How modern law makes us powerlessThe growth of litigation and regulation has injected a paralysing uncertainty into everyday choices. All around us are warnings and legal risks. The modern credo is not "Yes we can" but "No you can't".
Our sense of powerlessness is pervasive. Those who deal with the public are the most discouraged. Most doctors say they wouldn't advise their children to go into medicine. Government service is seen as a bureaucratic morass, not a noble calling.
Make a difference? You can't even show basic human kindness for fear of legal action. Teachers across America are instructed never to put an arm around a crying child.
The idea of freedom as personal power got pushed aside in recent decades by a new idea of freedom — where the focus is on the rights of whoever might disagree. Daily life in America has been transformed. Ordinary choices — by teachers, doctors, officials, managers, even volunteers — are paralysed by legal self-consciousness.
Did you check the rules? Who will be responsible if there's an accident? A paediatrician in North Carolina noted that "I don't deal with patients the same way any more. You wouldn't want to say something off the cuff that might be used against you."
Defensiveness has swept across the country like a cold wave. We have become a culture of rule-followers, trained to frame every solution in terms of existing law or possible legal risk. The person of responsibility is replaced by the person of caution. When in doubt, don't.
All this law, we're told, is just the price of making sure society is in working order. But society is not working. Disorder disrupts learning all day long in many public schools — the result in part, studies by New York University Professor Richard Arum found, of the rise of student rights.
Health care is like a nervous breakdown in slow motion. Costs are out of control, yet the incentive for doctors is to order whatever tests the insurance will pay for.
Taking risks is no longer the badge of courage, but reason enough to get sued. There's an epidemic of child obesity, but kids aren't allowed to take the normal risks of childhood. Broward County, Florida, has even banned running at recess.
— from Philip K. Howard, Wall Street Journal, January 26, 2009.URL:
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123293018734014067.html Dutch anti-Islam MP to face trialA Dutch politician and film-maker is to be prosecuted for inciting racial hatred against Muslims, after he made a number of anti-Islamic comments.
Geert Wilders made headlines in March 2008 for his short-film
Fitna, which juxtaposed shots of the 9/11 attacks on the US with quotations from the
Quran, the text Muslims believe to be divinely revealed.
In 2007 he had called for a ban on the
Quran and compared Islam to Nazism.
On Wednesday, Amsterdam's appeals court ordered his prosecution, overruling the public prosecutor who had previously decided against a criminal trial.
A summary of the court's decision read: "The court considers this so insulting for Muslims that it is in the public interest to prosecute Wilders."
Its screening prompted protests in Pakistan, Iran, Indonesia and Afghanistan, while Ban Ki-moon, the United Nations secretary-general, described the film as "offensively anti-Islamic".
Wilders is the leader of the right-wing Dutch Freedom Party (PVV), which has nine seats in parliament.
Wilders said he was "shaken" by the latest ruling. "I had absolutely not expected it," he said.
He said he saw "the judgment of the court as an attack on the freedom of expression".
— from Aljazeera.net, January 21, 2009.URL:
http://english.aljazeera.net/news/europe/2009/01/200912114471707334.html UK Christian care home accused of "institutionalised homophobia"A home for retired British Christian missionaries faces a massive funding cut after residents refused to answer questions about their "sexual orientation" on a government form.
Elderly residents at the Pilgrim Home in Egremont Place, Brighton, were accused of being "closed to the gay community" for their refusal to answer the questions. As a result, the Brighton & Hove city council revoked a £13,000 grant to the facility.
When residents refused to cooperate, saying the questions were "intrusive", the council accused Pilgrim Houses of "institutionalised homophobia", and revoked the grant. Because the home's policies were based on Christianity, homosexuals were being excluded, the council claimed.
A council spokesman said, "The Government specifically states the home must be open to the gay and lesbian community and that it must demonstrate this to qualify for funding. In the absence of any willingness to do this, funding has been withdrawn."
The council claimed that it was acting according to the requirements of the Labour government's equality legislation and sexual orientation regulations. The council's questionnaire asked residents, all over 80, to reveal whether they were lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender or unsure of their sexuality.
The council also had plans to invite the homosexualist activist organisation Stonewall to make a presentation at the home and had instructed the charity to include depictions of homosexuals in its promotional literature.
— from LifeSiteNews.com, January 8, 2009.URL:
www.lifesitenews.com/ldn/2009/jan/09010804.html
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