|
candystripper -> RE: MOre threats against Obama (11/15/2008 3:25:33 AM)
|
quote:
ORIGINAL: Arpig
He's a lawyer...and you know what Shakespeare said about lawyers[;)]
LOL, I always wondered what the quote actually is Arpig. I don't have the patience for all that middle-English.
So here's the entire passge:
Henry VI, Part II:
"The first thing we do, let's kill all the lawyers". - (Act IV, Scene II).
Even a cursory reading of the context in which the lawyer killing statement is made in King Henry VI, Part II, (Act IV), Scene 2, reveals that Shakespeare was paying great and deserved homage to our venerable profession as the front line defenders of democracy.
The accolade is spoken by Dick the Butcher, a follower of anarchist Jack Cade, whom Shakespeare depicts as "the head of an army of rabble and a demagogue pandering to the ignorant," who sought to overthrow the government. Shakespeare's acknowledgment that the first thing any potential tyrant must do to eliminate freedom is to "kill all the lawyers" is, indeed, a classic and well-deserved compliment to our distinguished profession.
Today's Jack Cades can readily be found throughout the insurance industry and in manufacturing, pharmaceutical, and chemical companies. They want to dismantle the tort system. They want to disrupt the judiciary and abrogate the common law, to the detriment of the rights of individual citizens, consumers, and injured persons who deserve competent representation and adequate redress for harm done to them.
Over the centuries tyrants and demagogues have come in many forms. In today's context, it is not the "army of rabble and a demagogue pandering to the ignorant" who cry for the demise of the lawyers, but rather modern demagogues who manipulate our governmental institutions to their own ends. Why? Because trial lawyers are the first line of defense to prevent irresponsible elements within the insurance, manufacturing, and chemical companies from dismantling the tort system, disrupting the judiciary and abrogating the common law to the detriment of the rights of individual citizens, consumers and tort victims.
Doubtless, if Shakespeare could put quill to parchment to script analogous phrases for modern corporate tyrants, he could couch their refrain thusly:
- If America's democratic institutions of right to trial by jury and election of judges are to be abolished, first let's discredit all the lawyers;
-
- If American citizens' common law rights to full recovery of legal damages are to be abrogated for the benefit of profit-motivated corporations, first let's defame all the lawyers; and
-
- If America's judicial system of tort reparations is to be remolded into a profit mechanism for the insurance industry, first let's degrade all the lawyers.
http://www.howardnations.com/shakespeare.html
Whhooo, whooo. I loved this quote from the same play:
"Small things make base men proud". - (Act IV, Scene I).
candystripper [sm=pole.gif]
|
|
|
|
