Customer Reviews

The Death of Common Sense

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

As a fed myself, this book not only helped me identify why I can become so frustrated at work, trying to do the right thing - it also helped me identify what the _real_ underlying issues are - and how to resolve them. Public servants struggle against the avalanche of regulations, laws, guidelines (if we even know they exist/where to find them) and what our _experience_ tells us is the right course of action. We too are utterly frustrated about how slowly solutions and problem-solving comes about - and the resulting actions often missing the point of what was intended all along.

Howard's plea to free us from the quagmire of rules allows us to use our judgment as public sector employees, which (as he shows us) leads to more efficient and effective leadership, moving towards results that work for the good of the public... and isn't that what government is supposed to do? He agrees that federal government efforts should be fair - but adding policies/procedures continuously has the opposite effect - it's true now and, as it turns out, in ancient Roman history! In my view, the next step of this book is how to change the national conversation around human rights/social justice to allow government to place greater responsibility (and therefore, greater ownership) around community responses to citizens' needs.

Indeed, many of the projects I work on are founded on a principle of homegrown solutions, tailored to each community we work with. This leads to greater responsibility AND increased ownership of the outcomes (i.e.: success). Ultimately, we did not do it *for* them - they told us what they needed and we supported their efforts until they could do so on their own. Greater health, community connection and independence is our program goal. And shouldn't the people working in the communities get the credit for healing their communities? I think so.

I am lending this book to my colleagues at my agency because of the deep impact this book has had on my understanding of my work and the implications for how we must move forward together as public servants.

This book should be required reading for all lawmakers, all regulators, and everyone affected by their work. The only caution I would give is a medical warning. The true stories used to illustrate the author's points are likely to raise the reader's blood pressure to dangerous levels.

This book has altered my thinking.

As a free-spirited, liberal-minded South African ex-patriot (now living in America), the ills I observed in this country that I routinely chalked up to half-baked lawmaking or the perils of a perpetual two-party, see-saw political system were really misguided.

In a country that has conspicuously prided itself on a "rule of law", what is in fact suffocating America, as Howard has intelligently profiled here, is an attempt by generations of public servants to micromanage human behavior in the tragically mistaken belief that all the causes and effects of our actions and interactions can be predicted.

This should be REQUIRED READING for all public servants in all sectors of government, large or small. Recognizing and understanding how our laws have stripped us, not just of the ability to exercise our common sense, but of our essential humanity and community is the key to re-empowering Americans with a sense or moral responsibility.

In fact, I'd submit that this nightmare legal construct in which we now find ourselves trapped may arguably be one of the greatest inherent flaws of the Grand Experiment.

So often in books, concerning issues we face as a society, only a definition of the particular issue is provided. Perhaps some weak attempt is made at providing a direction or conversely the author spins off into the depth of the universe never to return to reason. In "The Death of Common Sense," Mr. Howard leave others behind and give us an example of how to do it right.

Rather than providing some drab history on our national problems, Mr. Howard give us an informative, and dare I say entertaining, cause and effect model to help up understand just how we ended up with a government that hardy functions. Moreover, it is not some sort of blame game that suits some hidden agenda or political party's attempt to keep the status quo. It is obvious Mr. Howard understands there is plenty of blame for everyone, even us (the public) that willingly fiddles while our metaphoric version of Rome burns.

Though published in 1995, the addition of an addendum for the 2011 release updates us on how we have progressed (or regressed as the case may be) since.

Mr. Howard shows us the problem and suggests a process to end the problem. The only question remaining is if you will read his book and help do something about the problem.

MH Benton

Freelance writer and editorial cartoonist

and award-winning author of Life's About the Adjectives

This book came highly recommended by an attorney friend. I have not finished reading yet because it is so frustrating in its accurate portrayal of government and its often illogical way of operating. Having worked in government, I do understand the need for rules and consistency, however the examples portrayed in this book so clearly display how so many rules exist for the sake of the rules themselves. The intent behind the rules are lost and the results often are more harmful than good. If only our government officials could take off their blinders and take to heart the messages from this book. This country would be in a far better place.

