MaybeToday.org

Occasionally, I read or hear about something so stunning that I feel like I’m having an out-of-body experience, watching from a detached vantage point as the world unfurls strangely in front of me. Yesterday afternoon, I had one of those experiences.

I was at work, pausing to check the headlines, weather and traffic, when I saw the surreal headline: “Massachusetts Appeals Court rules that judge was wrong to order mentally ill woman to have an abortion and to then be sterilized”.

Forced abortions and sterilizations in Massachusetts? Granted, the court-ordered violation of this woman – and murder of her baby – were stopped, but it still seems hard to fit these facts into the perception I have of the world I inhabit. This isn’t China, or some other totalitarian state; despite the admittedly growing monstrosity of state hegemony over too many areas of life, America’s still seems like a system worth saving through correction, not overthrowing. Judges don’t really order things like that, right?

I’m not wholly ignorant of the history of these kinds of criminal depravities in American jurisprudence; I know these kinds of judgments were not unheard of during the early heyday of Progressivism, 100 years ago or so, before the “historical marches” of fascism and communism progressed Europe into post-Christian, scientifically-ordered hell-holes, giving the eugenics and related movements a rather tarnished public image. I’m also very aware of the broad based public support for abortion, in both varnished and even unvarnished guises; for eugenics in just about every conceivable form excepting the currently unfashionable sex-selection killing of fetal girls practiced by Hindus and others; and even for sterilization of the “unfit” as part of the eugenic spirit, at least insofar as it is reflected in attitudes that some people, for the common good, just shouldn’t be allowed to reproduce. even if the means of accomplishing that are not part of the reflection. Still, I wouldn’t have thought any judge in 21st century America would dare to be so craven, regardless of her own level of contempt for the human being.

A day later, there are still a few lingering things haunting my mind about this fiasco, after getting past the shocking moral depravity of the judge in the case – Norfolk (MA) Probate and Family Court Judge Christina Harms, who retired from the bench last Wednesday, less than a week after handing down this ruling, which among other indecencies, stipulated that the mother ‘could be “coaxed, bribed, or even enticed … by ruse” into a hospital where she would be sedated and an abortion would then be performed’, according to the original Boston.com story I read, as well as the few others I’ve found.

The first is the amazing lack of legs this story has (not) grown. I would have expected that a story reported on  pretty major MSM news site about a judge in America ordering this forced abortion and sterilization would have gone close to viral within 24 hours – especially during an election year. This has barely caused a blip. Am I the only one shocked by this, or is this a case of the MSM looking the other way from what could be a political hot-potato for their political sponsors? Is there another explanation? I’m lost on this.

Secondly is the realization that it was apparently only the attempted forced sterilization that brought about the judicial rebuke from Appellate Court Associate Justice Andrew R. Grainger, who noted that the ruling contradicted a 1982 (MA) Supreme Judicial Court ruling on the right to procreate. The fate of the baby appears to have been handed over to yet another lower court judge for dispositioning! The courts might yet order the baby to be killed for having a mentally ill mother! Incredible.

Lastly, I was profoundly struck by what I can only characterize as a thunderous moral tone-deafness and spiritual imbecility on the part of the alleged adults involved in this, including the reporters (with the exception of Ben Johnson writing for LifeSiteNews.com, who picked up on this). It is a tone-deafness to the cruel irony that the mental incapacitation afflicting this women (schizophrenia), which is the cudgel being used to beat her into the torture chamber, appears to have its source in a prior abortion she had committed. Court records are clear that she had a breakdown after the abortion, and has been a basket case ever since, especially around issues concerning babies.

This poor woman is tormented by the evil of her earlier abortion, and this knuckle-dragging judge wanted to trick her into having another abortion! And her own parents are advocating for killing her child! May God have pity on all of them in their deformities. This tortured soul does not need an abortionist, she needs a priest. I pray one finds her soon.

Quote of the Day for Wednesday, September 14th, 2011:

Mary Rose Somarriba, writing yesterday at Public Discourse, on the recent anti-bullying legislation recently enacted in New Jersey (hewing closely to Obama administration policies), in an article called “A Bully-Free World?”:

Why, one might ask, would the president lead a conference on preventing something like bullying, which is ultimately impossible to prevent? It could be, perhaps, because bullying is something that everyone agrees is wrong, and it is something that everyone can relate to, because everyone has been bullied at some point.

But sadly, bullying is like any unfortunate human conflict and will exist as long as humans do. This does not mean it is okay to bully; it means it is problematic to imagine that we can create a world in which conflict doesn’t exist. It is hard to imagine zero-tolerance bullying prevention without schools becoming mini-bureaucratic-police states—the likes of which only belong in films like Minority Report or Adjustment Bureau—where kids could be criminally charged for hurting each other’s feelings, “different” kids could be targeted as “likely to be bullied,” and so on. But that is exactly what this boils down to: a child’s version of hate crimes.

