Philip Howard is a leader of government and legal reform in America. He is Chair of Common Good and a bestselling author, and has advised both parties on needed reforms. In Everyday Freedom, he pinpoints the source of powerlessness that is fraying American culture. In Saving Can-Do (Rodin Books, September 2025), he provides a framework to alleviate populist resentment and revive human responsibility at all levels of society.
What follows is Philip’s take on what is needed to revive “can-do” in the United States. It’s an urgent need.
Americans increasingly feel like rats in a maze. Do this. Don’t say that. Did you comply with the rules? Is your paperwork in order? Can you fill out more and more of it for no discernible reason?
Governing systems were remade after the 1960s to replace human judgement (and authority) with a kind of legal software program. The origin story displays the best of motives--to preclude any more abuses such as racism and pollution. Because humans can make poor judgments, the theory went, it’s better to strain choices through a legal sieve of prescriptive rules, processes, and rights.
But it doesn’t work. Instead of enhancing freedom, law replaced freedom. Americans no longer feel free to do what they think is right or sensible. Doctors and nurses spend half the day filling out forms, teachers have lost control of the classroom, and employers no longer give job references or candid reviews.
Individual freedom shrunk, and shrunk again, as red tape accumulated to protect against any possible error. Rules prescribe exactly how to transport apples from the tree to the barn, how to illuminate a stairwell, how to arrange rooms in a nursing home, and how to keep the paperwork proving you did all these things properly. The granularity of the rules is, literally, mind-numbing.
Another casualty was good government. Governing without human judgment is like wearing a blindfold. How does a school principal prove who’s a good teacher, and who’s not? How does an official prove the tradeoff judgments needed for sensible and fair decisions? Parsing human judgment with a legal scalpel generally skews good judgment towards rationalization, not results. That’s why government is paralyzed-- environmental officials trudge through years of repetitive reports and hearings to give permits.
Law is everywhere. That’s why America’s can-do culture has been transformed into its inept opposite. Governing for the public good is bogged down in legal quicksand. Striving is replaced by caution and defensiveness. Spontaneity is suffocated by suspicion. Play is discouraged as risky. Morality is replaced by legal bickering.
Powerlessness fuels polarization. Many turn to MAGA. Large numbers of people look left. But the cure is not found on the spectrum of less government versus more government. The indiscriminate slashing by Elon Musk’s DOGE initiative did little to cure public paralysis or enhance Americans’ freedom. Nor is the cure to replace overbearing red tape with top-down dictates with different values.
The cure is to re-empower Americans at all levels of society to act on their best judgment. That requires transitioning away from the red tape state to simpler governing frameworks built on the solid foundation of individual responsibility.
Law is supposed to define and protect an open field of free choice, not turn America into a legal minefield. Law is supposed to delineate the scope of official authority, not turn officials into legal robots.
Returning to a human responsibility framework for governing is not radical. It is, in fact, the premise of our constitutional system. As James Madison put it: “It is one of the most prominent features of the constitution, a principle that pervades the whole system, that there should be the highest possible degree of responsibility in all the Executive officers thereof.”
America’s failed experiment in automatic government teaches us, without room for reasonable disagreement, that it’s not possible to create a government better than people. The only cure is to pull law back into its traditional framework, and re-empower Americans to use their judgment. Let Americans roll up their sleeves and act like Americans again.
Ed. Note: Philip’s bio is here. The Common Good website is here.
Barry Oshry has made a life long study of why people in systems do what they do, frequently making things worse rather than better, as they intended. Learn about this at www. powerandsystems.com.
Also, Dr. Morris Massey's life long study exploring what influences people to grow up with what values causing them to behave they way they do. "You Are What You Were, When."His premise is, what you are is set in stone as you first acquire your values of good and what is bad, as you grow up in your early years. We don’t ditch those values when we get older unless there is what Dr. Massey terms a Significant Emotional Event (SEE) causes those values and learned behaviors to change. How we cope with whatever life throws our way is determined by what we learned as a child and as a youth growing up. Baby Boomers grew up admiring significantly different "heroes" than 20 somethings today. In very different value systems and world. "You may have seen Paris during the war, but ONCE YOU SAW PARIS, Peoria didn't look half as good as it used to."
Both of these life long studies and presentations clearly describe the whys, hows, what's.
Thanks, John, for sharing. As I learned in 3 plus decades of military service--Discipline is the bedrock of most well-meaning human behavior. Strongly believe our USA needs conscription service (e.g., military, educational, health, religious, et.al.,) to help instill/infuse the discipline that today is sorely lacking in most young adults. Further, I contend this lack of selfless service to our country is the root cause of the "lost boys" and young people in general. For evidence, just observe & study the exceptional success of Israel as a country, where mandatory military service (32 months for men, 24 months for women) is required.