unless there’s a huge cultural shift. Rich asked me to do him a little favor last week — a little somethin’ somethin’ called “tort reform”.
I would love to have tort reform. I would probably have more quibbles with amounts of damages rather than lawsuits themselves actually. The Bible, common law, etc. have conceptions of “blood money” for wrongful/accidental death so we don’t leave folks penniless and to “encourage” reasonable folks to act “prudently” and use “ordinary care”.
The problem is — we are still in many regards in full blown Romanticism…. we “feel” bad when bad things happen. We are unhappy when “bad things happen to good people” it is “unfair” and not “right”. Our ancient lawgivers, Medieval forbears in the law, and our Enlightenment Founders didn’t envision a world where there were “good people” to begin with and even if all people were good — who the hell were they to expect good things to ALWAYS happen? Life’s hard, brutal, and often short so suck it up and live right while you’re here, they would say (more eloquently).
Today — and very understandably so — we expect to live close to 80 in air-conditioned comfort. We wear helmets on our kiddie bikes for cryin’ out loud and ensconce our cars in bubbles. We have lawsuits for kids sticking their penises in vacuum cleaners as if it’s Hoover’s fault your kid gave himself a weenie-ectomy We are a nation — a civilization — of Children. Children have unrealistic and immature expectations about life, death, health, and nature in general. Modern liberal progressivism and it’s evil cousin “legal positivism” are used by their adherents to teach us that we can improve — engineer a just and fair society by having enough laws to make things fair. They call justice “fairness” and we buy it because we — as a culture — make decisions based on our emotions and not on our Reason. We respond to Columbine, 9/11, mistakes by doctors,, etc. not with Reasoned and understandable grief and a sober finding of mistake after a reasonable period of time has elapsed. We knee-jerk demanding huge payments and someone;s head on a stick. That instinct for grief has always been there — we’ve just institutionalized it in our ever-expanding law codes and rampant lawsuits for every bad thing that happens to us in life.
I’ve never lost a kid so I’m not going to judge the emotions of parents who have other than to say that those emotions should not generally be the basis of social policy nor allowed to be the sole motivating factor in “justice”. Whether or not people are good; bad things always have and always will happen to them. No amount of demagoguery, “progressivism”, or belief that law is a science and a tool to engineer a perfect society will ever change that.
This story resurrected this idea in my mind. My son loves Monster Jam. We’ve been to them before and they are loud and chaotic — right up a 9 year old boys alley. At the time it never crossed my mind that we were in danger. Thinking back — it is reasonable in light of the complex machines, demand by consumer to get in on the action, crashes and speeds, etc. that it’s a reasonable possibility that something liek this could happen. I don’t know all the facts, but I’m inclined to think that Monster Jam or the Tacoma Dome couldn’t do much more to make it safe without fundamentally ruining the Monster Jam experience. Is that worth it? It might be to the parents who lost their precious little boy and will always struggle with that. Is that a sufficient basis upon alter the show or sporting events in general?
To be clear… I don’t blame the parents, injured, etc. generally (though there are some money grubbers to be sure). The guardians… lawyers, judges, and politicians are mostly to blame for pandering, demagoguery, and outright greed.
On the other hand we just had an aircraft crash in which no one died. Think of all the poor tort lawyers who will be forced to go hungry next year because of that.
ugh… I think I am going to have horrible nightmares tonight.
*shudder*
I may just have to sue you Floyd for posting this so that I would be tempted to read it, thereby causing my brain to picture such horrible images and irrevicably damaging my brain
I only feel bad if there is a reason: 9-11, Katrina until it appeared people in New Orleans are too friggen STUPID to know what EVAQUATION MEANS…and no its not got anything to do with voiding bowel movements after a bad run of Gumbo. I feel bad when one of our kids gets hurt or killed in Afghanistan or Iraq. But thats the extent of my feeling bad for people. And let me say I have run into quite a few people who def. need to have a dose of FIX IT YOUR DAMNED SELF…..
