A senior federal employee lamented to me recently about work fights he has with lawyers. It would be bad enough if these pitted him against attorneys launching lawsuits against his department, but it’s not.
His diurnal conflicts are with lawyers on his own side. They constantly press him not to go ahead with one innovation or another because, by breaking new ground, he would increase the risk of litigation and financial damages gouged out of federal funds.
I asked what department he worked for, and his reply was telling: “The one where safety comes first, the Department of Defense.” Yes, the department that oversees military men and women prepared to give their lives — talk about the ultimate risk — is a place where safety is the No. 1 concern.
The work done by Pentagon Man — I’ll call him that to avoid identifying him — requires innovation, new thinking, and departure from what’s tried and tested. Otherwise, he is not doing his job, at least not doing it as well as he might or fulfilling his mission.
He can sack his legal advisers if they become too stifling, but he knows their replacements will do just the same. And he cannot do without lawyers because of the danger of exposure to liability.
All of which means he is stuck in the same predicament as so many businesses and public services across America, which are constrained, in some cases even crippled, by the two mutually reinforcing encumbrances of litigation threat and learned risk aversion.
This nation, at least as much as any other, is like an airplane. It needs to be moving forward because, without that momentum, it will fall. Pentagon Man was right when he concluded that we have a problem with our national culture, which has shriveled from one in which people took risk because it promised rewards, but now instead reflexively chooses safety first.
A society as risk averse as ours has become is doomed to slow decline, at best. If you expend your energies protecting what you have rather than creating new opportunities, products, and methods and building wealth, you are bound to lose.
It’s like what used to be said about the “war against terror,” that the terrorists had to succeed only once to cause catastrophe, but security forces had to succeed every time to avoid such disaster.
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If America makes risk avoidance its mission to protect what it has, it must succeed every time or else, bit by bit, with one loss here and another there, its capital, leadership, military capabilities, and wealth will decline. Conversely, accepting risk creates circumstances in which new ideas can germinate and flourish, in which wealth can be created, political and military leaders can inspire, and new technologies and methods can ensure America stays ahead of all its rivals and inspire admiration and fear as appropriate around the world.
We need litigation reform, we need fewer regulations and more freedom — we can reasonably hope for those with the new administration arriving on Jan. 20 — and we need a shift in our culture to one that seeks new frontiers rather than cowering behind its old ones.
This article was originally published at www.washingtonexaminer.com
