Practical Philosophy

Practical Philosophy & the Constitution:

Ms. Megan McArdle is quite right to say that ethics -- which is the type of philosophy she and her interlocutor are practicing here -- ought to have some real-world relevance. The old phrase "hard cases make bad philosophy" (which also exists: "hard cases make bad law") is true, and it's true for just the reason she brings up here. The amateur (or very clever) philosopher will simply abstract until they've removed all the negatives from whatever they wanted to prove; or until they've removed all the positives from what they wanted to disprove. This is a form of sophistry.

The argument being put foward is, 'So, if we could provide perfect health care to all people at a low cost, shouldn't we do so?' The concept is that, once you endorse the principle that you should do so in a perfect case, we need only to slowly expand to engulf all the imperfections.

Yet wait: Even in that perfect case, I have a practical objection. Listen to the principles Ms. McArdle lists in her counterargument:

■We have some obligations to future generations, if not necessarily future individuals within those generations. Extreme thought experiment to clarify the principle: we cannot strip mine the earth and leave them to die.
■People have no obligation to perform labor for others. I may not force a surgeon to save my mother at gunpoint. (To be sure, I might. But society would justly punish me for doing so.)
■States have an absolute right to tax their citizens to provide public goods, i.e. goods that are broadly beneficial but non-excludable. They have a right to enact other laws, such as public health rules, to achieve similar ends. Both rights are constrained by the basic rights of their citizens. You may perhaps quarantine Typhoid Mary. You may not shoot her.

■Societies have a right to organize themselves to improve the justice of their income distribution. That organization may include taxation. It may also include property rights, or outlawing behavior like blackmail.
■Property rights did not spring full-blown from the head of Zeus into a natural right. They're contingent, evolving arrangements that happen to work really, really well for encouraging many sorts of beneficial economic activity.

■Just income distribution is not just a matter of relative position, but also of how the income is acquired, and absolute need. I do not have any moral claim whatsoever on a dime of Warren Buffett's fortune, because I have a perfectly adequate lifestyle. I still wouldn't have any claim on his fortune if he suddenly got 100 times richer, provided that he acquired that money through means that we regard as licit.

■Societies should strive to organize themselves so that everyone in the society can, if they desire, acquire the means to provide their basic needs.

■There is no per-se right to health care, since "health care" is not a thing, but a shifting collection of goods and services with amorphous boundaries. Health care is a subset of the modern "basic needs" package, and therefore falls under broader distributional justice claims. No matter what your distributional justice intuitions are, it would be perfectly acceptable, if impractical, to give very sick people the cash required to treat their cancer, and let them blow it on a trip around the world.

■No one should have to work more hours for the state than for themselves. This should inform our approach to taxation.

■Taxation should strive to equalize the personal cost of taxation among all members of society, not the dollar amount or the percentage of income. That is, it is appropriate for Warren Buffet to pay a higher percentage of his income in taxes for shared public goods than I do, because the personal cost of taking 25% of his income is much lower than the personal cost of taking 25% of mine.
■An equal distribution of misery is not a good social goal. When policies to redistribute goods or money result in fewer or poorer quality goods being available, that cost should limit the redistributive impulse.
■If people will not comply with your regime, and their non-compliance may have unpleasant results for themselves or others, this is an important side constraint.

■The government should not interfere in voluntary transactions unless there are significant direct externalities. The fact that you get stressed or unhappy thinking about something does not qualify as a direct negative externality. Nor does the cultural miasma that emanates from these transactions.

■The government certainly should not forbid anyone to purchase something on the grounds that other people are not able to purchase that thing.

Some of those principles are very sound, and others I might argue; but there is something noteworthy missing from them.

What is missing is the Constitution.

The discussion they are having would be a very nice one for a state in some early stage of formation. However, we've had that discussion. The government was allocated certain powers, only. Not one of the Founders ever dreamed that they were endorsing a government that would provide insurance coverage, or provide doctors, or otherwise provide health care to anyone at all -- far from "every citizen" in the country (plus, perhaps, any other persons in the country, legal or illegal).

The Founders provided us with a means for allowing the Federal government to assume sweeping new powers: the Constitutional Amendment process. So, here is a principle missing from the debate that belongs there:

■ For the Federal government to assume major new powers, that goverment must ask for new authorization for those powers from the People through the amendment process.

"But Grim," you might say, "you know perfectly well that it is impossible to get a Constitutional amendment through such a divided electorate. You're merely attempting to rule that the other side isn't allowed any realistic option for enacting its program."

Not so!

First, the Founders were very well aware of the difficulty of the process they proposed. They were especially aware that it might outright prevent contentious issues from ever becoming Federal law. That was the whole point.

The stability of the government, of the nation, and of the polity all depend on not ramming rapid, massive changes through in the face of severe opposition. Just such behavior had led to civil wars and rebellions across Europe in the period when the Constitution was being written. Two of special moment to the Founders were the English Civil War and the Covenanter movement in Scotland.

That is why the Constitution they wrote requires not only a supermajority of representatives and Senators. It also requires the States to ratify the amendment, each one considering the issue separately in its own space. Without the vote of a supermajority of the States as well as Washington, the Federal government may not assume new powers. It especially may not assume vast new powers touching every citizen in the nation, and every State in the Union.

The amendment process the Founders settled upon was precisely the opposite of the method the Obama administration chose here. They decided to try to pass a law before anyone could even read it, and before the August recess when Congressmembers might have to hear from their constituents about it. Far from asking the States to ratify their approach, they tried to prevent anyone living in the States from having the chance to express an opinion. They would have had Washington insiders decide the issue alone.

Sweeping changes that travel through the legitimate process have to be heard at length, fully argued, and enjoy broad support across the several states as well as within the Federal government itself. That is the way the system is meant to work. It doesn't matter how good your philosophy is: that's the system.

Second, if in fact you could 'provide health care to everyone at minimal cost,' you might well be able to win even the more arduous argument. The problem is, you can't. A substantial number of Americans have lived in countries that have tried, or have traveled in such countries, or have experience with the health care industry, or in one of many other ways become aware of the practical limitations.

