A Subtle Tyranny

Miami Herald columnist Leonard Pitts has an outstanding piece, built around a conversation he had with a friend from Estonia, on the ways that Americans are losing freedom:

Americans, she said, love to trumpet their freedom. But it's hard to square that with political correctness that straitjackets communication for fear of giving unintended offense, hair-trigger litigiousness that requires major corporations to treat customers ("Caution: Coffee is hot") like idiots for fear of being sued, zero-tolerance policies and mandatory sentencing guidelines that remove human judgment from human encounters for fear of rendering unequal justice.

Mr. Pitts argue that these trends -- some social, some political, some legal -- result in the loss of originality.