Responsibility used to be the hallmark of American freedom. Act as you wish, but accept the consequences: Smoke, get cancer. Eat, get fat. Fall down drunk, get hurt. Just don’t act surprised—and certainly don’t blame anyone else. No longer. Today the hallmark of American freedom is litigation. Act as you wish, but make sure someone else suffers the consequences. Indeed, America’s liability system has become the international standard of what not to do. Walter K. Olson, a senior fellow at the Manhattan Institute, explores how the U.S. has long been hospitable to the litigious in his new book The Rule of Lawyers: How the New Litigation Elite Threatens America’s Rule of Law.
Read Original at: National Review