Because I am an airline captain for a major carrier, I was deluged by friends with questions from the moment John F. Kennedy, Jr.'s airplane disappeared last July.
“Why on earth was he allowed to take off into weather he wasn't trained to handle? Why didn't the government do something? Why wasn't he stopped? How could anybody with his lack of experience be given permission to take off on such a night? How can we make sure this won't happen again? Why can't the FAA create and enforce laws that are strong enough to stop this kind of thing?”
When the waves closed over the watery graves of Kennedy, his wife, and sister-in-law, calls began to arise for greater regulation of private pilots. But there were already plenty of regulations on the books to cover every facet of Kennedy's last flight. As I asked my friends, how would the government restrain anybody from getting in their cars and driving off a cliff? How does one regulate common sense? And more to the point, what are the hazards of granting government the power to attempt such regulation of horse sense?
We live in an era when most people assume that every new problem is properly open to solution by government regulators. Implicit is the belief that the regulators have enough power, information, and wisdom to meet any new challenge.
Young Kennedy's pitiful death illustrates some of the issues that arise from the question of government regulation and the hugely vexing and misunderstood question of the major political tension of our age: the questions of the political primacy of the individual versus the state, and the very purpose of government.
As you read on, ask what sense you can make of the moral philosophy and political policy that are invoked by those who in the wake of young Kennedy's crash are now calling for more government regulation. Also consider a life metaphor that was suggested to me by my career as a commercial pilot.
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