disclaimer") - just a form of literary criticim of stale tropes and genres.

W. Kiernan at least recognized that when he said that this might be helpful in tightening "our arguments." Good start. Now "we" have to come with arguments, as opposed to complaints about what others are doing "to us."

There is a Russian smart aleck party saying that translates "we are not dancers, we are fuckers" (mhy nye dansyori, mhy yebakee - said by usually drunk males "supporting" walls at parties, when told to ask ladies to dance). Praphrasing that great folk wisdom, I may say that I am not an organizer (I cannot organize anything to save my life, as a cursory look at my office attests) - I am an analyzer. I cannot contribute much to the cause by trying to organize or mobilize, but I think I can make some contributions by using my analytical skills. People on this list are free take it, leave it or critique it on its merits or demerits - but I am not at all impressed by ad hominems, sanctimonious preaching, and reproached that I am not toeing in the party line, I just click the delete button.

Wojtek _______________________ DISCLAIMER: Opinions posted by this writer to this forum are solely forms of literary criticism exercised as the First Amendment right, and do not necessarily reflect the author's views or attitudes toward real-life people, including other writers posting to this forum, groups of people, institutions, or events to which the critiqued texts may refer, either explicitly or implicitly. Any statement asserting or implying such views or attitudes on the basis of this writer's opinions posted to this forum is thus unfounded, and may be libelous. ________________________

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