Don't tell me, though, that the argument couldn't possibly prevail if it were really true. If the government could actually provide 'perfect health care to all people at low cost,' it would be a very salable idea.

It would sell even through the Amendment process.


What is causing all this revolutionary "water-the-tree-of-liberty" rhetoric at the tea parties is the rank refusal to consider this basic constitutional question. The Federal government wants simply to assume vast new power without asking the States or the People outside of Washington. They may not.

If there is a single philosophical principle that ought to be defended in this debate, that is it. It's not even a question of whether health care is a right or a commodity, whether it's right to want the government to provide it to the citizens or not. The main issue is that they were never given such authority. If the Federal government wants it, it may not simply seize it with no reference to the States or the People. Washington can't do this alone. If they want to make a massive change to the basic nature of the government, they've got to ask for new authority.

The fact that Washington has discovered that it has the power to ignore the Constitution does not make it right. Does everyone remember when George W. Bush, while President, stated that he had Article II power to hold prisoners indefinitely? Remember how badly he was excoriated for that (though the Obama administration appears to agree, now that they are in office)?

Yet at least he made a reasonable attempt to show that the suspension of habeas corpus was rooted in a genuine, spelled-out Constitutional authority of the President's. What is the Constitutional justification for any of this? For the "investment" in General Motors? What limits on the Federal government will Washington recognize?

Wow

Wow:

Block out fifteen minutes and watch this.

Islamic Scarves

The Right to Choose (the Scarf):

Naomi Wolfe has an article in the Sydney Morning Herald (a fine Australian newspaper, that) on the subject of Islamic women who really like to wear their veils and scarves. The article has generated some controversy, but I'd like to explore the concepts she raises because I've heard women in Iraq say exactly the same thing that she has these Moroccan women saying.

Indeed, many Muslim women I spoke with did not feel at all subjugated by the chador or the headscarf. On the contrary, they felt liberated from what they experienced as the intrusive, commodifying, basely sexualising Western gaze. Many women said something like this: "When I wear Western clothes, men stare at me, objectify me, or I am always measuring myself against the standards of models in magazines, which are hard to live up to - and even harder as you get older, not to mention how tiring it can be to be on display all the time. When I wear my headscarf or chador, people relate to me as an individual, not an object; I feel respected." This may not be expressed in a traditional Western feminist set of images, but it is a recognisably Western feminist set of feelings.

This is a point that I have heard from Iraqi women, from American women who have had to travel in the Middle East, and from Israeli women who have operated within the Arab world. It harmonizes very nicely with the piece we were discussing lately on the subject of what it is like for foreign women to operate in the Muslim world, which is apparently highly aggressive towards foreign women particularly.

In addition, she's right to say that the feelings are 'recognizably... feminist.' I can think of several women who read this space who have, at times, expressed a sharp desire for a public space in which women are treated without reference to sexuality. Islamic society has achieved a success of a sort there: they do have a public space in which (local rather than foreign, veiled or otherwise scarved) women may operate without being "on display" or judged by their appearance.

One American woman I worked with found that the headscarf was a welcome refuge when working with Muslims. She spoke of the comfort she felt while wearing it, because it seemed to deactivate men's ability to think of her as a sexual creature. She had a freedom, then: when with those whom she wanted to consider her as a potential mate, she could be sexual if she chose; but when with others, she had a retreat.

Phyllis Chesler delivers an excoriation to Ms. Wolfe, however, pointing out that what is "a choice" for her (and for the American women I mention) is not a choice for many Muslim women.

Now that Wolf is no longer the doe-eyed ingenue of yesteryear, she sees the advantage of not being on view at all times. A Westerner, “playing” Muslim-dress up, Wolf claims that hiding in plain view gave her “a novel sense of calm and serenity. I felt, yes, in certain ways, free.” In addition, Wolf believes that the marital sex is hotter when women “cover” and reveal their faces and bodies only to their husbands.

Marabel Morgan lives! In the mid-1970s, Morgan advised wives to greet their husbands at the door wearing sexy clothing and/or transparent saran wrap with only themselves underneath. Her book, Total Woman, sold more than ten million copies. According to Morgan, a Christian, “It’s only when a woman surrenders her life to her husband, reveres and worships him and is willing to serve him, that she becomes really beautiful to him.”

Well, what can I say? Here’s a few things.

Most Muslim girls and women are not given a choice about wearing the chador, burqa, abaya, niqab, jilbab, or hijab (headscarf), and those who resist are beaten, threatened with death, arrested, caned or lashed, jailed, or honor murdered by their own families. Is Wolfe thoroughly unfamiliar with the news coming out of Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia, and Sudan on these very subjects? Has she forgotten the tragic, fiery deaths of those schoolgirls in Saudi Arabia who, in trying to flee their burning schoolhouse, were improperly veiled and who were beaten back by the all-powerful Saudi Morality Police?

The point is well taken. Ms. Wolfe's approach discusses the issues of the veil as if they were about Westerners being unable to accept an "alien," "Other" approach to sexuality. She writes as if this is what Muslim women really desire, and that the fault is ours for not understanding them. In fact, in very many cases, the various forms of the veil are enforced rigorously: they are not a choice.

Ms. Wolfe is not wrong, however, when speaking of cultures where there is choice. She mentions France, and its war against the hijab, as an example. Here in America, too, women have the freedom to choose if they like.

Women have tended to choose against the veil, or other clothes designed to 'deactivate' their physical beauty, given the choice. USA Today was just describing how even some nuns now wear "street clothes," since Vatican II gave them the choice. Married women in the West once wore veils over their hair as a normal part of their attire, but increasingly rarely since the 1600s.

There is a choice available that makes that much-desired "public space" more readily attainable for women. However, that choice -- for whatever cause -- is unpopular (even with nuns!). You can see from Ms. Wolfe's writing that there is a certain value placed on it by those who still practice the custom. However, as Ms. Chesler points out, given the physical coercion involved, it's hard to say how much of womens' praise of the veil is rationalization of something they couldn't escape if they wanted. For women I've known in the Middle East, it was a choice that was valuable to them; yet only a few of them wanted to be veiled among other Americans.

