A Hearing For YOU? Well . . . Not Really!

For a long time the nation's oldest chartered bar association, the Philadelphia Bar Association, has been pretty much solidly liberal, as in all liberal, all the way, on all issues, all the time with no disagreement sought, invited or encouraged.

As awful as this may sound for an organization of lawyers (people who are charged with hearing at least two sides to every story, if not 200) we're here to tell you this is not really that unusual. Save for pockets of resistance in some parts of the midwest, south and west, America's organized bar has been largely radicalized and is in the control of lefties. In fact, the American Bar Association (ABA) itself is one of the most left-leaning organizations in the country. And, lawyers themselves (led largely by trial lawyers) have consistently been among the largest contributors to the Democrat Party and its candidates.
This didn't happen overnight.
It started gradually in the 1970s and 1980s as boomers began to come of age. And, as these same boomers succeeded in the legal profession and gathered more money and influence, this trend advanced rapidly into the 21st century. At the national, state and even local levels, bar associations were pushed further and further to the left.We know because we were there to witness it. We watched it. We saw it happen, closeup and personal.
It wasn't (and isn't) a pretty sight because it brought with it the same condescension, the same self-appointed elitism and the same intolerance for diverse views that define modern day liberalism.

And nowhere was this more prevalent than at the historic Philadelphia Bar Association whose founders included some of the very people who signed the sacred documents which created our democracy and supposedly guaranteed free speech and the full airing of all points of view, no matter how contrary or controversial.
And, sadly this intransigence remains the case today as that same association is firmly entrenched in the liberal camp.
But, why take our word for it? Listen to what Philadelphia Daily News columnist Christine Flowers has to say about it:

I’ve never been a member of the Philadelphia Bar Association, even though I was once on the editorial board of its professional journal, the Philadelphia Lawyer Magazine. But I never chose to pay dues and officially align myself with the association because, when I started practicing law in the early 1990s, it was clear there was no place for me at the table, let alone the “bar.”

As a conservative woman who believed abortion was both immoral and legally indefensible, it was impossible to feel welcomed or respected in an organization that had become increasingly left-leaning. This did not surprise me. Even my Catholic alma mater, the one with the crucifixes in the classrooms, wasn’t outspoken in its advocacy for the unborn. I recall a constitutional law class in which the teacher sped through the landmark Roe v. Wade decision as if he were embarrassed to focus on the ethics of killing what many of us considered babies. 

I haven’t given thought to the bar association these past few years. They do their thing, I do mine. For example, at 11 a.m. Tuesday, I’ll be speaking at a rally in the state Capitol rotunda in Harrisburg in support of pro-life legislation, such as Senate Bill 3, which would ban abortions after 20 weeks (they currently are permitted until 24 weeks) and criminalize dismemberment abortions. The rally also will support the defunding of Planned Parenthood, which is the nation’s single most prolific provider of abortions.

That’s my thing, which I doubt will interest many of the people who paid $65 a head to attend a reception at the Bellevue on Friday honoring Carol Tracy, executive director of the Women’s Law Project. Tracy is this year’s recipient of the Sandra Day O’Connor award, which the bar association presents to a female attorney “who has demonstrated superior legal talent, achieved significant legal accomplishments, and has furthered the advancement of women in both the profession and the community.” 

In an email news release, the association said Tracy was chosen for the award because she has led “major legal victories on the national scale in women’s reproductive rights, violence against women, and other areas of women’s rights, including serving as co-counsel in the landmark U.S. Supreme Court case Planned Parenthood v. Casey.”

Click here to read the rest of Christine Flowers' superb column.