Steele: The Silent Majority

By Heather Steele

“I don’t think we should have opinions, at least not publicly.”

I was discussing with a group of lawyer friends the positives and negatives of having a presence on social media, and one of them indicated to me that they did not think it was a wise idea for lawyers to have any public opinions, and certainly not any political opinions.

To say I was shocked is an understatement. Isn’t it a lawyer’s job to have an opinion? Isn’t that what we spend years in law school learning how to do? To think critically, to dissect ideas, and to render a persuasive argument in favor of or against something?

Nearly all of the Founding Fathers were lawyers. They practiced law during the times they weren’t attending the Constitutional Convention. If not for lawyers, would the United States have come into being in the late 1700s? If not for a group of people publicly discussing their opinions, we might still belong to the British.

And yet, today the American Bar Association (ABA) says only one in 6,000 lawyers is a current member of Congress, as compared to 1 out of every 265 lawyers in the late 1800s.

It is understandable that a law firm would want to ensure that, even if their clients did not agree with their politics, they still receive the best representation possible. And it would seem that in litigation, especially, it would be seen as a positive that a lawyer would be able to clearly and forcefully articulate a position, even if that position is related to politics.

But the divisiveness of today’s state of affairs has caused many lawyers (as well as many other professionals) to silence themselves in the face of current politics.

It seems today that the only individuals who are out there, stating their opinions in a public forum, are the loudest and most vile of the fringes. (I’m looking at you, obnoxious trolling commenters on this article.) When the public discourse is dominated by unreasonable and extreme voices, there cannot be any real dialogue.

What I see today is a silent majority. A majority of Americans who are incredibly disheartened by the disgusting actions of people at the periphery of the left and right are sitting in the middle, silently disillusioned by all politics.

What we truly need is for that Silent Majority to stand up. To take action. To contribute to their communities, to change the discourse, to reach out and listen to the people they disagree with and find common ground.

If Alexander Hamilton, James Madison, and John Jay had never written their opinions in the Federalist Papers, we might not have our Constitution. If John Adams had not argued his opinions in the Continental Congress, and if Thomas Jefferson had not written those opinions down, we might not have had our Declaration of Independence.

They were not silent lawyers. They were not afraid of letting their ideas be heard. They understood that there were great risks to speaking out, yes, but they believed in the grand concept of a democratic republic, that the government derives its just powers from the consent of the governed. That the opinions of mankind should be given a decent respect. That instead of sitting in observation, we should pledge to each other our lives, our fortune and our sacred honor. That we cannot be furious with the government if we are not making our ideas known to our representatives (or even running for those offices ourselves).

Stand up, silent majority. Stand up and make your voice heard. The vast majority of Americans are not with any fringe group, but instead dissatisfied with the representation offered to them from either side of the aisle.

Stand up and make your opinion known – that you do not approve of fascism or socialism. That you will not stand by and watch as our nation swings too far to the left or to the right. That a group of moderate citizens who will work together to solve real problems are what’s needed in our political positions today – not repugnant fringe opinions that do not accurately represent the majority of Americans.

We are better than this. We are not meant to be a divided nation. And we cannot get anything real accomplished if we are too busy shouting across alleyways and aisles.

Also from Heather Steele: I Will Do Something. And I Will Do It Now.

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Heather Steele is a litigation partner practicing in Northern Virginia who is working on a book about her experiences as a litigation attorney. Mom to three young daughters, she writes about parenting and lawyering on her blog, “What’s The Deal, Heather Steele.”