Was that due to some similar social pressure: not beatings and stonings, but a fear of scorn or disdain? I'm not sure, myself, not being female; but I suspect that it has to do with a desire to be perceived as "normal." In the Muslim world, "normal" wears a veil; in the West, it doesn't. Insisting on wearing one here is a choice that would be accepted, but it would also be a signal that you demand to be treated differently than everyone else. While people would accept that, generally speaking, it would result in you being placed in a special category off to the side, rather than being part of the general society. Many people, and perhaps especially many women, value social interaction to a degree that makes them want to be accepted as widely as possible.

Still, the answer to that is only that there needs to be a movement to make it common enough that it ceases to be unusual. Not, mind you, that I'm advocating such a movement; no more than I'm advocating against such a movement. I'm merely interested in the issue because I've observed it in several places and through several lenses.

American Royalty

American Royalty:

"It's time to embrace American royalty," declares the Sock Puppet, while making a very good point:

We're obviously hungry to live with royal and aristocratic families so we should really just go ahead and formally declare it...

I'm afraid that all these Kennedy retrospectives make it clear that he's right.

Except, hm... Kennedy, Kennedy... no, no mention of it in this article.

No, he's mad that Jenna Hagar, nee Bush, was given a job. Nothing about the Kennedys at all.

Hm. Well, probably it will occur to him soon.

What?

The Nobility of the Horse:

It's been a long time since I posted a horse photo, once a regular feature of the page. The horse is a noble animal, admitted to the narrow range that features also dogs and men, and very rare cats.



What?

Oh, you're wanting dog pictures too. Philistines on the sidewalk. Fine.

A Year With The Romans

"A Year With The Romans":

Open Letters has endorsed a project by that name, in which their monthly magazine will feature reviews of Roman writers' works -- I gather, every month for the year. The author, Steve Donoghue, has the first piece here, reviewing Quintus Curtius Rufus' writings on Alexander the Great.

I'm encouraged by the comments section of the piece, which suggests that the readers are not taking any foolishness. Mr. Donoghue will have to up his game to satisfy them, which will probably be good both for him and for his future pieces.

One part of the review, toward the end, touches on something I have been thinking about from some other readings. You have here a Roman reflecting on Macedonian conceptions of what it means to be "a free man," and on the proper relationship between a free man and his state (in this case, his king). The occasion is a mutiny by Alexander's men. The classic Greek warrior -- and remember, Alexander modeled himself consciously on the heroes of the Iliad -- was led by a "first among equals" king, not an absolute monarch. It was the Persians who believed in kings who were set far above their subjects. The Greeks fought in a warrior band:

You wanted Macedonians to kneel before you and worship you like a god! You betrayed the memory of your father Philip, and if some fashion elevated a god over Jupiter, you’d despise Jupiter too! We are free men – are you surprised we can’t endure your vanity? What can we hope for from you, if even innocent men must face death, or worse than death?

It’s possible that by this point in his world conquest, Alexander really did fancy the idea of Persian-style absolute monarchy over the hillbilly egalitarianism of his native Macedon. We lack the written records to say for certain, but men have been known to become thus corrupted.

"Hillbilly egalitarianism" is a terrible phrase. It misses the spirit of the warrior band, who are "egalitarian" only among themselves: heroes, who are brothers against the world!

It also misses the real issue of the Roman system, and particular the Roman law. Henry Charles Lea captures the issue in The Duel and the Oath, his work on judicial duels and oath-swearing in European law.

The Roman law concentrated all power in the person of the sovereign, and reduced his subjects to one common level of implicit obedience. The genius of the barbaric institutions and of feudalism localized power.

Lea's "barbaric" nations were chiefly the Germans, Franks, Angles and Saxons whose traditional laws were in competition with the Roman law among Medievals trying to determine the right way to write laws of their own. The Roman law generally speaking preferred to place power in the hands of authority. The Germanic peoples preferred to place power in the hands of men of honor: that was why they favored systems of compurgation, which would allow men of honor to establish your innocence by swearing that they believed in it; and systems involving trial by combat.

The official Medieval understanding of trial by combat was that God would defend the right, so that the just cause would win. The underlying root is that sense of honor that runs the risk of sacrificing life for what is loved: if a man loved something enough to peril his life for it, that love and honor stood before the court as overwhelming evidence unless it was equalled by another champion on the other side. If it was, they would fight.

You can see how this is a system that would appeal to warriors, far more than a system of submission to higher authority. That latter system might impose any humiliation on them, and indeed, the very act of submission to it in the first place was a humiliation. All this system of judicial combat asked was that they be ready to die when they could no longer win. As that was the daily fact of their lifes in the days of combat by shield-wall -- and, likewise for the Greeks in the days of the phalanx -- it was an entirely acceptable bargain.

If they were self-interested in that way, the champions of the Roman law were likewise driven in part by the expectation that they could benefit under their preferred law. The Papacy's special authority was exercised by men not always practiced in physical combat, but expert in argumentation, logic, and intricate legalism. The main advocate of the Roman law was the religious, who pressed for submission to authority as a way of maintaining their predominance in the law. Lea:

An important step was gained when in 1146 Henry II, as a concession to the papacy, agreed that ecclesiastics should not be forced to the duel; but this did not extend to the Scottish Marches, where by law an ecclesiastic was as liable as a layman to personal appearance in the lists; if he presented a champion he was held in custody till the event of the duel, when, if the champion was defeated, his principal was promptly beheaded.

The papacy remained a stern enemy of judicial combat, and especially of forcing churchmen to it. Their success was uneven and limited, however, and Innocent IV resolved certain issues confronting his papacy through wager of battle. He was successful in this regard, probably reinforcing the notion that God was in fact defending His favorites. Even so, the Popes preferred law by evidence and argument, not by the sword, or the oath of trusted men.

