Don't be fooled be high sounding, unconsciously soothing arguments--the English Only movement is veiled bigotry. The basic argument goes that it's a matter of economics and ensuring communication. "It's too expensive to accommodate other languages so we must make one standard fit all!" they cry. The same argument has been used to espouse one party rule, create monopolies, crush the Native American Indian cultures, establish National religions, and require mono-culturalism. It's an argument born of fear and ignorance. Fear of those who speak differently. Fear of those who believe differently. Fear that the English language will be obliterated by foreign speakers with higher birth rates.
These foreign speakers with higher birth rates who a lot of you English Only people never even talk to, have the same core human values and virtues that you do. Moreover, recent immigrants to this country still learn English as fast as they always have despite the anecdotal harangues of wrinkled, old, English speaking men in saunas at local clubs claiming otherwise.
Without undue government intervention, just as the principles that apply in the free market system and the market place of ideas determine the winners and the losers, these same market principles will appropriately regulate the muti-linguism in our society. Other than having English declared as our "official language," government need not dictate to businesses, municipal governments, or school districts, etc. either accommodation or nonaccommodation to foreign speakers. If it is economically or otherwise prudent to do so, other languages will be accommodated. If it is not economically or otherwise imprudent, they will not. No well meaning bigotry will change this fact and no laws need be passed to regulate languages. Instead of gaping in fear at those who arrive here from other countries--whether legally or illegally invited by us--be assured that as long as we remain the home of the brave and the free (while you English speakers may benefit from learning a little Spanish, Chinese or Russian), you can sleep comfortably at night knowing that when you wake up in the morning you'll arise to a predominately English wired nation and if you do not--don't blame the law--blame it on the collapse of your own vitality and usefulness.
Loren M. Lambert
Sept. 21, 2000 ©
Thursday, September 21, 2000
Sunday, September 3, 2000
Old Glory
If and when all the dust clears, the millions of dollars are spent, and the frenzied whirlwind of emotion, rhetoric and demagoguery subsides– there, enshrined in sacrosanct parchment we’ll have our blessed Flag Amendment. There, at the tail of truths self-evident will be the Amendment that will rescue the United States from the depraved would-be Flag desecrators and take us to greatness well into the next century by allowing Congress to punish such ne’er-do-wells. Perhaps the omniscient Congress could adopt the following verbiage: Any person that maims, mutilates, mars, defaces, desecrates, soils, shreds or tramples the United States’ Flag will be maimed, mutilated, marred, defaced, desecrated, soiled, shredded or trampled– a just punishment for an attack on the very heart and soul of America!
But when it’s all done, will we have a better nation? Will there be less cocaine in the streets? Will the deficit be smaller? Will our children be more studious and respectful? Will there be less pornography? Will our landfills be less repulsive and our skies clearer? Will the nostalgic veterans and tippling warlords of our great nation be able to sleep more peacefully at night knowing that no pimpled skinhead, no nihilistic punker will dare defame the Flag that he makes his bed with?
No, No, No, No, No, No, and maybe yes. Just maybe while John Doe is tried for flag desecration on national television as the political dogs salivate gleefully and as the warlords drift slowly off to sleep with visions of 21 gun salutes dancing in their heads, Joe Blow can more quietly sell crack and pander pornography to their teens down the street. Just maybe while John Doe ties up the Courts with constitutional battles, motions and appeals, the druglords and psychopaths can stretch out their own trials and appeals for 20 years. And maybe while John Doe serves his sentence he can take a correspondence course on patriotism from Jim Wright, Ted Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ivan Bosky.
And while we’re at it, we might as well protect from calumny a few other American symbols. No longer should people be allowed to burn in effigy our Presidents or should idle children be allowed to throw darts at their photographs. Nor should we tolerate protesters making a mockery of our institutions–the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Military. But they all should be forced to kneel each morning and chant some patriotic mantra like, "Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, I will always praise on high, the flag, President, and apple pie."
