A Former Lawyer's Brief Memoir

Remember, I’m countin’ on you to keep me out of jail, Harry remarked to me one

morning. I responded smugly. You are smart, Harry, to understand how useful a lawyer can be these days. Well, I’m lucky to have you lookin’ out for me, he said. Then he surprised me with these words.

            I had to step back. It took years to get it through my head the law serves to lay before the criminal mind reliable theories to facilitate the business of thieving. It is for convenience of the thief that laws are written, to make it feasible to practice corruption. Rules are the framework on which to weave a web of deceit. Regulations are the backdrop against which legal authority can be acquired to harm one’s fellows with a claim of right. And lawyers who write the rules break them best. Lawyers by definition partially administer injustice. I am glad to have one.

            Last year, the local University won a football championship and it was a widely celebrated affair. But I ask you…tell me…how do you suppose the administration of this large, crowded school went about the process of assembling players and coaches who could bring about such a mirage of superiority? How was it made to appear that this bunch of boys belong somehow uniquely to this University and deserve to be called “Champions”? What, in Heaven’s name, is the point? Is it to train the kids to manipulate rules as a way of life? Or, more to hypnotize the public into blind submission to a football system that produces economic wealth? Of course, it is both. And, where did the play go, I wonder? Can its football team really be proud of such a University?

           The inherent evil in any system of laws is the ten thousand systems concealed within every system that man creates. For instance, it has been applauded that a group of people in North America in 1776 desired to form an honest government of officials that would be answerable to those they serve, but look at the multitude of concealments that have come to light since the day that ideal took shape. Who claims now an honest government in America?

            Looked at closely, Americans had been pretending to serve King George who it was pretended was ordained by God Almighty to rule a false Britannia. With the stroke of a pen an imaginary leader told the Americans to believe they will now pretend to be free people. Pretense! How can anybody be so foolish as to believe a people who pretend to be free by creating a system of government with power to raise armies and to tax and to make laws to control them are free? How does that amount to freedom? There is but a simple and obvious reason people agree to this: lack of trust in themselves. The poor people believe if they were to be free they would be scoundrels, or worse, failures.

            There is a popular saying, With freedom comes responsibility. It is used by those who are given the responsibility to control the behavior of people who are supposed to be free, for example, school room teachers and judges. Have you considered the responsibility you owe to yourself? What if you knew that responsibility, the one you owe to you, is innately natural like the sweetness of an apple? What if you knew human nature to be good? If it were not so nobody would even consider the sound of freedom.

            And it may have been innocent enough when mommy and daddy decided to begin a family as they had been instructed to do but millions of books have written of the tragic consequences that have befallen the offspring of such a union and twisted them into unhappy adults. Looks suspiciously the same, no? Contrived as a system of government to control behavior it contains its own thousand clowns of evil. The ideal of fidelity creates infidelity. Laws facilitate deceit. Either you are a good person or you are not. Are you not even interested to know which?

            Every system thought up is immediately corrupt. There is no preventing it. See how the system is not less corrupt when this fact is exposed but ever more so. It seems publicity of how some scoundrels were caught holding the bag acts to encourage others to try their luck. Or maybe the cynicism that results from the impression that everybody is doing it provokes more of it. Fact is everybody is doing it. Fact is, every player needs his lawyer. Every husband and every wife needs a lawyer. One for each should come with the ceremony.

 It’s a sad thing to accept. Do you not see any hope? I asked. Harry put it this way.


It's up to each individual to choose, in his own time, to leave all systems behind. It is possible. I do not claim it is easy. Notice this is not a call to revolution. Quite the contrary, it is a call to cease all attempts to be free for all such attempts are idealistic systems with the nasty consequences we have already. It is a call to discover you are free. Nothing else is suggested.

            To know oneself. Self examination which leads to the funny brilliant recognition that as I am I am leads to an individual's own declaration of independence. The only one without hidden agendas. When laws and the crimes they define become irrelevant jails empty out on their own accord and peace prevails in the land. In the abyss each one who declares it to be so is his own authority, takes naked responsibility for his own truth, risks the moment, and shoos his own flies, calls his own dog, keeps his own counsel, accepts his own fate, blows his own whistle, draws his own conclusions, fights his own battles, sweeps his own side of the street, makes up his own mind, faces his own challenges, finds his own strength, stands on his own feet, answers his own question, has nobody to blame, and lives before he dies.

I quit.