Sunday, December 15, 2002
Copyright © Las Vegas Review-Journal

COLUMN: Thomas Mitchell

A week among the folks who know best

The utter genius of the founding fathers is pounded into my head every time I venture into the halls of academia.

On Tuesday, I spent much of the day participating in a Boyd School of Law forum on the topic of whether judges should be elected or appointed. On Thursday, I sat in on a portion of the meeting of the university regents on the UNLV campus.

I have news for all you mere working stiffs who dutifully hie yourselves to the polls on election day and offer your two cents worth at the water cooler: Your betters don't think much of your ability to pick the right candidate or your right to speak your mind.

During the law school forum, several professorial types bemoaned the lack of "civility in public discourse," especially as displayed in some recent judicial elections. They just don't think you commoners have the wit and wherewithal to sort through all that confusing, hostile campaign rhetoric and make such vital decisions as to which wealthy lawyer is best suited to rest on his laurels at a leisurely pace on a princely salary and with early retirement.

In their eyes, everyone else is a dullard or a craven opportunist: Voters pick candidates based on the number of times they are seen on TV; judges who take contributions are so corrupted that they will bend justice to benefit their benefactors. Smart voters and principled judges reside only in quaint rural villages and novels.

The answer, they say, is to appoint judges. To which I say: I've seen patronage systems, and they're not pristine.

Then at the regents meeting, a dozen or so citizens paraded to the podium, mostly to defend Regent Linda Howard, who was facing potential censure for snooping in the files of a student newspaper columnist who had called her an idiot in print.

There were a couple of pulpit pounding diatribes in which everyone who has dared to criticize Regent Howard (who is black) was called a racist, including the Review-Journal ... several times.

Regent Mark Alden was taken to task for calling his fellow regents a bunch of orangutans. It seems to be permissible to call people racists, but not primates. Alden apologized. Howard did not.

Then, a first-year law school student got up and declared with considerable authority, "No one has a right to humiliate or degrade anyone ... anyone."

They must not get to that Bill of Rights stuff until the second year.

Now, how in a mere 200 years did this nation evolve into one in which the voters can no longer handle the task at hand and citizens cannot be entrusted with free speech?

Surely things are different now from those genteel days of minuets and powdered wigs. Thomas Jefferson would never have been such a lifelong fan of free speech and free press if he could've fathomed that someday an underling student might deign to describe a lofty regent as an idiot.

What has happened to civility?

Well, it never was.

The press of Jefferson's day was fiercely partisan and famously crude. Smut-peddler James Callender first exposed Alexander Hamilton's love letters to a Mrs. Maria Reynolds, and then claimed Jefferson fathered children by his slave Sally Hemings. Callender later was convicted under an unconstitutional sedition law and served nine months is jail.

Duels and canings were the order of the day.

The editor of one newspaper wrote of another: "This atrocious wretch ... knows that all men of any understanding put him down as an abandoned liar, as a tool and a hireling. ... He is an ill-looking devil. His eyes never get above your knees. He is of a sallow complexion, hollow-cheeked, dead eyed, and has a toute ensemble, just like that of a fellow who has been about a week or ten days in a gibbet."

Our forefathers managed to grapple with the baser instincts of man and devise a system in which power is entrusted to an informed electorate. Sure, sometimes a crook gets elected. Sometimes a person's feelings get hurt.

But it is far preferable to entrusting power to the hands of those who know best.

Thomas Mitchell, editor of the Review-Journal, writes a column on the newspaper's functions and role in the community. He may be reached at 383-0261 or via e-mail at tmitchell@reviewjournal.com.