a dog-eared town

“If the present Congress errs in too much talking, how can it be otherwise in a body to which the people send 150 lawyers, whose trade it is to question everything, yield nothing, & talk by the hour? That 150 lawyers should do business together ought not to be expected.”

– Thomas Jefferson (Autobiography, 1821)

Reference: Jefferson: Writings, Peterson ed., Library of America (53)

The amount of lawyers in congress and in Concord is probably the number one problem, as I see it, with legislatures. They are not trained to think in a rational manner. Their professional training makes them try to see loopholes. It’s what they are paid to do.

So when they get into power, they try to make and keep all the loopholes that they can. After all, it’s what they have been trained to do. It gets to the point where they can’t acknowledge something that is really simple, because they have been trained not to do so.

And if you don’t think that’s the truth, then you don’t know what the meaning of “is” is. Just to bring up one example.

Lawyers aren’t trained to have common sense. And as legislators are creating laws, we the people are the worse off for that lack of common sense with all the uncommon sense laws that get passed.