In reality, laws like New Jersey’s risk worsening the problems of bullying. There is reason to believe that hotlines where kids can anonymously text-message tips to incriminate bullies are yet another technology that kids will abuse for the purposes of bullying. Further, bullying prevention is arguably the wrong goal altogether. It would be better to focus on conflict resolution than on conflict prevention. Devoting all effort to preventing the inevitable is not only wasteful policy; it is a failure to do what actually might lessen the damage of real-life conflicts.

One of my kids – probably the youngest one – mentioned something during dinner the other night about the latest anti-bullying campaign at her school, and I was too tired and cranky to resist letting out a snort. The kids were a little flabbergasted when I said I thought the current anti-bullying hysteria is moronic. Of course, they assumed that anyone who didn’t “like” anti-bullying must therefore “like” bullying – that’s the way these things are framed society-wide, the way immature minds tend to work naturally, and certainly fits the Facebook zeitgeist we and they inhabit. I pointed out the hypocrisy of adults shoving anti-bullying propaganda down the throats of helpless populations of schoolchildren, and made some references to the long stream of social do-goodism in the schools, of which anti-bullying is not merely the latest fashion, but an almost inevitable consequence of previous efforts by the same kinds of “progressive” people to coddle school children, eliminate discipline, abandon authority, and eradicate the stain of “judgmentalism”.

I don’t think I did a very good job of explaining myself, and fortunately, Somarriba does a pretty good job in this article of explaining at least why the anti-bullying agenda is impractical. But I really dislike it for reasons she comes close to, but doesn’t address. She suggests that perhaps President Obama wants to get out in front of this because everybody agrees that bullying is wrong, and she’s dead right about that. It’s a convenient platform for cheesy moralism. You won’t lose any votes by thundering denunciations against bullies, after all. And that’s the real problem here: it’s symptomatic of a culture that feels the need to find something phony to fill a glaring void, where genuine morality deserves to be found, but cannot be allowed expression lest it upset the libertarian apple cart of mutually assured disregard of vice.

Quote of the Day for Sunday, June 5th, 2011:

Naomi Schaefer Riley, writing in the June 3rd Washington Post, on the value of a modern college education, and the disconnect exposed by PayPal’s Peter Thiel when he recently thumbed his nose at the university system:

Executives at U.S. companies routinely complain about the lack of reading, writing and math skills in the recent graduates they hire. Maybe they too will get tired of using higher education as a credentialing system. Maybe it will be easier to recruit if they don’t have to be concerned about the overwhelming student debt of their new employees.

Employers may decide that there are better ways to get high school students ready for careers. What if they returned to the idea of apprenticeship, not just for shoemakers and plumbers but for white-collar jobs? College as a sorting process for talent or a way to babysit 18-year-olds is not very efficient for anyone involved. Would students rather show their SAT scores to companies and then apply for training positions where they can learn the skills they need to be successful? Maybe the companies could throw in some liberal arts courses along the way. At least they would pick the most important ones and require that students put in some serious effort. Even a 40-hour workweek would be a step up from what many students are asked to do now.

If tuition continues to rise faster than inflation, and colleges cannot provide a compelling mission for undergraduate education, we may move further away from Obama’s vision of education and closer to Peter Thiel’s.

It seems to me there are few areas of public life more dysfunctional than the la-la land of higher education (well, maybe the K-12 public school system…). The “Obama vision” referenced here is the widespread vision, shared among the cultural elite (especially the professorial class), of universal higher education, which, like most every “progressive” idea, sounds wonderful – if you are naïve enough to believe the utopian hype without bothering to think through the nuts & bolts of the details, and understand their consequences.

The reality is that as the reach of “higher education” spreads deeper into society, both the relative and objective values of higher education plummet toward irrelevance – much to the detriment of most of us, but especially of the least capable in society, who find more and more vocational possibilities being pushed out of reach in the credentialing game, and yet much to the benefit of – surprise, surprise – the professorial class, who find themselves with ever increasing power in the marketplace, and the liberal governing class, who see higher education as the next frontier for state domination over the intellectual/spiritual/religious formation of its subjects, having already accomplished a virtual monopoly over the formation of youth from near toddlerhood through adolescence.

Quote of the Day for Wednesday, January 19th, 2011:

Walter Russell Mead, writing at The American Interest on the on-going decline – and largely unconsidered future – of the structures underpinning modern life in the West:

The word ‘developed’ contains an important assumption: that a historical process known as development (closely related to modernization — another problematic word) not only exists throughout the world, it culminates in a known end which has already been reached.  This word implies that countries like France, Canada and our own happy United States of America have reached the end of history, the summit of human achievement, stable and enduring arrangements in political economy that are unlikely to change much going forward.

Nothing could be stupider or less historically defensible than this belief, yet few assumptions are more widespread among the world’s intelligentsia, planners and, especially, bureaucrats.  Technological change has never been moving faster or with greater force than it is today as the implications of one revolution in IT after another work themselves out; the foundations of the global economic and political order are being shaken by the dramatic rise of new powers. Yet somehow many of us believe that the  western world is an end state: the comfy couch at the end of history rather than the launching pad for another great, disruptive leap into the unknown.

