A fail-safe society is sure to fail

When are we going to trust our fellow Americans again? When are we going to allow qualified individuals with responsibility to make decisions without consulting detailed rule books and formal procedures?

Those are questions that the New York lawyer and author Philip K. Howard (one of his books is called, simply, Try Common Sense) asks in his latest mini-tome Everyday Freedom. The freedom he is writing about is not the freedom of eccentric individuals to demand special treatment and punctiliously pronounced pronouns, but the freedom of individuals in positions of authority to make decisions — and to actually get things done.