So Far, 2013 Is The Year of the Well Read Legislator

On the January 6, 2013 Viewpoints page of the Sacramento Bee, Assemblyman Jeff Gorrell, a Camarillo Republican, opines that despite he and the members of his party holding less than one-third of the seats in both the Assembly and Senate for the first time in 80 years, they still influence the legislative process.

Apparently as sort of a nagging conscience, Gorrell says, alerting Democrats to the negative effects of raising taxes or voting for other policy changes Republicans consider detrimental to California.

“Indeed,” Gorell concludes, “Republicans continue to have an important role in the Capitol.

“I would rally my newly elected Republican colleagues with the words used by Fyodor of ‘The Brothers Karamazov’ to his students:

“ ‘Even if we go on to more important things, if we attain to higher honor or fall into deep misfortune, let us remember how good it was once here when we were all together united by a good and kind feeling that made us better than we are.”

(Editor’s Note: Also from the mouth of the character Fyodor, father of the brothers, is this destined-not-to-be-a-GOP-legislative-rallying-cry: “The stupider one is, the closer one is to reality. The stupider one is, the clearer one is. Stupidity is brief and artless, while intelligence wriggles and hides itself. Intelligence is a knave but stupidity is honest and straightforward.”?  The most acclaimed — and influential — passage in Brothers is “The Grand Inquisitor,”  although it likely wouldn’t prove much of a rallying call for either Republicans or many Democrats. In the book, “The Grand Inquisitor” is a parable told by Brother Ivan to Brother Alyosha. The parable is dramatized below. Guessing who the heretic is won’t be difficult. Sir John Gielgud  portrays the inquisitor:

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