The Death of Common Sense: How Law Is Suffocating America

The bloated bureaucracy; the rules; the laws; the regulations; are so integral to our lives that we no longer would recognize a life without these burdensome evils. We continue blindly with no discretion, a growing behemoth, with no end in sight; this was never meant to be. With the thousands upon thousands of pages of rules and regulations we believe we can remove all conceivable risks, contemplate every eventuality, plan for everything; all in the name of "rights", and fairness. What is meant for good, and to bring about harmony, only results in stagnation, closed businesses, higher prices, less choice, rise of litigation, etc. We all pay a price. Ingenuity pays a price. Ironically, "[t]he more precise we try to make law, the more loopholes are created". Mandated perfection only ends in the opposite, along with an incredible waste of money and manpower, not to mention it treats individuals as criminals. This Expansion of law into agencies and programs was never meant to be. Three big culprits (though there are many) are OSHA, EPA, and the USDA.Howard says this emotionally based attitude has replaced humanity; and, that it has its roots in rationalism. He gives numerous examples, with many rulings so ridiculous even to the point of laughable. Although Wilson's "Great Society" and Roosevelt's "New Deal" (whom he quotes) spawned this form of bureaucracy it still took many more presidents to bring us to this point. These two progressives probably never envisioned it to this degree. It takes more than an individual, it requires an unbridled beast--the first beast--government. His sources are lengthy for so compact a volume. There is also a lengthy bibliography, but it would have been helpful to add endnotes.We need to get back to individual responsibility; the direction we're headed is simply not attainable."The virtue of rights, at least to the advocates, is that they are absolute. What's a little inefficiency when there is complete justice for me? Absolutes sound good, but generally leave behind a landscape of paradoxes and bruised victims."

The atmosphere in America has changed. "Americans feel on a daily basis that their society is falling apart, that things aren't working right." Mr. Howard is exactly right.Although Mr. Trafficant who was...expelled from Congress may actually be guilty of the charges alleged of him. His comments about how the American people view and fear their government, the judicial system and the various organizations that solidify the awesome and terrifying power of the political machines in American, are in large part true.This is not because all those entities could not work if filled with virtuous men and women as the Federalist Papers charge. But because they have been bogged down in 200 plus years of misdirection, partisanship and political corruption, the kind of corruption that seeps into any long running program, party, powerful entity or political machine.We could fix this degradation in our national political process by moving back onto a better path. But influential people today have, as Mr. Richard Maybury says in his excellent "Uncle Eric" series of books, on government and finances, lost their mental, emotional and political view of the true and best "American model" for our nation politically, socially, morally and judiciously.All it would take to fix this would be the will of the people united in a common cause to once again "create that more perfect union," or MODEL spoken of in the Preamble to our Constitution. It could be done, it should be done, but the question is do we have the will to make it come to pass? One draw back to excessive diversity is a lack of cohesiveness on the important issues that face our nation and the world.It is astounding that the summation of all the laws ever written since it's creation are already contained in the precepts, principles, and guidance given and envisioned within the Preamble to the Constitution, and the Articles and the Amendments that go with it. It is such a shame that nations tend to legislate and opinionate themselves into nonexistence. Even when they have it right, they seem to need to interfere and make things worse.Mr. Howard has done all of us a great service by producing this book and it is unfortunate that it has not received the prominence and accolades it is due, a great read...

First, the scary part. This book was published nearly 25 years ago. The stories about the abuses condoned by are legal system are appalling, but they are old stories. What one has to wonder and worry about is how many more situations that have occurred in the last 25 years. You can be assured the legal system and people's state of mind hasn't improved (i.e. returned to normalcy) in that time.The message is quite clear: our legal system is very sick, if not broken. The result is that no one wants to take responsibility for fear of being sued or inconvenienced. Plus, the definition of "rights" has been so badly distorted by legislation and court system that the social and actual costs to Americans is becoming intolerable. The direction we are all heading is only making the conditions worse. Something has to change, but how long are we willing to wait?The politicians have us bouncing off the walls. Obama promoted change and now Trump wants to drain the swamp, but neither have addressed the source problem; the legal system needs to be renovated in the extreme. This book offers some ideas.This book is still very timely about the situation. I highly recommend this book to anyone who about the health of the United States. I plan on reading more books by this author.

As another reviewer pointed out this could've been covered in a long article rather than a whole book. The subject matter is interesting, but each point is punctuated with loads of articles that string each chapter out to a long read when a few pages could easily do it justice. Found myself skipping a few pages at a time and (presumably) not missing much. Overall an interesting read though.

Trata-se de um clássico, livro de grande repercussão quando do lançamento. O autor trata do excesso de regras na sociedade americana e como isto acaba inibindo boas iniciativas individuais.

Simple read and this is what is going on in the US. No common sense.

Very intersting