On the Other Hand

On the Other Hand, the Eugenics are Great...

Mark Steyn adds another piece of information to the Canada picture:

As a result, this once proud Dominion now has to import sperm. According to CTV, 80 per cent of Canadian women who conceive through donor sperm are getting it from the United States, mainly from men in Georgia...

Well, then! Another generation or two, and it should be quite livable up there.

Rest in Peace, Mr. Kennedy

Rest in Peace, Sen. Kennedy:

I wasn't going to say anything at all on the subject of Senator Edward Kennedy's death. I'd rather not be unkind to a man at a time when his family is suffering the grief that is natural to any such passage.

However, Dr. Althouse does raise an excellent point, based on the information that Chappaquiddick jokes were a particular favorite of his.

If Teddy always "saw the other side of everything and the ridiculous side of things," then that's an open invitation. Despite his death, we can make all the Teddy Kennedy jokes we want. If anyone should see fit to criticize us, they need to know: Teddy wouldn't have wanted it that way.

That's not an unreasonable assertion, actually. Taking the story as its author plainly intended it -- and those men who worked with Kennedy seemed almost invariably to have liked him -- jokes at the deceased's expense might be an honest expression. Such jokes are not unusual at Irish wakes, and Kennedy was Irish enough. For ideological foes, often astonished at how much the man was let to get away with because of his name and willingness to vote 'the right way,' such jokes are even a tribute of a sort. They point to just how astonishing his record actually was.

Here is a good collection. I'll quote a few that I liked. If you have others, include them in the comments.

"Declassified papers report that John Kennedy was taking eight different medications a day. He was so wasted, his Secret Service code name was Ted Kennedy." —Craig Kilborn

"It's Bring Your Daughter to Work Day. This tradition began about 25 years ago down in Washington, D.C. by a quick-thinking Ted Kennedy who was spotted leaving his office with an 18-year-old." —David Letterman

"What a nightmare I had last night. I dreamed I was at a Washington party and I had to choose between Dick Cheney taking me on a hunting trip or Ted Kennedy driving me home." --Jay Leno

Canada Healthcare

So, What's It Like To Live In Canada?

An interesting perspective on the subject of healthcare comes from reading this company's page. They make a living by helping Canadians escape their government-run system, and get what they need in the United States of America.

The Canadian government apparently spends a lot of energy brainwashing its citizens to believe that they have no right to buy health care. Several points in the FAQ are about convincing people they really do have a right to take care of themselves.

Is it legal to go outside the Canadian health care system in this manner?

Yes. It is illegal in Canada to "jump the queue," but perfectly legal to leave the queue and receive treatment outside the public system.

Doesn't this contribute to a "two-tier" healthcare system?

There is already a multi-tier system in Canada. Workers Compensation Boards, the RCMP, the Indian Affairs Ministry, insurance companies and the Federal Corrections Department regularly pay for their clients/prisoners to receive prompt medical care at private surgical clinics in Canada. Recently, the spouse of a deputy provincial health minister sought our help to leave the queue to get private medical care. In November 2005, the CBC aired a one hour documentary on their program "The Passionate Eye" on which they pointed out the fallacy that Canada still has a one-tier system. Our organization, Timely Medical Alternatives was featured prominently, on that show.


Isn't jumping the queue against the Canadian way?

Indeed it is. Inmates in Federal prisons and politicians (among others) routinely jump the queue and we agree that this practice is outrageous. Jumping the queue occurs when convicted criminals and politicians are given preference over the rest of us. When they jump to the head of the queue, Mrs Brown - who had been at the head of the list - is forced to relinquish her place in line. Our clients don't jump the queue; they leave the queue and obtain timely care outside the public health care system.

...

What does the government think about Canadian residents leaving the country to get timely medical care?

Who knows what governments really think. Realistically, they are happy when anyone leaves the 875,000 person waiting list-or at least they should be! The bad news is that Canada is one of only 3 countries where citizens are forbidden, by federal law, to pay a care giving medical facility for treatment. Hence the long waitlists. The good news is that, unlike the other two - Cuba and North Korea - Canadians are still free to seek care beyond the borders of their home country.

So: you're a Canadian who needs medical help. Months drag on. The suffering makes you think about escaping the system, to get the care you need. Still, you feel guilty about not suffering while you 'wait your turn.' You've been told your whole life that it's selfish and immoral to want to get care just because you are in pain: a good Canadian should take his suffering with patience and quiet dignity.

With great effort, you finally overcome the moral inhibitions that your government has inculcated in you. Enough, at least, to ask the question -- if I did choose to pay for my care, how much time could you cut off these months of waiting?

So you ask:

What do you mean by "Timely"?

In general, we can arrange surgery in the U.S. within 17 days.

File that away, when we talk about health reform, and rationing, and the use of 'moral' persuasion by the government to help control costs. This has been something we have talked about especially in terms of end of life care, but it is not only relevant there.

A Shame

Shame, Islam, and the West:

Arts & Letters Daily has a link to a piece from World Affairs Journal, on the subject of foreign women traveling or living in the lands of Islam. For the most part, it is just as bad as you'd expect. Female US Soldiers seem to be treated respectfully in Iraq, in my experience, but they are in uniform and armed, and accompanied by other soldiers who are likewise armed. When our women are traveling alone and unarmed, things are not the same.

A couple of the interviews were worse than I expected. What makes these cases worse is that we were worse.

Here is what happened to her in Kabul—and it’s essential to remember this occurred decades before the Taliban made life for women completely intolerable. Chesler’s American passport was confiscated at the airport: she never saw it again. Her young “bohemian” husband became, as she notes, “another person”: cold and distant, a sometime defender of polygamy (his father, to Chesler’s surprise, had three wives) and champion of the veil. Chesler quickly discovered that “Afghans mistrusted foreign wives”—and her walks around the city, invariably barefaced and without the long coat or gloves urged on her by her in-laws, made her the target of lewd advances and crude insults. When she fled to the American embassy, “the Marines would bring me back home every time,” she recalls. “I was the wife of a foreign national. I had lost my citizenship.”