Most of us know we live in an imperfect system and that our laws can seem silly at times making our lives a bit difficult. This book takes that little glow of what we think and illuminates the whole room with it. You can not imagine how screwed up our laws are and how counter-intuitive they are at serving the people, which is their purpose right? From preventing nuns from building homeless shelters, not fixing leaking dams that end up causing billions of dollars worth of damage, to taking 20 years to test the safety of insecticides for use on our crops, this book will open your eyes to the nonsensical system that is our government. A book every citizen of the US should read, for the common person it is eye-opening, for an intelligent person looking to work in this system of law it reveals the true insanity you will expose yourself to.

Mr Howard explains in laymen's terms how the huge edifice of law and regulation is suffocating our country.

I will purchase other titles by this author.

In country enamored with lawsuits, practicing New York lawyer Philip K. Howard took considerable personal risk in publishing the revised edition of his The Death of Common Sense. In this age of anti-government angst, he has written a book so infuriating that he is likely to give many of his readers a heart attack or stroke.

Mr. Howard explains why there is a conspicuous lack of artwork in most elementary schools. Due to specific--and absolutely inflexible--fire code regulations that prohibit placing flammable paper near windows and doors, American children in many cities have to endure their schooling in Spartan, bare-walled classrooms.

Before you write him off as just another angry white man, Howard is no anti-government ideologue. Far from it. In fact, he has worked with high-profile politicians in both parties, including--gasp!--that champion of the Left, former Vice President Al Gore. Howard even wrote the introduction to Gore's book, Common Sense Government.

Howard's gripe is not so much with the size of government, per se, nor with its political orientation. His contention is simply that the rule of law has been perverted to mean something very different from what a Thomas Jefferson or John Locke would have understood. Law, rather than being the codification of general principles, has come to mean procedure--precise, technical, mind-numbing procedure. In our quest for fairness and equality, we fixate on form rather than substance and common sense is tossed out the window in favor of an inflexible rule book. The actual end--whether it be protecting the environment, ensuring worker safety or providing for the poor--doesn't matter. The only thing that does matter is the precise means of following the rules.

It wasn't always this way. Howard reminds us that as recently as the 1960s "government puttered along without detailed rules to meet every eventuality." Forest rangers could carry the rules governing their responsibilities in their shirt pockets and "did just fine armed with a pamphlet of rules and their own common sense."

Common Law and Common Sense

Given the size of the Federal Register and its equivalents at the state and local level, it is easy to forget that the United States has a common law legal system, inherited from the English. While continental Europe has a long tradition of precise, detailed civil codes, common law systems are more flexible and based on general principles and the weight of past precedent. In praising the common law system, Howard writes,

"Application of the common law always depends on the circumstances: The accident caused by swerving to avoid the child is excusable; falling asleep at the wheel is not. The most important standard is what a reasonable person would have done. Every principle has exceptions. More than anything else, the common law glorifies the particular situation and invites common sense. It was the common law that developed the jury system, in which a group of peers, not an expert in law, would decide right and wrong in each case."

These days, the exact opposite is generally true. Juries are instructed to decide whether particular laws were technically broken rather than consider the circumstances or the rightness or wrongness of the law itself.

In the traditional Anglo-American model, there was never a belief in the necessity of allowing for every possible contingency; human beings were presumed to be rational and capable of exercising judgment. They didn't need a series of "if...then" statements like a computer.

The U.S. Constitution, is Howard reminds us, is "a model of flexible law that can evolve with changing times and unforeseen circumstances," and the founders of the country had a strong aversion to specificity. Alexander Hamilton was against the drafting of the Bill of Rights because he believed that enumerating any rights at all would imply the absence of other rights.

Perversely, it is the traditional American aversion to big government that is actually part of the problem, according to Howard. Because Americans instinctively mistrust the government, they have stripped its agents of anything resembling discretion. Discretion could lead to favoritism or arbitrary government, after all. So in attempting to shackle the government by reducing its regulatory role to a massive checklist, we have unwittingly made it even bigger and more arbitrary.

Unfortunately, the suppression of human discretion and common sense comes with a steep price tag, and by this I do not mean the explicit cost of running the government--which at nearly $4 trillion is not cheap, I might add. Time, money, and energy spent in complying with unnecessary rules are a major distraction, and the costs of lost productivity are incalculable. There is also a human cost. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration takes, on average, six years longer than other Western countries to approve new drugs and medical devices. Six long years can make the difference between life and death for patients in need of new treatments.