All those that refused could be sent to Iran, Syria or Lebanon as some sagacious representatives have suggested. And to finish up the job, we may as well send all the overzealous Protestants back to Europe; the Black Americans back to Africa; the liberals, socialists and utopianists to Russia, China and Cuba; the Italians back to Italy; the Asians back to Asia; all the Latinos back to Spain; and all others that have a dissenting view, culture or an "ism" back to somewhere far far away to keep democracy safe for the world. This solution, the old "send ‘um back to where they came from" solution, was taken to an even higher plane and most efficiently employed by such notables as Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun, and Ghengis Khan. They sure sent ‘um back to where they came from! Now we definitely won’t go as far as they did but I am sure that all our problems would be solved if we took it at least as far back as Eden or the primordial soup.
On the other hand, we could all just go back to work, balance our budgets, raise our families, and keep behaving the way a nation that is the beacon of freedom and liberty should behave to give the Flag its glory. We could also take pride in our heritage and continue to honor all those that have made contributions to this great nation by their deaths or by the way they have lived.
Perhaps we would then realize that the symbol of our nation is not revered and honored because of any laws passed to impress its importance upon the mind, but because of the living ideals of its people. With this knowledge, we wouldn’t have to worry about the flag burners–unless that is, they really had something to say. And besides, if there ever came a day when we would do well to follow the example of our forefathers who burned the British Flag, we could do so with no Flag Amendment that had been rendered meaningless by our nation’s devolution.
Loren Lambert
© Fall, 1998
But when it’s all done, will we have a better nation? Will there be less cocaine in the streets? Will the deficit be smaller? Will our children be more studious and respectful? Will there be less pornography? Will our landfills be less repulsive and our skies clearer? Will the nostalgic veterans and tippling warlords of our great nation be able to sleep more peacefully at night knowing that no pimpled skinhead, no nihilistic punker will dare defame the Flag that he makes his bed with?
No, No, No, No, No, No, and maybe yes. Just maybe while John Doe is tried for flag desecration on national television as the political dogs salivate gleefully and as the warlords drift slowly off to sleep with visions of 21 gun salutes dancing in their heads, Joe Blow can more quietly sell crack and pander pornography to their teens down the street. Just maybe while John Doe ties up the Courts with constitutional battles, motions and appeals, the druglords and psychopaths can stretch out their own trials and appeals for 20 years. And maybe while John Doe serves his sentence he can take a correspondence course on patriotism from Jim Wright, Ted Kennedy, Richard Nixon and Ivan Bosky.
And while we’re at it, we might as well protect from calumny a few other American symbols. No longer should people be allowed to burn in effigy our Presidents or should idle children be allowed to throw darts at their photographs. Nor should we tolerate protesters making a mockery of our institutions–the Supreme Court, the Congress, the Military. But they all should be forced to kneel each morning and chant some patriotic mantra like, "Cross my heart, hope to die, stick a needle in my eye, I will always praise on high, the flag, President, and apple pie."
All those that refused could be sent to Iran, Syria or Lebanon as some sagacious representatives have suggested. And to finish up the job, we may as well send all the overzealous Protestants back to Europe; the Black Americans back to Africa; the liberals, socialists and utopianists to Russia, China and Cuba; the Italians back to Italy; the Asians back to Asia; all the Latinos back to Spain; and all others that have a dissenting view, culture or an "ism" back to somewhere far far away to keep democracy safe for the world. This solution, the old "send ‘um back to where they came from" solution, was taken to an even higher plane and most efficiently employed by such notables as Hitler, Stalin, Attila the Hun, and Ghengis Khan. They sure sent ‘um back to where they came from! Now we definitely won’t go as far as they did but I am sure that all our problems would be solved if we took it at least as far back as Eden or the primordial soup.
On the other hand, we could all just go back to work, balance our budgets, raise our families, and keep behaving the way a nation that is the beacon of freedom and liberty should behave to give the Flag its glory. We could also take pride in our heritage and continue to honor all those that have made contributions to this great nation by their deaths or by the way they have lived.