This is a smart essay from Mead that points out just how backward-looking the whole current debate over political economy is in America – and elsewhere. So-called conservatives are, of course, routinely accused of backwards, illiberal thinking (even though, at least in America, those known as politically conservative are almost uniformly advocating classically liberal policy). But even the left, with their pretentions of “progressing,” are not trying to move toward anything new, but are only doubling-down on a project that is already exhausted, even when viewed in the most favorable light.

Mead sees the best path forward in a new incarnation of liberalism. I suppose he’s right, at least at the white-board level, but the devil, as they say, is in the details. I think his view that the current state of liberalism is a continuing bulwark against socialism defies the growing evidence of the mainstreaming of a leftist politics of resentment, and the continued hostility to religion in public life emanating from the liberal institutions of influence (media, academia). Not to mention the ever-creeping scope of government. Maybe I’m misreading him. Then again, maybe he should similarly look at the evolution of socialism. Nonetheless, he’s a good read.

Quote of the day for Tuesday, December 7th, 2010:

Timothy Dalrymple, posting at Patheos yesterday on the meaning and underlying cause of what he calls “Palin Enragement Syndrome”:

[M]uch of the opposition to Palin is not political. It is deeply and thoroughly cultural. Sarah Palin is Miss Jesusland, the living emblem and foremost representative of an America that progressive elites had hoped had been swept into the dustbin of history. One definition of culture is “the attitudes and behavior characteristic of a particular social group.” Palin represents the values, tastes, and institutions, the attitudes and behaviors, that are shared by one American sub-culture and despised by another. Hugh Hewitt had it right over a year ago, when he said that Palin is “the opposite of every choice that lefty elites have ever made . . . the antithesis of everything that liberal urban elites are.”

In a very peculiar sort of way, then, Sarah Palin herself has become the latest contested territory in America’s ongoing culture war. The fight over Sarah Palin is a proxy battle over cultural issues and over the meaning of America: not only Democrats and Republicans but low culture versus high culture, conservative Christianity versus progressive religion, pro-life versus pro-choice, traditional family versus modern family, rural versus urban, the wisdom and goodness of the people versus the technocracy of the elite. It’s a proxy battle over which culture — which set of values, attitudes, and behaviors — ought to pervade and guide our nation and its government.

It was obvious in the summer of 2008 that Sarah Palin had instantly touched a venomous nerve in progressive circles. It was not entirely clear why. I thought some of it could be chalked up as a reaction to the energized thrill with which the more conservative elements of the electorate met her ascension to McCain’s Presidential ticket – I know for my part, I’d fully expected McCain to select a middle-of-the-road running mate, even someone pro-abortion, and I was delightfully surprised that he selected a social conservative, and I doubt I was alone in that surprise any more than I was in that delight.

Nonetheless, there are a lot of social conservatives out there, and while they do get trashed by the liberal press on principle, they don’t get trashed like Sarah Palin gets trashed. I agree with Dalrymple that she is more symbol than human being to the left, but that still doesn’t explain why she became such a lightning rod, rather than any of the many other people, including women, who generally share her views. And as a national figure, she is almost purely a product of the left’s obsession with her. They call her stupid(of course), but she’s dumb like a fox, and has proven herself to be one of the more prescient members of the chattering class, which I think is changing her perception among non-progressive elites.

In the end, I think Dalrymple overstates this somewhat, because even though he is correct about Palin being a flaming icon of the broader cultural conflict to the left, I think the moderates and more conservative folks are seeing her as more of an effective conservative political figure, especially as time goes on. She’s more about results than ideological grandstanding – even if she is not prone to compromising principles. Pure populist, yes, but she’s turning into a genuine movement leader, not just a token of a broader idea. I suppose that’s why the left turned her into a celebrity: by definition, you can’t take celebrities seriously… Good luck with that.

Richard Fernandez over at Pajamas Media posted a disturbing commentary yesterday on a couple of articles he had recently read concerning the apocalyptic economic problems facing both California and Great Britain. The root of the problem, in both cases, is easy enough to identify: the entitlement mentality that believes that something can be had for nothing (or little). The title of his article (I Want My MTV) sums it up neatly (money for nothing, chicks for free…).

But it’s easy to hammer on the unsustainability of free lunch programs for massive numbers of people. In the abstract, more or less everybody understands it. What’s disturbing about the viewpoint of Fernandez (and his interlocutors) is a pessimism that politics would even be capable of tackling the problem – but they may be right:

Britain has gone into debt to buy a ball and chain. Who’s going to tell the electorate that? And how do you sell solutions to such monumental problems to an electorate accustomed to being promised ever more comfort, safety and ease? The answer: you can’t. The political system can’t meet the challenge without liquidating itself. Faced with an insoluble problem the political elite marks time by becoming obsessed with trivia. It rearranges the deck chairs on its Titanic. It whistles past its graveyard.

I keep telling myself that America has a reservoir of resiliency that will surge up to fend off the dangerous lurch to the left that the country has taken – telling myself that the overreach of the Obama regime will waken the sleeping giant that has too quietly acquiesced to the steady leftward march of the nation over the past century, before we plunge over the edge.

