Letters to the Editor
-
P.D. "Bo" Steele
If a top painter could paint a masterpiece that would change what he considered wrong with the world, would he not do it? Or would he lay down his brush and start drawing cartoons?
Would that such an artist ever existed, or had such influence and power. Picasso painted his masterpiece Guernica, and yet Franco stayed in power for 40 years, and his Axis allies proceeded to destroy the rest of Europe.
Furthermore, in his own way, what you are implying that an artist could do is precisely what Glenn is doing, i.e. telling all who care to listen all that's wrong with things today, in quite masterful fashion. In your analogy, said artist would, instead of painting his masterpiece, take paint companies to court for making poor quality paint, in order to address such problems.
Glenn is a high profile litigator, well trained, and obviously well educated. He claims that our country is rife with violations of the law, and that we are all one jackboot away from fascism. The courts are the designated places for violations of the law in our system, are they not?
It seems to me Glenn should lay down his keyboard and take up his briefcase. A federal lawsuit only costs a couple of hundred dollars and an injunction hearing could be set within weeks of a filing.
I wouldn't call that lazy or cowardly. I would call that having the courage of one's rhetoric.
I suspect that Glenn has been consulted by a number of people who have sued or are seeking to sue in court in such matters. But he is only human, and can only do so much with his limited time, energy and resources. Sure, he can litigate, and do much good there. But there are plenty of highly talented and principled litigators who are already doing that, but who don't have the time, talent or interest in doing what Glenn does.
Furthermore, just because a person's original expertise and experience is in one area doesn't mean that they are forever restricted to it, or only able to have a positive influence through it. By your logic, Wes Clark should stop writing books and making appearances and re-enlist in the military, in the hopes changing our policy in Iraq. Or, at least, run for office. He chooses not to, and yet continues to have a positive and powerful effect.
Viewing litigation as the silver bullet that will solve all or most of our problems is, I repeat, naive. It is certainly important, and necessary, but simply not sufficient, or even as important as the other steps that I outlined in my previous comment to you. And while Glenn would certainly have a powerful effect as a litigator, I think that he is having a far more powerful one doing what he's doing now, which is what they refer to in the military as a "force multiplier".
And there's no reason to believe that he won't someday return to legal work if he thinks that it would genuinely help, or do it simultaneous to writing, if he felt that this was possible. The two are not mutually exclusive, e.g. Stephen Breyer--or, more odiously, Clarence Thomas.