écrivainI’m a business lawyer, but this isn’t a blog about business law. This is a blog about important issues where I think we’ve lost sight of what’s right and what makes sense. It’s a forum where the discussion is about facts that are overlooked and not in the mainstream.

I started this blog because our dialogue in America doesn’t always serve us well.  Society is about competing interests and arriving at decisions that reflect the majority view. For the most part, the system works well, but not always. For a variety of reasons, our conversations get skewed.

Sometimes, well-funded special interest groups flood the media with distorted facts.  Other times, we rely on paradigms that no longer make sense, or we make decisions based more on emotion than fact. We fear change and cling to the status quo because it is comfortable.  We focus too closely on what benefits the group we belong to and forget about the common good. Whenever any of these things happen, we make choices that are less then optimal.

The common denominator to these situations is an absence of critical thinking that generally results in an absence of justice, not justice in the courtroom sense, but justice in the sense of what is the highest good for most people. Need some examples?  How about a middle school honor student with no disciplinary record who was expelled for 80 days because he mistakenly left his Swiss Army knife in his backpack after a weekend Boy Scout camping trip? How in the world could that decision reflect justice?  Is it justice when the political party in the majority gerrymanders election districts so that its members face re-election with little chance of being defeated?  How does that serve the common good?

So, I speak up when I can. I take a personal interest in issues that don’t make sense or don’t receive enough attention. I want to spur conversation about the things that warrant more attention.  I look forward to hearing your views, including those that disagree with mine. I will post all comments so long as they are civil, polite and not condescending .The same holds for links included in your comments.