But listening to people rationalizing the government takeover of the healthcare market – whether various flavors of the Obamacare vision, or even the current regulatory shakedown of (non-profit!) insurers here in Massachusetts under Romneycare – it strikes me that the defense of these actions is almost invariably couched in moralistic terms that defend taking (i.e. stealing) from the “haves” for the greater good – whatever that may actually entail in practice. In other words, this is hardly a political problem at all, but a spiritual one, which displaces even basic morality with a moralism rooted in the will to power – and those crafty paving stones of good intentions.

This is a very different rationale than Fernandez pursues, but it certainly supports his conclusion .

In the on-going debate over how to improve the American healthcare and healthcare delivery systems, the professed intent of most of the players has been to increase “access” or “coverage,” by extending benefits to people who currently do not have such access. Ostensibly, this is because “access” and/or “coverage” is priced out of reach for these folks, on account of some combination of raw poverty, and unavailability of employer-provided/subsidized health insurance, which is the vehicle through which most non-elderly Americans access the healthcare system. I spent almost a decade of my life numbered among those without medical insurance, and I’m familiar with the significant limitations of the current model, from the distortions introduced by the prevalence of employer-sourced benefits, to the reluctance – especially among the young – to view healthcare costs as a necessary out-of-pocket expense, similar to food, clothing, or shelter.

In any policy debate, a central component of the debate is the question: Who benefits? Apart from identifying precisely what the need is, and how it might be met, we need to have an understanding both of who should benefit, as well as who actually would benefit under any given proposal. Perceiving that adequate healthcare, whatever its precise definition (which must be defined in order to make rational policy decisions), is a universal necessity for living a fully flourishing life, many public voices have taken to calling for the recognition of a universal right to healthcare, and, not infrequently, of identifying the various “reform” packages proposed by Democratic leadership with such a universal mission.

But what does “universal” mean when used in the current political context? Does it truly mean universal, or does it merely say universal while meaning something else? And if it says one thing while meaning another, what are the implications typically associated with the term that cannot be legitimately claimed under these current circumstances, given the reality of what is actually meant when the term is being used? In short: How can this idea be invoked honestly, and – hence – profitably?

Consistent with decades of Catholic social thought, the Catholic Church, at least in the form of the USCCB, has thrown its moral weight behind the idea of a program of universal access to healthcare (whatever that particular term might mean), but there certainly has not been a single proposal put on the table during this debate that would come close to meeting a catholic understanding of the term “universal.” However, I’ve seen no evidence of anyone in the American hierarchy pointing out that disconnect, with the exception of the particular incongruity confronted in the abortion problem.

To a Catholic, it is a breathtakingly cruel mockery to invoke the character of universality on a healthcare plan that not only excludes a subset of the human race from the scope of said care, but positively persecutes them to a violent death at the hands of those they love the most. Yet, to the progressives behind the current program, abortion is part and parcel of the initiating agenda. It is quite beyond me how the bishops think they can lie down with the whore of misanthropic progressivism, in a foolish attempt to sire a bastard offspring that will manage to obsolete charity through benevolent state power, yet avoid the stink that naturally arises (the public funding of abortion) when they do. The bishops, I trust, will continue to refuse to support any program that is remotely pro-abortion – I would not suggest otherwise – but until the architecture of reform is rooted in a philosophical and political view of the world that is not wedded to the legalized murder of innocents, it strikes me as myopic to think that there could be room for a legitimate cooperation, devoid of complicity in evil. I don’t get their willingness to be strung along.

Nonetheless, other problems remain at the gate. For example, it would be politically impossible to include health care coverage for illegal aliens in our policy implementation, but Catholic social doctrine in no way distinguishes among persons on the basis of citizenry. The Church’s legitimate voice in the argument must speak to the implications of the dignity each human person possesses as a creature formed in the imago dei. Not only does such a perspective transcend the status of citizenry, it by definition also transcends national boundaries altogether.

The truth of the matter is that if the issue is to be framed as one of universal social justice from a Catholic perspective, every right to healthcare ascribed to a “poor” citizen of Anytown, USA, must also be ascribed to non-citizens within our borders, as well as “the least among us” in the far-flung corners of the earth. I’m not proposing this as an ad absurdum argument against healthcare reform. To the contrary, I believe it is in fact entirely true that local illegals and the remote destitute have the same claims as the rest of us to anything that can be construed as a human right, including healthcare. Political rights can be circumscribed by politics, but not human rights.

Nor am I trying to make the perfect the enemy of the good – suggesting that the Church cannot or should not support a plan that partially solves a problem without solving the whole thing. Provided that a plan does actually show promise of making progress toward a legitimate goal (in my opinion, a dubious assertion in this case), it would certainly be appropriate to propose its provisional value. But invoking the symbolism of absolute terms like “universal” upon what is at best contingent is misleading, a situation particularly deleterious when it involves spiritual leaders entrusted with the task of distinguishing the contingent from the absolute. It not only lulls the gullible into a false sense of sanctity, but as in this case of Obamacare, it obfuscates the absurdity inherent in the project of reducing human brotherhood to a political program.