That was forty-five years ago. This was only nineteen years ago:

Undeterred, in 1990 she returned to Saudi Arabia, gathered her children, and brought them to the U.S. Embassy. At which point, as The Wall Street Journal reported well over a decade later, embassy Marines were summoned to expel the family from the premises. The Saudi authorities had an even more effective solution: they arrested Stowers. She left the country. But at 12 years old, her daughter was still languishing in Saudi Arabia, married off to a cousin.

America betrayed its duty to Ms. Stowers and her daughter in 1990. It has tried to make up for it. The President of the United States personally addressed the issue in a meeting with Prince Bandar in 2002. Congressman Dan Burton apparently took up the matter of Ms. Stowers in 2003. He met with the daughter, who at that time was 19.

Congressman Dan Burton of Indiana has been investigating why Monica Stowers and other American mothers have not been helped by their own government.

“The State Department, in my opinion, for the past 10-15-20 years, has not done their job properly,” says Burton. “Every Embassy in the world, every consulate in the world ought to be a safe haven for American citizens.”

Last August, Burton led a U.S. delegation to Saudi Arabia. They were armed with a list of 35 American kids he says have been kidnapped from their mothers....

It took more than a decade, and a dogged congressman, before an exit visa was finally issued just days before Burton's committee arrived. But for Amjad, the visa may have come too late.

It turns out that two weeks before Burton's trip, Amjad's father arranged a marriage for her to a 42-year-old Saudi military officer who already had a wife and five children. He sat right next to Amjad when she met with Burton.

“She told me she wants to come to America. She said that to me at least 10-15 times. But then she looked at him and said ‘But not now,’” says Burton. “All you could see was her eyes and she was crying.”

The State Department could easily have done its duty in 1990, instead of ordering the United States Marines to expel from US territory citizens they should have been sworn to protect. Congressman Burton's resolution defining that duty for their future reference may be read here. Because they did not do their duty when they had the chance, neither the President nor Congress has been able to make things right.

Elevator Shaft

Late Night Jello:

Iowahawk imagines a conversation between an older lady and a hospital orderly.

You're a Christian, aren't you, Mrs. Petrowski? Me too. I guess my favorite part of the Bible is where it talks about how we all get our allotted "three score and ten." Seventy years, right there in the Bible. And you are, now what was it, 83?

Okay, 78. Still, that's what, eight years over your biblical limit? That's one amazing overtime run you're having, I'd say. Almost unnatural.

Psalm 90:10 actually does imagine you making it to fourscore years. Still, there's reason in it to cheer the heart of an orderly of the type Iowahawk imagines.

OOF

"For Political Reasons"

The President's uncle -- remember how he'd liberated Auschwitz? -- has a few words on his nephew:

SPIEGEL: Mr. Payne, early in June your great-nephew, President Barack Obama, will visit the former concentration camp Buchenwald, which you helped liberate at the end of the war. Will he be travelling in your footsteps?

Charles Payne: I don't buy that. I was quite surprised when the whole thing came up and Barack talked about my war experiences in Nazi Germany. We had never talked about that before. This is a trip that he chose, not because of me I'm sure, but for political reasons.

He says some nicer things later in the interview, but that was a pretty cruel cut.

Speaking of which, Cassandra has another contest.

I think the phrase is "sympathetic magic".

You know, take an umbrella if it looks like rain, and it won't rain, but if you didn't you'd get soaked.

So my first reaction on seeing this was: "But it will."

Healthcare Reform Named After Ted Kennedy Must Not Suck.

I suspect that the naming of things is still has power.

Well, Now, Lads:

Let's have a look at the Near Cosmos:



Each one of those dots is 100 billion stars. Have a drink or three with my compliments; and God Send Us A Merry New Year.

H/t: Dad29.

Hey for Christmas

"Hey for Christmas!"

Late August is probably the wrong time for Christmas; but as I missed the last feast, if not the holiday, perhaps you will excuse me.

One of my favorite early music groups, The Baltimore Consort, has a wonderful Christams album that I've recently discovered. The ultimate song is exactly the kind of merry brawl that so characterizes traditional music, when our feasts were sweetened by fasting.

Then they sat down to their good cheer
And pleasant were both maids and men,
And having dined and drunk good beer,
Then they rose to dance again,
And thus did they did dance from woman to man...

Then they went to the little thatch house,
And played at cards a game or two,
And with the good liquor did so carouse...

The pots blew out, the glasses were broke,
the game was scattered all by the fife,
Richard was pull'd down by the throat,
At which the hostess drew her knife!

They took the fiddler and broke his pate,
And threw his fiddle into the fire,
And drunkenly went home so late
That most of them fell in the mire...

I have fasted too, and perhaps I have learned something thereby. One thing I think I have learned is that the older music is better, and stronger, than what passes for music today.

That, of course, is just what you expect an old man to say: that the music of his youth is far sweeter and stronger than the music of today. If so, my youth was a thousand years ago. And maybe that is right.

Elizabeth Edwards

On Elizabeth Edwards:

My beloved mother refuses to watch sad movies. For a long time, even a sad scene in an otherwise happy movie was enough to convince her to refuse it. This was part of her method of turning off depressing or sorrowful thoughts, and focusing her life on happiness and joy. She has had more luck than most I know in taking control of her life, so there is probably something to the method.

A genuine tragedy, however, has the potential to be powerfully uplifting. There is a reason the "song of the goat" has been so popular since Ancient Greece, and it is the same reason that Shakespeare's greatest works are his tragedies. It is the same reason that the mountains are most majestic when you stand at the lowest place beneath them.

Alas, the life of Elizabeth Edwards has been a tragedy. I mean no offense by saying so. J. R. R. Tolkien's beautiful work on "subcreation" is best realized in his Silmarillion, with its description of the creation as a work of art: creation as a song. The tragedy also can be a song, and in fact reaches one of its peaks in the songs of opera. It may be that God wants to hear such songs, and asks them of us, from time to time.

