Young go-getters dressed for success in a dizzying array of power ties and pin stripes gathered to listen to advice from practicing lawyers at Cougar pre-law day on Friday in the CUE.
There were two panels of experts dispensing advice to the eager lawyers-to-be. The first was chaired by a Georgetown law graduate and included recent law school graduates and a Walla Walla County assistant prosecutor.
The chair said he went into law because he wanted to get into mergers and acquisitions. He said he wanted to be Gordon Gekko, the protagonist of the film "Wall Street" and the fictional embodiment of 80s capitalism, ruthlessness and greed.
Topics included choosing a career path, the LSATs and the competitive nature of law school. Panelists gave personal anecdotes from their experiences and how they coped with the pressures and demands of law school and the legal profession.
Words like "employment", "debt", "career", "trends", "competition" and "the economy" were used frequently. Terms like "civic duty", "public service" and "upholding the rule of law" weren't so much as mentioned.
At one point, the first panel's chair related an anecdote about how he was telling his friends he was coming to Cougar pre-law day. He said they acted as if he was a rouge bee keeper coming to tend to a budding nest of larval yellow jackets.
Panelists talked about how to maneuver around the obstacles presented by the wrecked American economy but not about what led to the collapse – which was greed, irresponsible lending practices and deregulation of unethical and immoral companies.
It was clear from Cougar pre-law day that the rugged individualism that once fueled the American industrial revolution and decades of innovation has been replaced or perverted into plain selfishness.
The ideals that embodied the American Dream, visions of hard work, personal freedom and a shared brighter future for everyone's children hung in the air like specters. Too tough and ancient to be drowned out by the repugnant egotism but fading fast under the glare of the cult of me.
At one point in American history a president once said, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
If the mentality displayed at Cougar pre-law day is an accurate representation of the attitudes of average Americans, it is clear that if those words were spoken by the president today they would fall on a nation of willfully deaf and uncaring ears.
How can the "rugged individualism" have been replaced by greed? It was BASED on greed - hence why the titans of industry were known as robber barons for their anticompetitive practices in an attempt to gain sole control of a market.
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