Of course, if the American people had to consider the possibility of tax-payer funding of a system of healthcare (whatever that means) that would serve the whole word, it would be (rightly) laughed down as a cruel hoax that was utterly impossible to fund, staff, administer, or police. But even if we proscribe the vast majority of the world’s needy, and limit participation to Americans, these practical absurdities, so readily evident when we consider the prospect of a genuinely universal scope, are hardly resolved, and common folk know that – as is evident from the steadily growing disapproval of Obama’s project among the American citizenry.

Nevertheless, supposing we get beyond the Catholic bishops’ amalgamation of the Church’s social doctrine regarding the universal dignity of man onto what is (of necessity) a much less ambitious undertaking – that of the forcible redistribution of particular resources among a recognizable elite (e.g. U. S. citizens and documented aliens) – we’re still faced with the hard reality that the finite inputs available to any such system will be far exceeded by the output demands that are implied in the expectations of pro-“reform” arguments calling for the expansion of “coverage” to some many thousands of people who are presently not covered.

Not only does this program threaten to bankrupt the country by redirecting huge sums of money from other needs and uses into the already financially bloated healthcare market, it is counting on the availability of services that often do not exist, both of which influences will only serve to increase the cost of healthcare, defeating the very purpose that the program allegedly seeks to serve. This is pretty basic arithmetic. We do not presently have a meaningful surplus of “health care,” and it will not be possible, within a rational universe, to provide additional goods and services without either increasing their supply, or reducing their availability in some other quarter.

This is precisely the prospect being faced by the elderly dependent upon Medicare, which is expected to lose half a trillion dollars in funding in order to make subsidy dollars available elsewhere. This funding shift can only exacerbate the problems providers like the Mayo Clinic already face with Medicare, and will surely accelerate the current movement by these providers out of the Medicare system. This is a pending elderly healthcare disaster being facilitated by the Democrats, even while the President himself is singing the praises of the very providers finding themselves forced to get out from under the abysmal government system. Incredible.

A knave, at this point, might be tempted to accuse me of thinking that those presently going untreated “don’t deserve” treatment, or some such hogwash, but that is not the case at all. I am merely pointing out what should be an obvious fact: that health care, like all goods and services, operates in a complex economy in which price and availability are strongly influenced by the levers of supply and demand. This influence is not a capitalist invention imposed upon hapless society by mean-spirited businessmen; it is an explanation of how economies really work. You can’t reduce costs by imposing a tax structure that reduces supply, increases demand, and depresses cash flow in the general private sector. And price-controlling healthcare services would ultimately have the same effect on healthcare as rent controls invariably have on housing: it’s a disaster for the poor, and for society on the whole.

I have yet to hear a proponent of progressivist “solutions” admit that this economic reality might possibly pose a difficulty to the healthcare socialization project. In their determination to believe the rightness of their cause, they seem to have convinced themselves that there is no real cost to any of this, that the problem of inequitable distribution is simply one of “unfairness” in which scarcity plays no role, and that they can even achieve better than market-optimal results while actively sabotaging market incentives, such as lowering the payments made to doctors under Medicare. Sheer delusion.

I live in a populous area, just outside of Boston, which is also one of the world’s premier hotspots for health care technology. I suspect the supply-to-demand ratio for health care around here is about as high as it is anywhere, and it’s already not easy getting timely appointments, at least if you are not already a patient. Knowing what we know about the notoriously long waiting periods afflicting patients in Canada and other countries that have socialized their systems, how can we think we are seriously addressing any kind of lack-of-healthcare problem when we’re not attempting to find a way to increase the availability of healthcare itself? Trying to frame the healthcare access problem as one simply of inability-to-pay on the part of a victim class is both wrong-headed and counter-productive – unless your goal has less to do with caring for people than it does with establishing state control of healthcare. Clever slogans might be politically expedient, but they tend to be economic time-bombs.

The Democratic proposals put forth by each Congressional house would significantly raise healthcare costs across the board, fail to provide healthcare consumers with any needed new options outside of government controlled exchanges, destroy market incentives for both third-parties and healthcare providers, discourage providers from serving the elderly and other less affluent segments of society, discourage entry into the healthcare field at both institutional and personal levels, encourage artificial demand for unnecessary services by frontloading costs into taxes and premiums, create the typical government feeding trough and corruption that doling out tax dollars invariably creates, facilitate the continuation of enormous wastes of time, money, and resources as a consequence of medical malpractice law abuse, and, of course, exclude the most vulnerable members of the human race from even the most fundamental of protections. To call these plans “universal” in any sense at all – even provisionally – is an utter farce.

So who benefits? Beyond the advocates for unlimited state control of human society, I don’t see how anyone benefits. Sure, there will be rent seekers of various stripes who line their pockets – it’s impossible to spend $2.5 Trillion without making somebody rich – but the net result to the healthcare system- and the people it serves, will be a certain loss.

George Orwell, in his 1946 essay “Politics and the English Language” said: “Political language . . . is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” There is no more apt description of the political discourse that has defined the “healthcare” issue in this country over the past year. Now that we’ve seen what the Democratic leadership has proposed for legislation, would it be out of line to suggest that someone might owe Joe Wilson an apology?