Perhaps we would then realize that the symbol of our nation is not revered and honored because of any laws passed to impress its importance upon the mind, but because of the living ideals of its people. With this knowledge, we wouldn’t have to worry about the flag burners–unless that is, they really had something to say. And besides, if there ever came a day when we would do well to follow the example of our forefathers who burned the British Flag, we could do so with no Flag Amendment that had been rendered meaningless by our nation’s devolution.
Loren Lambert
© Fall, 1998
Thursday, August 3, 2000
Is It Irresponsibility or Litigation?
The moment I heard the screeching tires I instinctively looked over to ensure my three year old daughter was out of danger and that I was between her and the road. I then watched as a sleek black sedan cut around our corner, wheels sliding and contorted. As the car sped by at 50 miles an hour on our residential 20 mile an hour street, I peered in at the teenage couple who appeared oblivious to my presence. After making the loop in our neighborhood the black sedan made its way back towards me. Hoping I’d be respected, I stepped into the road and waived at the teenagers to stop. The car slowed and stopped at my side. "Please slow down we have kids in this area," I stated as nicely as possible while pointing at my daughter. "Sorry," the teenage girl stated from behind the wheel, "I just got my license and need to go fast and have a little fun."
As an attorney her statement unnerved me. It was a paradigm of our age. Our society is not litigious, it’s irresponsible. In its irresponsibility it wants to blame us attorneys for the expense, time, misery and penitence it must go through as a result. It wants guiltless-no-expense-clean-ups of its messes. I’ve been in divorces in which both spouses jump into a pile of manure and start flinging it at each other. When the manure flinging reaches a dangerous level they then call in their respective attorneys and ask them to: clean them up, referee the manure slinging, act as a human shield against incoming manure, flatter them that their manure is the cleanest and most smartly flung, and then join in the manure slinging so as to overwhelm their spouse. At the end of this manure tirade, even after their attorney had suggested a different course, they often look back in amazement to find they’re naked, drowning in manure and are perplexed that their attorneys expect to be paid for cleaning them off.
I’ve litigated and won $10,000 cases against corporations that have hired dozens of attorneys and spent over $100,000 because the stakes were low. We attorneys are expected to be Gods, when only government prosecutors and judges have that luxury. (When was the last time you heard a Judge or a Prosecutor admit that they made a wrong decision or perhaps someone was wrongfully tried and made bankrupt as a result)? I’ve learned early in my career that to take a reasonable approach or to seek a consensus early in a case only invited the opposing counsel to be more unreasonable in their demands. I’ve learned that it is government and powerful industries that most often take advantage of loopholes and technicalities that were created in the guise of legal reform. Usually, this means screwing the blue collar worker and their attorneys. When’s the last time you heard of congress or your legislator trying to limit the attorneys fees and wages of insurance defense counsels, and corporate lawyers?
This fall I was asked by a pre-school to sign a waiver that stated that I would not sue them if they sexually molested, physically abused, accidently poured boiling hot water on, pushed down the stairs or accidently ran over my child. I did not sign it nor should you. I then went to my doctors and was asked to sign a waiver that meant that I would not sue if my doctor operated on me while drunk and accidently cut my leg off instead of removing my appendix. Based upon these experiences, it is my conclusion that we are not litigious, we are irresponsible.
Hence, I have an offer to make the general public: if you will sign and return to me the following waiver I will promise not to sue them.
Loren M. Lambert
1998 ©
As an attorney her statement unnerved me. It was a paradigm of our age. Our society is not litigious, it’s irresponsible. In its irresponsibility it wants to blame us attorneys for the expense, time, misery and penitence it must go through as a result. It wants guiltless-no-expense-clean-ups of its messes. I’ve been in divorces in which both spouses jump into a pile of manure and start flinging it at each other. When the manure flinging reaches a dangerous level they then call in their respective attorneys and ask them to: clean them up, referee the manure slinging, act as a human shield against incoming manure, flatter them that their manure is the cleanest and most smartly flung, and then join in the manure slinging so as to overwhelm their spouse. At the end of this manure tirade, even after their attorney had suggested a different course, they often look back in amazement to find they’re naked, drowning in manure and are perplexed that their attorneys expect to be paid for cleaning them off.