Some who have heard that song have written well of it lately. It is a tribute to that sorrowful lady that pieces of almost unbearable sadness have been written in her name. Two such are here, and here. But they are not equal pieces. The sadness of the one is her own. The sadness of the other is the author's, a good man, and a blind.

Conservative Philosophy

Conservative Philosophy:

Cassandra had a post yesterday examining conservative philosophy, and there was some interesting discussion around its history. Via Arts & Letters Daily today, a review of a book hostile to conservatism. The author of the review was unimpressed, but cites an earlier book that made the point better:

A decade earlier, Raymond English had touched upon a similar theme in an article in The American Scholar titled “Conservatism: The Forbidden Faith.” Their point was that conservatism as a political philosophy runs against the American grain and thus will always play something of an incongruous and subordinate role in a revolutionary nation dedicated to equality, democracy, and restless change. While the conservative case for order, tradition, and authority may be useful as a corrective for the excesses of democracy, it can never hope to supplant liberalism as the nation’s official governing philosophy. As Rossiter put it, “Our commitment to democracy means that Liberalism will maintain its historic dominance over our minds, and that conservative thinkers will continue as well-kept but increasingly restless hostages to the American tradition.”

We often talk about Jefferson as liberal (classically so, not a part of the modern 'social liberal' movement), and Hamilton as the conservative. It's easy to forget, though, that Hamilton was extremely liberal compared to English conservatives of the day.

What conservatives want is the right kind of person.

For example, one of the thing American conservatives insisted on was restricting the franchise to men; who were white; and also had property in the community of a certain value. That was shorthand for the kind of person they thought could be trusted to exercise power.

But the American Revolution was fought against Europe's version of Traditional Conservatism, which is a philosophy much older than this country. Even the most conservative of the American revolutionaries were wildly liberal (in the Classical sense) compared to English conservatives of the day. Recall that the English, in those days, had a similarly restricted franchise; but it only elected the House of Commons; and that parliament had a House of Lords that could flatly override the Commons, as they trusted nobility of blood more than any commoner; and there was a King who could, in some circumstances, ride herd on parliament.

That situation had only been produced by a series of liberalizing revolutions: the original power had been concentrated in the person of the king and his loyal nobility alone. It spread to the class of knights (who were not nobility) only because of the absolute need of such men in the wars of the period; the lower nobility and their knights won rights from the Crown during the reign of King John, whose barons forced the Magna Carta from him. But that gave rights mostly to the barons and the King: it was only over time that it came to be interpreted more broadly.

Etc., through the Wars of the Roses, which was followed by a conservative re-concentration of power under the Tudors and the "Divine Right of Kings" vision that predominated under the Stewart kings. That led directly to the English Civil War, which was the first major expansion of commoner power; but there was a counterrevolution under Charles II, followed by a re-counter-revolution under James II, followed by several attempted re-re-revolutions under the Jacobites.

So, yes, Hamilton was a conservative next to Jefferson; but neither of them were conservative next to the English conservatives. They believed that "the right kind of man" wasn't just any common man, but a man of noble blood and descent.

Education couldn't make a nobleman of a commoner. Right? They didn't have the upbringing.

That's the position that conservatives hold here. Education can't make the right kind of man: only upbringing can do that. And they're right, exactly to the degree that Aristotle was right.

The question -- and for Americans, a very difficult question -- is exactly where you draw the line. How do you say, in a land that is sworn to 'liberty and justice for all,' that only the right kind of man can be trusted with power?

More, the lines have shifted so far and so often that it's hard to see where we draw them now. It wasn't true that only the king and high nobility could handle power: Washington handled it, and he was a tradesman. It isn't true that only white men can handle it: Dr. King handled it with great finesse. You can run this line down as far as you like.

Yet there is a basic truth there, one that Aristotle saw and that remains true. Not everyone is trustworthy, and it really is a combination of blood and upbringing that makes you so. That is, some people are born wicked, for reasons that presumably have a physical cause; and some are raised so that they can't see the right, but have notions of "justice" that include killing innocents to bring about the Caliphate, or aborting children that interfere with their pursuit of gratification, or the idea that lying is OK if it's for a good cause. Etc.

That's the conservative position: that there is a kind of natural nobility among men, who are the right ones to lead. They need to be (at least) free of 'bad blood,' such as leads to wickedness; and they need to be given the right upbringing from an early age. If you get that person, they can become a good ruler and a wise leader once they are educated.

But not just anyone will do.

The American experiment is a liberal experiment, which has made inroads expanding the franchise easy. Indeed, it's made them seem like simple justice:

As for the culture war—well, most conservatives would be glad to have it over with, if only cultural liberals and radicals would call a halt to their provocations. The historical record is clear that the first shots fired in every engagement of the culture war came from the left in the form of school busing, the abortion decision of the Supreme Court, the Mapplethorpe exhibition, political correctness on the campus, and (now) gay marriage. Indeed, what many call the “religious right” came into existence in the late 1970s in response to the Carter administration’s effort to deny tax exemption to religious schools on the grounds that they were segregated. Absent liberal provocations, there would have been no culture war and probably no “religious right” to wage it.

"Busing" and the Carter administration's attempt to force integration at religious schools are a good example of how the extension of the franchise was only part of the liberal project of empowering everyone equally. That's exactly the kind of democratic impulse that leads to the mob, to the tyranny of the majority, and to all the things that Cassandra warns against.

In the context of America, though, it's very hard to argue against them. The English could point to a nobility of blood or the divine right of kings; we threw all that out from the start. So what's left? We started with race (white) and property (you should own some): but racism hasn't proven healthy, to say the least that may be said; and while the focus on property worked well in some respects, it cannot be justified in an economic system that can sometimes overwhelm your ability to own property through no fault of your own.