Of course, it was almost impossible to know much of substance of what was being proposed until the 2,000+ page monstrosities were actually submitted as bills – documents our elected representatives wouldn’t even have read before voting on. For months, the public “debate” consisted of little more than partisan posturing from both major parties – save for some genuine disagreements over public funding of abortion, and the so-called “public option” insurance plan. Despite the constant “healthcare” rhetoric, the real target of political muscle-flexing is the medical insurance industry. Admittedly, questions around requirements for treatment rationing did arise while the public option was still on the table, so perhaps actual healthcare questions may come back into play at some point.

It is impossible to draft coherent policy without a sound understanding of the issues at stake, and it is impossible to understand the issues at stake without coherent definitions of the terms of the debate. The thing that bothers me most deeply about this obvious boondoggle is the almost total lack of interest – among politicians, journalists, or the general public – in making sure the issues are understood before taking a position or making a decision. As usual, we are, collectively, satisfied by an idealism unencumbered by facts, or by any kind of reasoning from ideas to consequences. I fear an economic train wreck coming, masquerading as yet more self-righteous do-goodism, and arrogating ever more power over people’s lives to the state. This is not reform, it’s simply the entrenchment of Big Brother.

The ideal at issue can be summed up as the universal right to healthcare. That sounds great, but what does it mean? In order to get from ideal to sound policy, all three terms (universal, right, and healthcare) need to be understood – not only insofar as their general implications through historical usage would suggest, but also precisely how they are being circumscribed by the current context. We are far from any useful common understanding of any of this. In discussion, this ideal is sometimes modified to propose that everyone has a right to adequate healthcare. The “adequate” modifier is a step in the right direction, recognizing at least that there is not a lately discovered unlimited right to whatever we call healthcare, but at the same time, it really just adds a fourth term to the question requiring resolution. If we don’t know what adequate healthcare is, how can we craft policy to achieve it?

The central term of the debate, healthcare, is so vague and ill-defined that it can mean whatever anyone wants it to mean at any given time, and it invariably does – and you can be sure that trend will continue. Not one of the main actors in this debacle would dare to publicly define exactly what constitutes “healthcare;” they’ll simply proclaim loudly that it must be reformed! It must therefore be noted that the central idea of President Obama’s primary domestic priority is a weasel word which nobody actually understands, or can articulate coherently! This is a textbook example of how a commitment to a vague concept can be abused for unrestricted leverage in policy determination. The point, after all, is not actually healthcare (whatever that means), but “shaping the future of America.”

I am reminded of a saying that I must confess I once accepted as axiomatic (as does virtually everyone on the progressive left): that the rich get richer while the poor get poorer. No doubt the poor, like everyone else, sometimes do get poorer, and there are indeed scenarios where the above dynamic would hold true (e.g. with land grabs by the wealthy, or other usurpations of finite resources). But the saying is usually invoked as a denunciation of wealth growth in a capitalist context, where it makes absolutely no sense. As American wealth has grown, all but a tiny fraction of the populace has seen their standard of living rise to levels simply unimaginable to the vast majority of those whom history has called the poor. It turns out that a rising tide does indeed lift all boats, whether the progressives like it or not. The problem is that all boats don’t rise equally, and envy perceives this lack of uniformity in progress as an injustice, despite the fact that the process is actually working for everybody. Thus, it is an envy-occasioned blindness that gives rise to the mischaracterization of universal but uneven improvement as being a case of “the poor get poorer.”

Likewise, the actual problems in our healthcare system, and/or our healthcare delivery system, hardly seem to me to be of crisis proportion (after all, our healthcare system, by and large, is excellent, and the envy of the rest of the world). I agree that is prudent to be concerned about the rate of increase in healthcare costs proportional to the rest of the economy, but a large part of that cost increase is traceable to the technical revolution in the medical field, which is making more and more treatments available to people, yet which do not – and cannot – come free. Twenty or thirty years ago, we spent much less on medical costs, but we got much less in return. I don’t see anyone trying to turn back the clock on medical technology.

Because of the prevalence of third-party payers, whose role ends up encouraging the over-use of medical resources for non-critical and even frivolous problems, and who in turn have to bundle increased usage costs from both non-critical over-use and constantly emerging technological advances into their own pricing structure, consumers encounter premium increases that may not reflect their own usage of the healthcare system, eventually reaching levels that are economically disruptive, and even pricing them out of the market. We can talk about subsidizing these costs, but unless the causal issues are addressed, the costs are merely being shifted from one pocket to another.

The presence of these third-party payers has also distorted the pricing models of the healthcare providers themselves, inflating the pricing of direct payment markets to sometimes ridiculous levels, effectively eliminating the option of patients paying directly for as-needed a la carte care from providers, as had been the almost universal practice until very recently. This is part of what frosts so many young people who would prefer to stay out of the health insurance market (and who are likely to be forced now to take on these spiraling prices of the third-parties, both directly through premiums, and indirectly through taxation), that the costs for services for those without insurance plans are far and away higher than the insured indirectly pay through their third-party payer. Those who are uninsured not by choice are in an even worse situation. Simply requiring open accounting of provider pricing could go a long way in empowering cash customers (i.e. patients) in search of a fair deal.

