Utopia Revisited

Judges, Lawyers & the Easter Bunny:

I was sitting at home bored the other day when I caught a touch of cabin fever, so I decided to hit the road and enjoy some of autumn’s beautiful scenery. After an hour or so of driving I realized that I wasn’t too far away from a small town called Utopia where a couple friends of mine reside. I called them up and told them that I was near and they insisted that I stop by for a visit. I was; of course, more than happy to oblige. This is a true story…partially.More... Utopia is a nice little town about a hundred miles due east of reality. It’s a place of free-thinkers, peace-lovers and a sometimes very different way of doing things. All in all, I’d say that it ain’t a bad place to visit.
My friends and I were sitting around enjoying the view from their back porch and making conversation, when suddenly our discussion took a familiar turn toward the unorthodox. I had mentioned something about our upcoming elections when my friend smiled and informed me that “We run things a little differently around here.” I leaned back in my chair and was prepared for just about anything when I said “Differently; how so?”
He said “Well for one thing we don’t have any judges or lawyers around here. We have the law and if you break it you get a certain punishment. No matter who you are, how much money you have or who your family is, everybody gets the same treatment.” He continued “Ever watch the news and see how one guy robs a bank and its his first offense and he gets ten years and then the next week you hear about a guy that robs a bank on his first offense and he 18 months and a fine? Or how about when one guy gets hooked on drugs and the commits a crime to support his habit gets the book literally thrown at him, while another guy gets sent to rehab – I’m talking about people with identical police records. The only difference between the two was how much money thay had and how fancy an attorney one guys family could afford. You ever wonder why that is? We don’t wonder because it doesn’t work that way in our town. We believe in equality under the law for all citizens; male, female, rich or poor. Now we do offer public defenders and trials by jury whenever needed but for the most part the law is just cut and dried.”
“That’s interesting” I said. “And another thing that we pride ourselves on is that our politicians serve an ‘unguaranteed’ term of office, which means that if they make campaign promises then they better do their best to keep them. It has become all too common for folks to expect that a person running for political office will flat out lie in order to win the election. You can’t deny that you’ve heard cases when a guy says that if you vote for him then your taxes won’t go up and then after he gets into office he raises your taxes.” I couldn’t deny it. He further added “Around here if you go against your word then ‘we the people’ will fire you. We believe that if a man can’t keep his word then he doesn’t deserve to be our leader.” This too was interesting, I admitted.
“Life is complicated enough without society and government trying to make things worse. I guess we just tend to lean toward keeping things simple around here.” He said.
I listened and was amazed at the fact that despite bracing myself, my friend still managed to raise my eyebrows.
Eventually our conversation about politics and such shifted to less engaging matters such as the weather and before too long I stood up yawned and took a look at my watch. It was getting late and I had a long drive home so I bade my friends farewell again with a promise to ‘come back again just as soon as I can’ and I hit the highway.
On the drive home I found myself reviewing the evening’s conversation in my mind. After much careful consideration, my feelings about that evening’s discussion could be summed up as follows: “These people certainly have a very different way of looking at things and doing things from what I am accustomed to. But the question is: Are the people of Utopia crazy? Or are we, the so-called ‘normal folks’ the ones who are crazy? The wrinkles in my brow were probably visible from outer space as I pondered those questions. Then all of a sudden, I broke out into a roaring laughter as I recalled another bit of our earlier conversation.
I remembered saying to my friend: “So are you seriously trying to tell me that you guys don’t believe in lawyers and judges?” He responded with the straightest face saying: “We don’t believe in the Easter Bunny either.”