You may think that's a strange title for an article and may be asking what do you mean is upside down? I mean just about everything you can think of is upside. Upside down is of course the opposite of right side up and the opposite of where it ought to be. Also things are the opposite from what they were at one time. It also means right is wrong and wrong is right. Our culture, our society, our values, our priorities, our attitude, and our thinking is upside down. We are becoming more and more a foolish and selfish race of people.
          We want what we want regardless of what that might mean to others. And we have plenty of Lawyers advertising on television urging the lazy and greedy to go after it. That is upside down from what it use to be. Until the last decade or so it was beneath the dignity of any respectable lawyer to advertise his services on radio, television or in the papers. But in this upside down society we are bombarded with lawyer ads. This "me me" and "sue sue" everybody mentality is destroying our society. It is boomeranging and the consumer is paying the consequences. Hospital cost and medicine is astronomical and insurance is quickly becoming out of range for the average person. When the doctors are sued, the cost goes up, the insurance goes up and the consumer pays the bill. A few years ago the biggest worry most doctors had was the welfare of their patients, today their biggest worry is wondering if one of their patients is filing a lawsuit against them.
          People have changed in other ways too. It use to be when a person told you something you could count on it, their word was their bond. Today, if somebody tells you something or owes you something you need a lawyer to write up a contract. There was a time when a contractor, electrician, plumber or whoever promised you they would be at your house, they would be there. But today, it's a different story.
          We all remember John Kennedy's famous words, "ask not what your country can do for you but ask what you can do for your country." In our upside down society, this has been changed to, "ask not what you can do for your country but ask what your country can do for you." That same mentality has carried over in other ways. Many go to the polls to vote not for the man who has the best character, or one who can be trusted, or even for the one who would make the best official- but the one who would most likely hand out the most bounty from the public trough.
          This same kind of upside down attitude carries over into personal responsibility. There was a time when you make a mistake, you admitted it, took the consequences and moved on. Not so today! It's always someone else's fault and we don't stop there. We do all we can to make them pay for our mistake. If a man cuts his finger off while slicing salami, he blames the restaurant. If he smokes three packs of cigarettes a day and dies of lung cancer, his family sues the Tobacco Company. If he shoots his foot off while playing Wyatt Earp, he sues Smith & Wesson. If a terrorist breaks into the cockpit and tries to kill the pilot while in flight and the passengers kill him instead, the mother of the deceased blames the airline.
          This upside down mentality has also effected our government and our politicians. When government programs are not working, instead of changing the programs, we just spend more taxpayer dollars on the same old programs that wasn't working in the first place. A lot of this is because the politicians are so tied to special interest like the environmentalist and other like minded groups that the laws they encourage are more in protecting the "spotted owls" then providing security, energy and jobs for the American people. That's what I call upside down.
          According to Larry Klayman, Chairman of Judicial Watch ( a watch dog law firm), much of the upside down policies, laws and attitudes of today's culture is caused by the Trail Lawyers. Klayman says, "this legal corruption is picking the pockets of hard -working Americans, putting literally billions of dollars into the pockets of greedy lawyers, turning neighbor against neighbor and threatening to derail the rule of law." He says, "trail lawyers contribute to politicians who make lawsuit-friendly laws, and hinder and oppose legal reform." Here's the way it works. The more the trial lawyers make the more they give to liberal politicians who appoint activist judges who make laws to favor the trail lawyers. Only congress is suppose to make laws but now the activists judges are over riding the constitution. That's another upside down situation. Klayman says, between 1988--1996 trial lawyers gave $60 million to opponents of tort reform, resulting in over 90 cases of pro-trial attorney judges overturning tort reforms in 26 states. Klayman points out that trial lawyers overwhelmingly favor the democrat party and the democrat party is overwhelmingly favorable to trial lawyers and legislation that helps them milk the system.
           So, all this means that we have a corrupt society electing corrupt politicians who appoint corrupt judges to make corrupt rulings for corrupt trial lawyers who represent the corrupt and greedy in our society. This is why we see so many upside down cases in the news. Like the one in March of 2000, when a truck driver in Florida broke into and climbed a transformer, receiving 13,000 volts of electricity. He sued the 6 bars that served him and the electric company and won. In California, a robber attempted to hold up a bar and in the process he got himself killed and his family sues the business for operating an unsafe establishment. Then we all remember the lady who spilled hot coffee on her self and sued McDonald's for a million plus and got it. All of this is the symptom of a society that's gone haywire or upside down. In the past the Bible was our equilibrium but now our culture has thrown out that stabilizing force and without it -- right side up is often upside down.

-David