The fact that the Democrats tried so hard to include a “public option” in the reform package demonstrates clearly that they do not understand the problems inherent in third-party payer systems, fail to see how sound risk management on the part of payers can limit those problems, and somehow still fail to grasp how much more distorted (not to mention corrupt) the market would be with an increased role for public agencies. It’s not that problems don’t exist in the delivery system; it’s that the Democrats seem bound and determined to make them worse in the name of making them better.

If the basic practical problem is that “healthcare” has become too expensive, there is absolutely nothing in the structure of the proposed reforms that will ameliorate that – in fact, all the guilty parties involved in this know full well that costs will increase. The Chief Actuary at the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has suggested that, with the Reid bill in place, healthcare spending, as a percentage of GDP, will increase from 17% to 21% over the next decade. Nice reform. I also have to assume that this estimate is not assuming overall economic damage, due to the irresponsible tax increases associated with this plan, shrinking the projected GDP, which would almost surely raise the percentage of that GDP spent on government regulated healthcare to an even higher percentage.

If, as it appears, the primary objective is to make “coverage” available to more people, the obvious first step should be to repeal the anti-competitive 1945 McCarran-Ferguson Act, and the second step should be to set up supports for policy portability. What we get instead are Constitutionally dubious proposals to wreak havoc on the medical insurance industry, which appear so poorly thought out that it makes me wonder if this plan is really intended as a time bomb to get a nationalized program in place through the back door of private sector collapse. OK, that’s paranoid. Still…

And, of course, the one surefire way to realize immediate, significant healthcare cost reductions for everybody, tort reform, is, as always, nowhere on the Democrat’s radar as far as I know, despite the fact that, again, everyone involved knows what a real difference this would make. What a disgrace.

Boy, am I growing weary of the political environment. What George W Bush did for for international relations with his “with us or against us” rhetoric, Barack Obama is doing to the political climate within the country with his treatment of political dissent. Of course, nations actually do operate in an environment of mutual belligerence, which is forever flaring up as actual warfare in some corner or another, whereas nations are supposed to operate, internally, with a civility stemming from civitas, but why split hairs?

Perhaps it’s unfair to blame Obama for the whole mess, but then again, it’s not. He’s the unquestioned leader of the ruling left wing in this country, with the power and ability to set the tone, and he sits back and watches the fissure. Whether that’s because of incompetence, or because he senses political advantage in it, I’ll let the reader judge – we’ll assume he doesn’t enjoy it for its own sake. He may pose as someone seeking unity (show me a politician that doesn’t!), but in the real world, he uses and approves actions and tactics that reveal a very different kind of leader.

So, we have Rep. Joe Wilson being censured by the House for blurting out “You lie!” during an Obama campaign speech before the joint Houses. Can we call it that? Maybe an infomercial? No, he didn’t pay for it. I think “policy address” is the official term – I’m not sure – but whatever it’s called, it was nothing but a powerful man using the bully pulpit available to him to advance his agenda. Nothing wrong with that, but why is it being treated as if it were some kind of sacred religious service?

It’s kind of creepy, really, the way the setting is being portrayed in the public propaganda narrative. I will admit that, for a few seconds, I felt like I was watching British Parliament instead of the U.S. Congress, but the “sacred” halls of American power were built for the rough and tumble of modern liberal politics, not for the circumspect adulation of Divinely appointed royalty that the whole liberal enterprise set out to overthrow. And, like many, I don’t remember a previous occupant of the Pennsylvania Avenue throne whom the public propaganda narrative depicted as deserving of such circumspect adulation. Creepy, I tell you…

But I think what bothers me the most about the whole affair is that Wilson is being accused of introducing incivility into the proceedings. What a load of crap. Undoubtedly, Wilson was absolutely fuming over just having been called a liar in front of both Houses of Congress, on national TV, by the President. Obama set the tone from his pulpit, and Wilson fired back in defiance from the cheap seats. It had been only perhaps 15 seconds before Wilson’s outburst that Obama had accused opponents of his, who included “prominent politicians” (and while speaking to the joint Congress, it’s pretty tough to misconstrue that reference), of lying about the implications of his proposed end-of-life panels of experts: “It is a lie, plain and simple” he stated baldly. Even I was dumbfounded at the time that he would say such a thing, and I’m not even a radio or cable talk show host, nor a prominent politician.

So we see yet again that we reap what we sow. But who is even talking about Obama’s incivility, his tactics of divisiveness and marginalization, or his responsibility for setting the tone of discourse at the level of personal insult? Incredibly, Teflon Barak just accepts Wilson’s apology, and sits back while Wilson gets savaged by Obama’s supporters, even to the point of being slandered as a racist for his outburst. Incredible.

