Day: August 27, 2009

During the 1990s, most of us thought we were living in a period of unprecedented peace and prosperity. We even spent the "peace dividend" — cutting resources for intelligence and the military. The Cold War was over. We had no enemies worth worrying about. That was the accepted narrative of that giddy era.

The fact that Americans were being attacked with regularity by Islamist terrorists — for example in New York City in 1993, at Khobar Towers in 1996, at two of our embassies in Africa in 1998, off the coast of Yemen in 2000 — did not lead most politicians to conclude there was a crisis that needed to be addressed. As a result, the catastrophic attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, came as a shock and a surprise.

This column is about the health-care debate, but first we must take a little diversionary walk — because the weather is still fine and a nice walk is a healthy activity — down to our lawyer’s office.

As it happens, the lawyer occupies a special place of disrepute in the chronicle of unloved professions. Why, lawyers enjoy even less social standing than other public scoundrels such as journalists.

Of course, lawyers have always been an unloved lot. More than four centuries ago, William Shakespeare gave a rebellious character named Dick the Butcher the famous line: "The first thing we do, let’s kill all the lawyers."