The legal system of the country at hand it may be relevant to the question at hand as it is a reason why to or why not to oppose homosexual civil unions. You are unable to actually back up your conclusion as it is a dogmatic. I on the other hand did back up my argument.
Okay, since you deem it to be (however minimally) relevant to the O.P., I will make one last comment. You claim that you backed up your statement "all lawyers are liars" with an argument. But from what I can tell, the only "support" that you have given to your argument is that you do not know how a lawyer can be honest and successful. This is not logical support for your argument, but rather another conclusory statement that is not all that different from your initial conclusion. Piling conclusion on top of conclusion does not make a logical argument, unless you first provide some logical basis for each of your conclusions.
Finally, you stated that lawyers "oppress" you by allowing criminals to go free. Okay, this seems like an attempt at a logical argument, but it such a misinformed statement that I figured that it was not worthy of derailing a thread over. But, here is brief
logical response to your statement.
First, not all lawyers are criminal defense lawyers. Some are prosecutors (whose job it is to protect you from criminals).
Most lawyers are not involved in the criminal justice system at all. Thus, to blame all lawyers for the perceived abuses of a small minority of them is to paint an entire profession with an excessively broad brush stroke, which is exactly what I accused of doing from the outset.
Second, let's assume,
arguendo, that criminal defense lawyers are representative of all attorneys. Even (especially?) criminal defense attorneys play an important role in defending your liberties. In protecting the rights of the worst of us, they protect the rights of the best of us. The framers of the U.S. Constitution inserted certain rights into our Constitution, including the right to resist unreasonable searches, the right to due process, and the right against self-incrimination. Why did they include these right next to the right to free speech and religion and such? Because, they were keenly aware, based on their experience, of the ability of oppressive governments to violate the dignity of everyday people by doing the very things that our Constitution now protects us from. These same rights are the basic building building blocks of many types of legal defenses in the criminal justice system. When the police build their case by violating the suspect's Fourth Amendment rights, then a lawyer's job is to have thrown out the evidence gained from this violation. A good judge will oblige the defense attorney in this scenario precisely because it is necessary to do so in order to keep the police from also violating the rights of the innocent. If there were no consequences for such constitutional violations, the police would have no reason to abide by the Constitution, and the Constitution would be worth no more than the paper it is written on. Fortunately, comparatively speaking, police in our country do their job in a way that respects that dignity of the innocent. This is due, in large part, to the fact that failure to do so, at least to the extent that it involves violating the constitutional rights of others, will result in the guilty not being brought to justice. And, because the police, by and large, want the guilty to be punished and, because the police understand this consequence of serious constitutional violations, it is quite rare they commit violations that result in allowing the guilty to go free. And, when a guilty person is allowed to go free because of such a violation, it is not the criminal defense lawyer who is at fault, but rather the police for failing to abide by the Constitution. Therefore, in arguing that a defendant's constitional rights have been violated, the attorney is not being dishonest, but rather he is asserting his client's legal rights and in doing so is creating a strong incentive for the government to repect
your constitutional rights.
Finally, as to your objection that I failed to provide reasoned argument to your statement that a lawyer cannot be honest and successful at the same time. You have yet to provide any basis for this statement. So, how can I even begin to dispute it? If I provide you with examples of attorneys who I believe to be honest, you will either not know who they are or you will claim that they are dishonest (which is an accusation that can probably be made of anyone). Unless you can show that the legal profession is somehow inherently dishonest, it is impossible to discredit your reasoning, because you have provided none. Thus, all I can do is provide an equally conclusory statement that there is nothing inherently dishonest about the legal profession, so there is no reason to doubt the ability of an attorney to remain honest. I have now provided one example to demonstrate my point that lawyers protect your rights, but you have not provided any basis for me to accept your statement that one cannot be successful and honest in the legal profession. It seems that, if there were a logical basis for this statement, you would have provided it by now.
Now, this really is derailing the thread, so if you would like to continue to discuss, please start a new thread out of respect for the OP and those who would prefer not to participate in this tangential issue.