At least there’s people like Scott Harrington over at the Wall Street Journal uncovering the dishonesty of Obama’s characterization of the examples he uses in his demonization of the insurance carriers. All that really seems to matter here to the President is that people’s contempt for, and distrust of, the insurance companies is fed and enforced. President “Hope, Not Fear” is willing to fudge the facts in order to scare people into thinking they need to buy his socialist snake oil to protect them from the ogres of the business world. Disgusting. Disgraceful. And depressing.

Meanwhile, the left wing picks up this theme of the “racist” calumny, which has been, at a minimum, simmering in the pot since the election cycle, and which has ever since been pulled out, time and again, to smear Obama’s opponents, and they bring it to an absolute boil. It’s not just effete TV celebrities and fatuous journalists slinging the slander now, but high-level political leadership among the left wing, including former president Carter, Rep. Steve Cohen, Rep. Hank Johnson, and undoubtedly many more I could find if I wanted to waste my time Googling for the info.

Suddenly, the air is ablaze with insinuations that opposition to Obama’s policies involves “elements of racism.” The verbal trick here is to morph the idea that racists are opposed to Obama into the idea that people who are opposed to Obama are racists. The trick is made all the more clever by feigning subtlety by referring to “elements.” If racists are opposed to Obama, them some of the opposition to Obama is racially motivated, therefore opposition to Obama is at least partially racially motivated. Hence, the implication is clear: If you are opposed to Obama, you are part of the partially racist opposition, and therefore you are (at least) partially racist. Not that opposition to his agenda has anything to do with his person anyway, but there I go splitting hairs again, and getting off-narrative.

This is shameful, of course – and sinful – to be slandering people with the “racist” label as a means of trying to advance a political agenda. This is so regardless of how corrupt the political agenda is: even a noble cause is irreparably defiled by ignoble tactics. But aren’t such tactics the very warp and woof of progressive political argumentation? It angers me – as it is angering an increasing number of people – to be called a racist for being a political dissenter (as I snicker at the thought of what these same snide and cynical  folks would have had to say about my support for Alan Keyes’ presidential bid in 2000), but in a sense, it’s just the typical fare that is served up for dissenters from the orthodoxy of progressivism. There’s just an assumption at work that if you reject the progressive orthodoxy, you have bad motives.

It’s not because you think the programs are bad, it’s not because you think you have a better idea, it’s not even because you’re mistaken, it’s because of your bad motives. Hence, if you oppose so-called liberal (socialist, really) policies concerning the welfare of the poor, it’s obviously because you hate the poor. It’s not possible that you think those policies will actually be bad for the poor, you just hate the poor. Case closed. “Hate” is a very important word in the lexicon of the left – it explains just about all dissent. How clever.

But this “racism” game is going to run aground before long. There are too many people seeing through the facile “solutions” of the left – and especially of the salesman-in-chief. That means there are increasing numbers of people who are going to be uneasy – if not outright offended – by the mean-spiritedness of the chimerical “racism” slander, and they’re going to push back.

Suddenly, Nancy Pelosi is fretting about the right wing stirring up a frenzy of violent opposition (shades of “right wing terror threats”  in the form of returning Iraq veterans!), but she couldn’t be more wrong. People get violent when they’re angry, and the Rush Limbaughs of the world don’t get people angry (except liberals, that is). What gets people angry – angry enough to fight – is being insulted, having their character and integrity questioned.

Whatever anger is out there on the right is not there because of political activism or talk-radio manipulation, it’s there because these are good people, who are good neighbors, who love their country, and who are fed up with being told they are “haters” of one stripe or another simply because they retain some semblance of conservative moral and/or fiscal values. Nancy Pelosi is too much the stooge of her ideology to see that, but I think Barack Obama is politically astute enough to recognize it. When the violence comes, it won’t come from the right, from those folks “clinging to their guns and religion” who place so much importance on law and right public order, and I think Obama knows that too. What I don’t know is whether or not he thinks he can survive politically without ratcheting down the “hate” speech. I suspect that will depend on what happens over the next few months with his health insurance takeover plan. We shall see.

While Pope Benedict XVI is busy bracing the winds of ill-will to find a way to heal rifts of schism within the Roman Catholic Church, the Anglican Communion continues to rush breathlessly toward implosion. Harvard’s Episcopal Divinity School announced today the appointment of the Reverend Dr. Katherine Hancock Ragsdale as the new president and dean of the seminary, a woman with apparently no academic credentials whatsoever, but who luckily happens to be an ordained lesbian Episcopalian priestess. Not only that, but she is a stalwart supporter of the legal right to kill prenatal children, and executive director of a self-identifying “progressive” organization, Political Research Associates, devoted to saving the world from conservatism – which includes, says their homepage, reports explicitly aimed at “debunking” the value of marriage in combating social ills such as poverty! Yes, God save us from marriage, and other right-wing conspiracies – by all means.

I reckon that, at this point, that’s about all the credentials you need to be charged with the formation of the ECUSA’s intellectuals and divines. I’m tempted to say “last one out please shut off the lights,” but I have a hunch carbon footprinting is probably the highest priority moral issue in those environs these days, so there’s probably no need. I’m sure I sound cynical, but, well…