I’ve litigated and won $10,000 cases against corporations that have hired dozens of attorneys and spent over $100,000 because the stakes were low. We attorneys are expected to be Gods, when only government prosecutors and judges have that luxury. (When was the last time you heard a Judge or a Prosecutor admit that they made a wrong decision or perhaps someone was wrongfully tried and made bankrupt as a result)? I’ve learned early in my career that to take a reasonable approach or to seek a consensus early in a case only invited the opposing counsel to be more unreasonable in their demands. I’ve learned that it is government and powerful industries that most often take advantage of loopholes and technicalities that were created in the guise of legal reform. Usually, this means screwing the blue collar worker and their attorneys. When’s the last time you heard of congress or your legislator trying to limit the attorneys fees and wages of insurance defense counsels, and corporate lawyers?
This fall I was asked by a pre-school to sign a waiver that stated that I would not sue them if they sexually molested, physically abused, accidently poured boiling hot water on, pushed down the stairs or accidently ran over my child. I did not sign it nor should you. I then went to my doctors and was asked to sign a waiver that meant that I would not sue if my doctor operated on me while drunk and accidently cut my leg off instead of removing my appendix. Based upon these experiences, it is my conclusion that we are not litigious, we are irresponsible.
Hence, I have an offer to make the general public: if you will sign and return to me the following waiver I will promise not to sue them.
I hereby agree to waive any and all legal rights to sue Mr.
Lambert for any harm, damage, injury or other problem he causes
me.
____________________
(Name)
____________________
(Date)
Loren M. Lambert
1998 ©
Sunday, July 23, 2000
Children Are Assets
I heard it again just the other day at my athletic club. "I’l tell yah, they should tax people extra, not give a tax credit, for each kid they have. This state has the highest birth rate and I have to pay for all your damn kids and their educations in my taxes, and I’m sick of it," finished the crusty old geezer before heading for his $80,000 Beamer.
He left too quickly for me to tell him that I’m sick of paying taxes to pay for his social security, Medicare, Medicaid, boat ramps, recreational areas, and rest home stays. Nor was I able to inform him that I’m tired of paying the interest on the national debt that his generation created. Lastly, I would have liked to have told him that perhaps we shouldn’t give parents tax breaks nor old men pensions. To the contrary, we should do as some of the ancient European clans and Indian tribes did and give our old men a blanket, one last morsel of food and cast them adrift on the swiftest ice flow or leave them alone in the middle of some desert wilderness.
It’s a good thing that I didn’t, because it’s not really what I believe but I do resent the ingratitude of a few of the childless, the rich and the"Modern Maturity"" set. We have forgotten that our children are our heritage. We have forgotten our sense of community. As an example, the rage in the law at this time is estate planning meant to secure government"entitlements"" and hide assets so that every aging adult can enjoy both their summer Maui Condo and also their winter Medicare-Funded Care Center stay (usually costing the American tax payer about $350,000 a year per patient). And who pays and will pay for our aging population’s social security, Medicare, Medicaid and the interest on the National debt? Our working youth.
Knowing this, I don’t begrudge the small break we grant American parents, I thank them. My only regret is that statistics show that the most affluent, intelligent, wealthy and educated of our society often opt for few if any children. Such people, who often forego raising children to contribute to population control, do not realize that the economy, the environment and the nation would be better off with four children in their homes instead of the motor home, boat, snowmobiles, sports car, RVs and riding lawn mowers they now have parked in their warehouse-sized garages.
So the next time you geezers out there cash your next social security check, don’t relish it as the fruit of your lifelong labor, because it’s not. Instead, thank the current American working class and pray that our tax practices will encourage the birth, development and education of our children. Otherwise you may find yourself alone and adrift on a fast moving ice flow with only a blanket and one last morsel of food.