Lawsuits are getting WAAAAYYYY out o’ hand. Sometimes $h!t just happens because of nobody but the Big Guy Upstairs.
Oh, and Steph, I left a rather lengthy response to your insulting of my finding Cote de Pablo attractive.
Look dude I don’t know whats going on with her eye brows its sort of scary.
“Look dude I don’t know whats going on with her eye brows its sort of scary.”
Understood. I just wanted to get my feelings off my chest (in a long winded way that proved I’ve been reading threedonia way to much).
It is just guys like me don’t look at the brows. We look . . . a bit . . . lower (The eyes and down).
I did find the hyperbole comparing her eyebrows to Brezhnev a bit out there (If they were that big they would’ve factored in my attractiveness meter and not in a positive way).
Anyway. The show is a good pro-military show. (and pro-Israeli)
The Marine in the show is awesome.
Hey I know a little bit about how the real NCIS works and trust me you are watching a fantasy. THey do not run ops, unless its some stupid kid selling drugs or stealing on his ship or on a base. And they do a lot of really bad stuff when they run investigations.
But Mark Harmon is a really cool guy and a Republican I believe. Michael Weatherly is a HOTTIE. But I cannot stomach Cote de Pablo. Her character is insufferable and I don’t think she can act. Compared to Katherine Bell from JAG I think Bellasario dropped the ball. But I do like casting Lauren Holly. She has always been good in whatever people have cast her in. Pauly Perrette is hilarious. And David McCallum is as always amazing. However when my hubby sees it on he rolls his eyes and walks away.
Stephanie,
I know it is fiction (I figured that out quickly). Just GOOD fiction, very good fiction. As for your husband, there are doctors who can’t stand doctor shows, lawyers who can’t stand legal shows, and etc. because of the innacuracy.
Anyway, what branch is your husband?
USMC. And he was a Battalion C/O. He knows the NCIS very well.
A weenie-ectomy, thanks for that pleasent mental image.
I must now gouge out my eyes.
They seem to have modeled their fictional NCIS on the DSS (Diplomatic Security Service). They are a small agency, so agents wear many hats. They can literally be conducting a murder investigation one day and the next flying half way across the world to extract people from a war zone. Of any federal agency, they also have the most hands on experience with counter-terrorism, since much their jurisdiction deals with embassies. A lot of their agents also come from military backgrounds and quite a few of them from special operations.
And you’ll likely never see a show about them, as no one has ever heard of them.
Stephanie,
Thanks for the info. Glad to have your husband defending us.
Floyd:
I had read the story about the Monster Jam accident. It reminded me of an incident at a pro hockey game where a young girl was hit smack in the forehead by a puck. She was very high in hte arena seating, also. I recall that the arena changed its netting/barriers. But it was an accident that could not have been avoided short of cancelling hockey, period.
It will be interesting to see what happens with Monster Jam … the insurance rates will rise … the tort attorneys will be paid … the defense attorneys will be paid … the arenas/ciliseums will be re-configured … and then the price of admission goes up …
Come on,Raoul…you know some fat greasy NY shyster with mustard all over his tie is going to get someone on that plane to file a $100 billion lawsuit:”…Oh,I got my feet wet…all that pain and suffering!”
My mother likes that show,Stephanie….I’m with your husband.The only one I like is David McCallum(remember “The Man from UNCLE”?
My personal opinion is that this is all Rabbi Kushner’s fault with that damn book, When Bad Things Happen To Good People. I do ministry with people who have lost children, usually during pregnancy because that’s when I lost mine, and the “let’s find someone to blame” thing combined with believing that God would never allow anything “bad” to happen just drives me insane. They spend an awful lot of their healing energy believing this garbage. God does allow bad things to happen, and it’s often nobody’s fault (at least for purposes of lawsuit).
Tracy..here in Memphis it should be “When Good Things Happen to Bad People”….thieves and murderers have the run of this city,not a care in the world they have
Tracy,
God bless you and the work that you do. It is not in vain.