Forgive me this post, but it’s my blawg and I’ll post what I want. I don’t usually get too personal, but this one was just so incredibly stupid that I had to share.
I’ve got nothing against conservatives. Really I don’t. William F. Buckley is one of my heroes (sorry, Gid). But in googling myself this morning (no, it’s none of your business why I had to google myself; NO, I didn’t forget who I am. I’m not that old), I came across my name on some neo-con blog, and just laughed myself silly. This goes back about a month, but don’t blame me because nobody I know reads this crap.
The blog is by a fellow named Keith Burgess-Jackson, and demonstrating his breadth of imagination, he named the blog after himself. Now this fellow is, according to his about page, a professor of logic, ethics and philosophy at the University of Texas at Arlington. Bennett, a friend of yours?
He picked up on a letter to the editor of mine in the New York Times, relating to a Times editorial that included, as a component of their justification for supporting a judicial pay raise, the argument that
In judging, as in most lines of work, competitive salaries are important for attracting the best work force.
As I’ve written here numerous times, this is false argument designed to appeal to people who can’t conceive of a reason to pay judges that wouldn’t apply to themselves. Accordingly, the gravamen of my letter was that
No one should sit in judgment of others because the money is good. To suggest that salaries are the motivator for exceptional people to assume the bench is to denigrate the integrity of the judiciary.
Does this strike anyone as being that difficult to follow? Well, apparently it was for this professor and his readers. Now I understand that this guy is an arch neo-con, the type who posts that “we here in the United States kill murderers because we value innocent human life. We demonstrate this value in two ways: first, by exterminating those who destroy innocent human life; and second, by preventing additional murders. What’s barbaric is not killing murderers but valuing the lives of murderers as highly as, or more highly than, the lives of the innocent.”
So the letter, characterized as “bizarre” by this neo-con Texas professor, is sufficiently understood by the New York Times editorial staff to find its way to publication, but is so incomprehensible to him and his readers that one writes “I have now read this letter 4 times, and I still cannot figure out the point the writer is trying to make.”
In an effort to level the playing field, I hereinafter promise to type slower so guys like this can keep up. I hate to write something and find that even after 4 reads, they still can’t get it. And people let this guy near college students? Talk about scary.
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I don’t get it. “Denigrate the integrity of the judiciary?” Many people assume the criminal bench because — like Mr. Burgess-Jackson — they think they have the wisdom to know what other people deserve. Compared to the delusive belief that one human being can know when another deserves to die, the quest for lucre is benign.
You have a different issue, since you think so poorly of judges to begin with that suggesting that they are driven by money would elevate them in your eyes. And they say I’m jaded. There are certainly judges who shouldn’t be on the bench. There are also some fine people who sit on the bench, and they don’t deserve to be branded as losers, second-rate or money-grubbers.
Since somebody is going to sit as judge, do you think the best choice would be someone motivated by money or someone whose purpose was to serve the public, be fair and do justice?
He sure posts a lot. Judging only from his blog, he doesn’t seem exceptionally bright, but his philosophical convictions might be impeding his creative faculties.
From his CV, it appears that he has a special fascination with rape.
If it were truly a choice between:
a) a judge who knew that he wasn’t wise enough to do justice, but was being paid well to make sure the parties followed the rules; and
b) a judge who believed that he was wise enough to hand out justice (always a delusive belief) and was so determined to do justice that it didn’t matter how much he was paid
I would choose (a) every time.
What I would prefer, of course, is judges just like me: people who know that they are not wise enough to say what anyone deserves, but are determined to make sure the parties play by the rules and, when in doubt, to do what Clarence Darrow suggested is as close as we can come to justice. I have met a few such judges, but they are greatly outnumbered by the judges in category (b). Raise judicial wages (or lower the BS quotient of the job) and you might attract more people who don’t see themselves on a mission from God to rid the world of evildoers.