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"The air in America is so thick with legal risk that you can practically cut it and put it on a scale. Legal anxiety trumps right and wrong." So writes Philip Howard in this startling examination of the legal paranoia now infecting every facet of American culture - from education and medicine to govern-ment and the corporate world.
Howard shows how the "litigation explosion" has caused Americans to stop looking forward and instead constantly look "over our shoulders," some-times with tragic results. He tells the story of a 15-year-old boy who was shot while playing basketball on a playground in Chicago. Two friends managed to move him to within 30 feet of a hospital before he collapsed, but couldn't persuade the hospital staff to come out and help him. A police officer who arrived on the scene also begged hospital personnel to help the boy. Fearful of leaving patients already in the emergency room and possible legal liability for neglecting them, the staff refused to budge and instead called 911. For 25 minutes, the boy lay bleeding on the sidewalk until a police sergeant arrived and commandeered a wheelchair to transport him into the hospital. He later died. Another anecdote describes a medical school graduate in New York state who happened to pass the scene of a motorcycle accident. The victim was obviously badly hurt. Torn between her desire to help and her fear of prosecution for practicing medicine without a license, she opted not to stop. Fortunately, the majority of Howard's many examples of a society gone litigation-mad are far less tragic, and some are even funny. He paints a sad picture of - in his words - "how warped we've become." In Oologah, Oklahoma, a 50-year-old "double [playground] slide" was recognized as a local landmark enjoyed by countless children over many years. In 1995, however, when a child suffered minor injuries while playing unattended on the slide, the parents made a claim against the town. City officials decided that the slide wasn't worth a lawsuit. Despite a citizens' petition to keep it, the slide was auctioned off to a resident of a nearby town. Lost Art demonstrates how politically-correct reforms enacted in the name of "individual rights" have harmed the common good in America. Without mincing words, Howard exposes the laws and institutions he believes must be destroyed or overhauled - and presents one idea that must be resurrected - in order to liberate the country from short-sighted special-interest groups. "In the name of individual rights, we took away the authority of judges, principals, teachers and everyone else with responsibility to do what they think is right and reasonable, leaving Americans victim to self-interested individuals and unable to influence our schools and other common institutions." He concludes that the concept of modern individualism is "flawed" and has actually brought us closer to Karl Marx's concept of equality in "a dictatorship of the proletariat." To recapture the authority needed for real freedom, he writes, "we have to take it back." "The institutions of government look powerful," he concedes, "but the walls are long-weakened with the absence of anyone's beliefs of right and wrong." In education, he advocates stripping away "union contracts" and "civil service rules" which are "bolstered by modern views of constitutional process," and which make it "virtually impossible" to run our schools. "We have taken away the human foundation of education," he notes, "and wonder why the house is falling down." (Random House, 2001, 220 pp., $22.95) |
Howard argues that today's gospel of "individual rights" contains fallacies that usurp the rights of society and discard common sense. "Today, any self-interested person can override the interests of everyone else," he observes. "In the name of individual rights, Americans have ended up losing much of their individual freedom. In the land of free speech, you'd have to be a fool to say what you really think."