In the decades after the Civil War, for example, fewer and fewer people in the South, black or white, owned their own farms. This was not because they were not working hard, but because the price of cotton was declining every year due to overproduction. Yet the farmers were not free to farm something else, because they could get no loans from the banks if they did not agree to grow cotton. The banking policy was set in New York, by national banks not the least bit interested in the question of whether farmers owned their lands, or lost it; or if they had any interest, it was in taking over the farm and reducing the owner to a tenant. Under such a system, you could quickly disenfranchise good, hard working yeoman farmers of the sort that were the backbone of Jefferson's vision: exactly the kind of people he wanted to have the right to vote. The bankers would retain their right.

It is crucial to be able to get 'the right kind of person' into office, if only to balance the worst instincts of the machine politicians, the various interest groups and lobbies. This is why Reagan was in fact a conservative: he was very much the right kind of man. It is why Sarah Palin was exciting to many conservatives, even though she plainly needed quite a bit of education to be ready for the role she was asked to assume. It was at the heart of McCain's candidacy, especially in 2000. It doesn't bear up well against machine politics, though: democracy is its enemy, because the right kind of person is not like everyone. They won't promise just anything, nor deliver all the wealth of the nation in return for votes.

The Republican machine hasn't been able to produce these kind of people: what we've gotten from them instead is "Compassionate Conservatism," which is just more promising up the wealth of the nation. Nor is it easy to see how a party of such people could prosper in a hyper-democratic environment. Virtue is not popular, and calls to virtue even less so. Yet what is even harder than getting the right kind of person elected in this environment is changing the environment: there is simply no practical way to restrict the franchise, to repeal the 17th Amendment, or to do anything else to make America less democratic. Even to say the words "Let's make America less democratic" sounds like treason -- democracy was the whole point, wasn't it? Isn't that why we went to Iraq?

Well, no, opposition to tyrants is not necessarily an endorsement of unlimited democracy: but, as the reviewer points out, George W. Bush's use of Woodrow Wilson's language makes it seem like it was. The Republican party, including its last real leader, adopted the language of the liberal rather than the conservative movement. In their domestic spending spree, they adopted its method as well.

Conservatism may be, not quite dead, but relegated to the fringe. Republicans may return to power, but they will no more be able to enact sweeping changes than the Obama administration has been able to do. What will produce the change is the coming collapse of the government, as it bankrupts and fails to meet its sovereign debt obligations. That day is ever closer. It is time to start thinking about what we would like to do when it arrives.

Now, the Bible

Now, the Bible:

The other matter was the Bible and its use in American politics and culture.

President Obama... has said that he hopes to be “an instrument of God.” (Shouldn’t we all.) And, the other day, I saw a photo of him next to a neon cross (pretty garish). I also read what he said about critics of his health-care plans: They were “bearing false witness.”

...

Kind of a funny country we’re living in. A beauty-pageant contestant says that she is opposed to gay marriage, believing that marriage is between a man and a woman — and she is pilloried as some kind of modern-day witch. But when Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Joe Biden, John Kerry, Bill Clinton — pretty much all major Democrats — express the same opinion: Everyone’s cool.

I know the standard answer: The Left (broadly speaking) realizes those Democrats don’t mean it; and they’re pretty sure that Miss California does.

He has more examples, but these are enough.

I think the issue is that the Left (again, broadly speaking) tends to hear religious rhetoric as a kind of bipartisan outreach. They forgive it in their own because they think 'well, the President has to reach out to the Right, and explain things in terms they'll understand.' They assume the speaker (being a left-wing politician) is 'with them' on questions of right and wrong, and don't get nervous that his faith might lead him to something they wouldn't like.

From a Right-wing politician, the Left tends to receive the rhetoric as outsiders. They assume the speaker isn't one of them, and he's speaking to others who are also not 'one of them.'

For the Right, the division isn't about whether the speaker is 'one of you' or not; it's about whether he's sincere or not. I assume most politicians who invoke God are doing so for purely cynical reasons, like a used car salesman telling you that he used to be a minister. While these people are annoying, they are not worrisome: I expect politicians to lie and wheedle, so it seems entirely within the nature of the beast if they do it.

However, a few men of genuine faith do become involved in politics. George W. Bush seems to have been one of those men. He spoke little about faith, and I think it was less to avoid scaring people, than because sincere faith isn't trumpeted. "Love is patient, love is kind. It does not envy, it does not boast, it is not proud."

That kind of faith reassures the Right, when it is present; but it terrifies those who do not share it. I can understand why. It is what the philosopher Soren Kierkegaard wrote about: what do you do if God calls you to something? What if that something is awful?

They were afraid that Bush was following his faith into Iraq -- remember the stories about how Bush believed it was the land of Gog and Magog? They were afraid he was following it everywhere. That would mean he was making decisions for reasons they couldn't understand or predict, and given the power of the office, that was terrifying.

In any event, this leaves us here:

1) Politicians who are insincere leftists may freely quote the Bible without scaring anyone, but they won't convince anyone, either.

2) Politicians who are insincere rightists would be better off not quoting the Bible, as it convinces the Left they are insane and the Right that they are liars.

3) Politicians who are genuine believers on the Left may freely quote the Bible, but probably won't. It won't scare anyone if they do, because the Left will assume they are 'one of them,' and will therefore receive the religion as unthreatening; the Right will respect the sincerity of the faith, even if they disagree about where it lead the believer.

4) Politicians who are genuine believers on the Right may freely quote the Bible, but probably won't: and they will terrify the Left regardless of their choice in this matter.

Scottish Heraldry

Scottish Heraldry:

Jay Nordlinger asks, "Who can wave the Bible?" I'd like to discuss that, and will do so above. However, first we must deal with another important matter.

Later in the piece, he makes the shocking admission that -- though part Scot -- he doesn't know what the flag of Scotland looks like. I hope that none of you are in that same category, but if so, let us fix it! The flag is the St. Andrew's Cross, the white cross saltire on a blue field. It appears in the upper left of this achievement:



Probably all of you have seen the Royal Arms of the United Kingdom, which quarter the arms of England (Richard I's three lions), Scotland, and Ireland. Did you notice, however, that -- when displayed as they are in Scotland -- the Scottish arms are given precedence? The Scottish lion rampant is doubled, instead of the English lions of Richard I. The Scottish national motto is also used, and the supporters are reversed. The crown of England steps aside when it comes to Scottish soil.

