People v. State

Jeff Gamso has a post up today noting the addition of a few blogs to his blogroll. He also notes: “I should probably consider deleting a couple of blogs from the list, but it seems wiser to add.  Because you never know.” I don’t have any reason to think my blog was one of those he had in mind for possible deletion (there’s several blogs on his roll that seem not to have been updated in some time), but it did cross my mind, and its crossing of my mind prompts me to ask myself once again what I’m doing, both on this blog and with my life in general.

I have a great deal of respect for Jeff. He’s been a great help to me on a couple of occasions with real life legal matters, once by phone and on another occasion by email. He’s encouraged me to hang in there when I’ve expressed readiness to throw in the towel. Beyond that, although we’ve sharply disagreed and traded barbs online on several occasions, and he’s come close to calling me an idiot, and probably close to half of my comments on his blog are critical (personally, I’ve always believed that thoughtful, critical comments are the most valuable), he continues to engage me, which is more than I can say for more than one blogger with whom I’ve also sharply disagreed and traded barbs.

I recognize that this blog has evolved or devolved to a single and simple philosophical point, and that philosophy doesn’t lend itself to blogging. I see this as a perhaps regrettable manifestation of my lifelong Platonic impulse, a preference for the universal over the particular, which some might – not unreasonably – interpret as intellectual laziness. Many criminal defense blogs ably and interestingly chronicle on a daily or weekly basis the crimes of the criminal justice system. My message is simply that the intention of the State is not to fight crime but to perpetrate it.

A major theme of the so-called practical blawgosphere is the denigration of attorney advertising. The true professional, although he earns his living by his profession, is not motivated by filthy lucre. He’s not an ambulance chaser. I’ve always appreciated this sentiment. I’m warming to it more and more. The legal profession is not a job like other jobs. It’s a calling.

I’ve felt called before. The lords of the legal profession, however, have given me every indication that I’m not welcome in their domain. Nevertheless, I remain the kind of man who would not turn a deaf ear to a person who needs help and whom I believe I can help. I believe there’s nothing more noble in life. I am open to that call.

But if the phone doesn’t ring? If I’m not called?

Norm Pattis has a post up today contemplating the upcoming trial season. It’s not pretty. It’s midnight terrors. It’s gambling and trading in human life. It’s Russian Roulette. It’s war.

It’s not the kind of thing one does unless one is called.

The beauty of poetry, even when written by a self-described hack like Robert Service, is that it can romanticize even The Men Who Don’t Fit In:

There’s a race of men that don’t fit in,
A race that can’t stay still;
So they break the hearts of kith and kin,
And they roam the world at will.

They range the field and they rove the flood,
And they climb the mountain’s crest;
Theirs is the curse of the gypsy blood,
And they don’t know how to rest.

If they just went straight they might go far;
They are strong and brave and true;
But they’re always tired of the things that are,
And they want the strange and new.

They say:  “Could I find my proper groove,
What a deep mark I would make!”
So they chop and change, and each fresh move
Is only a fresh mistake.

And each forgets, as he strips and runs
With a brilliant, fitful pace,
It’s the steady, quiet, plodding ones
Who win in the lifelong race.

And each forgets that his youth has fled,
Forgets that his prime is past,
Till he stands one day, with a hope that’s dead,
In the glare of the truth at last.

He has failed, he has failed; he has missed his chance;
He has just done things by half.
Life’s been a jolly good joke on him,
And now is the time to laugh.

Ha, ha!  He is one of the Legion Lost;
He was never meant to win;
He’s a rolling stone, and it’s bred in the bone;
He’s a man who won’t fit in.

Call us the uncalled.

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