Lifetime appointments = Tenure = Load of crap

It just dawned on me. Look at the garbage passing for Supreme Court opinions in the past fifty years. Now, look at the academic sewage most universities and colleges are wading in. What's the connection, besides the smell? Both professions enjoy performance-Kevlar that protects the wearer from any accountability for peddling nonsense.

Most working people live each day at least semi-aware that if they perform poorly, they can take a permanent vacation. This is a great piece of the employee/employer dynamic that has, in general, worked very well. A healthy fear of authority is a proper motivator.

The Framers thought if they gave justices life appointments, the judiciary would be immune to undue influence. A reasonable notion, but it has proven to be dead wrong (millions dead).*

The acquisition of wealth is not the worst motivation out there, contary to popular opinion.

Of all tyrannies, a tyranny sincerely exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It would be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent moral busybodies. The robber baron's cruelty may sometimes sleep, his cupidity may at some point be satiated; but those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.

-- C. S. Lewis


*With all due respect, the Framers did not foresee the executive and legislative branches' cowardice in regards to checking the judicial branch.