Loren M. Lambert, 2000
He left too quickly for me to tell him that I’m sick of paying taxes to pay for his social security, Medicare, Medicaid, boat ramps, recreational areas, and rest home stays. Nor was I able to inform him that I’m tired of paying the interest on the national debt that his generation created. Lastly, I would have liked to have told him that perhaps we shouldn’t give parents tax breaks nor old men pensions. To the contrary, we should do as some of the ancient European clans and Indian tribes did and give our old men a blanket, one last morsel of food and cast them adrift on the swiftest ice flow or leave them alone in the middle of some desert wilderness.
It’s a good thing that I didn’t, because it’s not really what I believe but I do resent the ingratitude of a few of the childless, the rich and the"Modern Maturity"" set. We have forgotten that our children are our heritage. We have forgotten our sense of community. As an example, the rage in the law at this time is estate planning meant to secure government"entitlements"" and hide assets so that every aging adult can enjoy both their summer Maui Condo and also their winter Medicare-Funded Care Center stay (usually costing the American tax payer about $350,000 a year per patient). And who pays and will pay for our aging population’s social security, Medicare, Medicaid and the interest on the National debt? Our working youth.
Knowing this, I don’t begrudge the small break we grant American parents, I thank them. My only regret is that statistics show that the most affluent, intelligent, wealthy and educated of our society often opt for few if any children. Such people, who often forego raising children to contribute to population control, do not realize that the economy, the environment and the nation would be better off with four children in their homes instead of the motor home, boat, snowmobiles, sports car, RVs and riding lawn mowers they now have parked in their warehouse-sized garages.
So the next time you geezers out there cash your next social security check, don’t relish it as the fruit of your lifelong labor, because it’s not. Instead, thank the current American working class and pray that our tax practices will encourage the birth, development and education of our children. Otherwise you may find yourself alone and adrift on a fast moving ice flow with only a blanket and one last morsel of food.
Loren M. Lambert, 2000
Friday, July 21, 2000
Death to the Tobacco Industry!
Most Americans support the death penalty for human beings. Murderers who do unspeakable things are put to death. Murderers who have faces, parents, and sentient bodies. Murderers who, depending on who you talk to, possibly have souls.
Most Americans do not support the death penalty for corporations. Corporations that have been known to do unspeakable things to human beings. Corporations that do not have faces, parents, and sentient bodies. Corporations that, most people would agree, do not have souls.
So why not the possibility of the death penalty for corporations? Why not the death penalty for those who stand behind the corporate veil and use it to commit unspeakable crimes? In England there are such laws. Why not the lethal injection of a huge monetary penalty and bankruptcy to kill corporations found guilty and deserving of death? Indeed, should they not govern their behavior, all Americans, small businesses and families are susceptible to such penalties. Why do Americans tolerate allowing CEOs with billion dollar salaries to set up impregnable walls to protect their corporate monsters?
The tobacco lawyers and CEO’s cry that the record punitive damage award against them will bankrupt their industry. So what? Welcome to the real world of the rest of America. Life will go on, and before the ink on your obituary has dried, other corporations will have filled the current Tobacco Corporations’ shoes. I say death to the Tobacco Industry!
Loren M. Lambert © July 21, 2000
Most Americans do not support the death penalty for corporations. Corporations that have been known to do unspeakable things to human beings. Corporations that do not have faces, parents, and sentient bodies. Corporations that, most people would agree, do not have souls.
So why not the possibility of the death penalty for corporations? Why not the death penalty for those who stand behind the corporate veil and use it to commit unspeakable crimes? In England there are such laws. Why not the lethal injection of a huge monetary penalty and bankruptcy to kill corporations found guilty and deserving of death? Indeed, should they not govern their behavior, all Americans, small businesses and families are susceptible to such penalties. Why do Americans tolerate allowing CEOs with billion dollar salaries to set up impregnable walls to protect their corporate monsters?
The tobacco lawyers and CEO’s cry that the record punitive damage award against them will bankrupt their industry. So what? Welcome to the real world of the rest of America. Life will go on, and before the ink on your obituary has dried, other corporations will have filled the current Tobacco Corporations’ shoes. I say death to the Tobacco Industry!
Loren M. Lambert © July 21, 2000
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