I recommend Mr. Howard's book, and I believe it should be required reading for any candidate of either party in the coming presidential election. I would gladly cast my vote for any candidate who made the book their campaign manifesto.

Affirmative action legislation creates an atmosphere stifling the very goals it seeks to achieve. Environmental law pollutes our air and water. The cry for the rights of the few denies the same rights for the many. These are but a few of the outrageous abuses perpetrated on the American public by a well-meaning legal system run amok.

Phillip Howard details horrid abuses of the American lifestyle in this fast-read book perpetrated by a bureaucracy that is no longer able to get out of its own way and so ensnarls public servants that they are unable to fulfill the very roles with which they have been charged.

Howard talks of a charitable fund run by the organization with which Mother Theresa was involved. They bought from the city of New York a number of dilapidated structures and sought to renovate them for the homeless. However, when it came time to open them, the city decided that the three-story structures required the installation of elevators at $100,000 per building. The charity did not have the funds to install the elevators and so the homeless were denied clean, warm housing in the interests of not forcing them to endure the evils of walking up a flight of stairs.

OSHA promulgates thousands of pages of documents to protect American workers from the tyranny of unsafe working environments resulting in an atmosphere where the use of a hammer or stepladder is covered in hundreds of pages of unintelligible legalese. Howard talks at length of one firm which has now accepted the fines levied by OSHA as an expense of doing business since it is not humanly possible to comply with all of the requirements. In order to protect its workers, it instead implemented a "Safety First" campaign of its own imploring common sense while OSHA inspectors chose to concentrate on tape measures showing banisters to be installed at 44" from the floor rather than the 48" required by law.

And "Common Sense" is exactly the thrust of the book. We are "entertained" with tales of OSHA determining that bricks are a hazardous substance -- not because someone might hit you over the head with one, but because if one is sawed in half, the dust particles might be inhaled.

Affirmative action has created an atmosphere where a secretary in the government's employ who did not show up for work (and did not work when she showed up) could not be fired without years of legal battles while she was on "paid leave". The atmosphere leaves minority applicants in the position that they have to be not just qualified for a position but have to be far superior to the white, male competitor. Otherwise, employers feel they will face a lawsuit every time they need to discharge a minority employee for legitimate reason.

The abuses go on and on. My only complaint with this relatively short work is that it could have shorter. Mr. Howard belabors and repeats many points thus detracting from an otherwise excellent book, which should be read by every citizen of America.

Much better than the usual run of the mill diatribes deploring loss of freedom, this well justifies the theme embodied in the subtitle. It's a great adjunct to the newer "Life Without Lawyers" by the same author. The two books together form an excellent introduction into legalistic thinking in analyzing problems of government encroachment on individual freedoms through overemphasis and bureaucratic abuse of the rule of law. Howard shows how too much law enforcing bureaucratic rules and processing restricts freedom of choice as well as inhibiting operation of government. That book expands Howard's reasoning as to history, consequences and prognosis. Thy both include many examples from personal experience in Howard's career as a lawyer, although we readers have no doubt seen many examples of our own. Howard is fond of referencing Ronald Dworkin "rules dictate the result" and Justice Benjamin Cardozo who advocated use of common law rather than rigid reliance on the constitution.

Progressives use rights in an attempt to eliminate inequality. Bureaucratic processing abuses due process, designed for protection and now interpreted as generating individual rights under guise of common good. The book helps to see how it inhibits good governance and poses a threat to our democracy. Government enforces individual rights for the few at the expense of the many. Rights are being invented and wielded like a sword. Proliferating lawsuits portend restrictions of freedom. In a culture of legal fear, the rule of law has been abused to create an over regulated society under a bureaucratic government. The quality of administrators has deteriorated since the new institutions of the New Deal. American law is now the world's thickest instruction manual. We are erecting a Tower of Babel.

We are paying a heavy price by generating invented rights for the few to be payed for with both money and eroding freedom by the rest of us. Ridiculous prohibitions on business are greatly affecting our livelihoods. A little good does a lot of harm.

The author's solutions contain perhaps too many metaphors rather than the pragmatism advocated in the text. There doesn't appear to be much hope of reversing the trend towards

more restrictive bureaucratic processing protected by law.

The book contains very prescient insights into our legal system with much food for thought.