About Me

The Lawyer Who Never Went to School

My name is John Lincoln; I wish to be heard. As Americans, we have a duty to our country that we cannot fulfill by silence. In any age, we have a duty to speak, sometimes loudly. In this time of troubles we must speak more loudly yet. A nation is only as strong as its citizens. The White House of late is dressed with gold, but “In a Nation’s Strength” Emerson said:

”Not gold but only men can make
A people great and strong;
Men who for truth and honor’s sake
Stand fast and suffer long.”

The gaudy display of gold does nothing to preserve or renew the greatness of the nation. The people, and specifically the voters, must preserve the truth and honor of the nation. If the nation is led by liars, and men and women without honor, the voters bear the ultimate blame because they placed the liars in power, and ignored their morally repugnant conduct. Too many citizens and voters turned a blind eye to such conduct because they were getting the result they wanted – no matter the cost. For them, the ends justified the means. America, as a nation of laws and not of men, is founded on, and will survive on, the opposite idea: that the ends do not justify the means. If the voters are to wrap themselves in the flag, they must not soil it with lies and dishonor. Some 251 years ago Samuel Johnson said that “Patriotism is the last refuge of a scoundrel.” The “scoundrel” in Johnson’s aphorism was not the sincere citizen but the opportunist who wraps themselves in patriotic rhetoric to conceal self-interest. Johnson’s phrase fits well those who claim to “make America great again” by attempting to preserve themselves in power by lying and cheating, and by violence. It is important to remember what America stands for; it is none of those things. Let us make America good again, and let us honor the flag and not soil it with dishonor. Let us remember what Abraham Lincoln said,“America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedoms, it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

I speak because as a citizen it is my duty. In addition, for at least five reasons, I am uniquely qualified, by history and education, to have insights and capabilities that others do not. First, I am largely self-taught. I smile when a form asks for my total years of education. My answer to the form question is, “Just over five years.” That might lead one to conclude that I didn’t get much past fifth grade. Actually, in my case it means that five years of my formal education were two and a half years in college and two and a half in law school. My only time in grade school was a couple months in second and third grade, and I never went to high school. In other words, my formal education was almost entirely at the end rather than at the beginning.

Second, I grew up in a third world country. I lived in Mexico for over six years. We moved to Baja California for two months when I was seven, and moved there again in April 1959, when I was 9. I came home to America from Sonora in May of 1965 when I was 15. Although I was an emigrant coming home, and not an immigrant coming to a new country, I have an immigrant’s insight. That insight is the understanding of the sameness of the people of the world; that as individuals we are all the same, wherever we may be. Individuals are mostly good, some bad, and everything in between. Individual Mexicans are no more likely to be bad than individual Americans.

Third, I grew up poor, and more often than not, starved. I only left starvation behind when I came home from Mexico and got a job that included room and board. I was in heaven because for the first time in my life I could eat whenever I wanted. Everyone has been hungry from time to time, and when you know the condition is temporary – when you know that you can eat soon – hunger is not particularly important. It is when you haven’t eaten for a couple of days and there is no prospect that will change, that hunger changes from inconvenience to desperation. The insight that I have as a result is that it is not “food insecurity,” it is hunger and starvation. The insight is also that Americans who have not starved in a third world country don’t know, and cannot appreciate how good life is in America. I used to marvel when I was young that the poor in America are wealthy by comparison to the poor in Mexico.

Fourth, most of us benefit by looking up to the examples of the great men and women of history. That a few of those great men and women are in my family tree does allow me a closer example of greatness, and a personal incentive to aspire higher. Even so, that I have in my own history people worth emulating, does not mean that I am a better person than I would have been otherwise. As President Lincoln said, “You have to do your own growing no matter how tall your grandfather was.”

Fifth, I was a member of the Bar for 50 years. I have noted that for some time now and in some circles the law and lawyers are not held in high regard. Be that as it may, I rose from abject poverty to the practice of law, and I have the insight, the training, and the expertise to defend America as a nation of laws.

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