Here is how you have probably seen the arms, as they are displayed in England and elsewhere:



The Scottish flag partially inspired two additional famous flags. The Union Jack includes the Scottish flag (as well as the St. George's cross of England, and the St. Patrick's cross of Ireland). Also, the old Confederate battle flag was a nod to Scotland in its choice of the St. Andrew's cross, as many of its soldiers were of Scottish heritage. The battle flag's colors, and the use of stars-for-states, were inspired by the American tradition. The Confederates, after all, believed they were defending American traditions of independence and rebellion against overweening authority.

With all of that handled, we can deal with the other matter.

Puff

Subregionalism:

This is one of those puff-pieces that could only have been written by a career diplomat, unless it was by a "visiting scholar" who depends on both the State Department and the White House for access. If you dig down past about seven paragraphs of flattery and excuse-making, however, you do learn something about the direction of US foreign policy under the new administration.

The United States has abandoned the idea of working with its traditional allies. The author mentions the failure of the G8 as a vehicle for our policy: those nations, excepting Russia, are Cold War allies. NATO is barely mentioned in the article, but its continuing difficulty fielding real fighting forces in Afghanistan has shown how weak it has become in its original role -- that of a military alliance. The new vehicle? The author states that this is not clear: "the administration has an effort underway to determine whether the successor to the G-8 will be the G-20, or perhaps some other grouping."

The questions that Sec. Clinton is described as asking have been of interest to the military for some time. A model for addressing the question of building networks of sub-regional partners was considered here, in a piece from the US Army's War College. That model is not entirely theoretical: the US Pacific Command leveraged our relationship with Singapore to assert US interests on a Singapore-Malaysia-Indonesia alliance to patrol the Malacca Straits.

The Malaysians and the Indonesians both have reasons to wish to avoid a formal alliance with the United States. Malaysia, in particular, has a longstanding foreign policy that balances several local third-world governments against any great powers operating in the region. Direct partnership isn't an option for that reason: Malaysia won't have it, not with us. Yet they will partner with the Sings, and our strong alliance with Singapore allows us to exert indirect influence.

Indonesia, meanwhile, is a partner of extraordinary importance as both the largest Muslim nation on earth and a modernizing force within Islam -- but it is also a noted human rights abuser, and a competitor in some respects to a genuine ally, Australia. We would like to work more closely with Indonesia, but political pressures prevent it.

In spite of that, by building strong sub-regional partnerships, we are able to influence the entire area. We have the alliance with Australia, which allows for the good-cop/bad-cop influence on Indonesia; we have the partnership with Singapore, which allows us to influence and keep apprised of the patrolling of the Straits; we have the alliance with the Republic of the Philippines, to whom we provide direct military support in the form of the Joint Special Operations Task Force there, and diplomatic support also to their peace process; and we have another strong ally in Thailand.

One reason the relationship between Sec. Clinton and the military is as good as it is, is that many of the solutions she has been looking for were pioneered by the DOD. The piece makes a sketch of a bow to that fact, noting that a lot of 'statecraft' resources are currently at the Pentagon. Why would that be? Because the Pentagon was the one having the success in creating the desired effects.

This is true even for her signature focus on getting State to attend to 'nonstate' actors, especially those focused on 'women's issues': one of the key places for State officials to learn that is with an ePRT or PRT in Iraq, where the military has been setting up women's committees for several years. These committees are often initially resourced by American money -- formerly CERP, but these days State may be involved from the beginning -- and may meet at US-secured facilities (though that is also increasingly unnecessary).

I'm not sure I agree with the author that the Obama administration has had any notable foreign policy successes. The Clinton State Department, however, may be poised to have some internal successes. If so, the lady does deserve the credit for having both the sense to recognize practical solutions, and the personal power to move the bureaucracy to adopt them.

However, the piece seems to overstate the effects achieved so far. For example:

Even just a few months in, it's clear that these appointments are far from window dressing. Lew, Slaughter and the acting head of the U.S. Agency for International Development are leading an effort to rethink foreign aid with the new Quadrennial Diplomacy and Development Review, an initiative modeled on the Pentagon's strategic assessments and designed to review State's priorities.

Confer that assertion with this piece by Matt Armstrong, at Small Wars Journal, on the serious problems with USAID at State. USAID is one of the most effective arms of the State Department. Also relevant is Mr. Armstrong's commentary on State's failures at re-establishing a role in Public Diplomacy. You might say that he agrees that the Clinton State Department is an improvement, but with less effusive praise:

I'm not sure where Pincus has been, but until the recent year (ie. this year), the leadership at the State Department was out to lunch....

It is worthwhile to recall that it was the Secretaries of Defense (both Donald Rumsfeld and Gates) and not the Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice that frequently and seemingly continuously fielded questions about the need of resurrecting the United States Information Agency. It was Rice who raided the public diplomacy budget to help fund the Embassy in Baghdad.

Dr. Rice was indeed a disappointment, both as Secretary of State and as National Security Adviser. Sec. Clinton does seem to be an improvement over her, but there is a very long way to go. If State wants to begin reasserting its traditional perogatives, it can do worse than to start by trying to "buy back" some of those DOD strategic communication assets, and re-building USAID.

Now it's getting serious.

WASHINGTON (Reuters) - A U.S. Senate Democrat asked the top 15 health insurers to explain what portion of premiums go to profits versus patient care, putting further pressure on the companies to explain their business practices as Congress considers sweeping health reform legislation.

It's going to get real interesting, real quick, I think.

Rating Stars

Rating Stars:

I really have no idea why Haloscan is popping up this annoying "rating stars" code. I'll try to shut it off. In the meanwhile, if you have an opinion on what I have to say, please continue to express it in writing. :)

Ouch

A Rhetorical Slap:

Yesterday we noted the President's odd use of religious rhetoric. Professor Althouse slapped down one piece of that rhetoric.

BARACK OBAMA, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: These are all fabrications that have been put out there in order to discourage people from meeting what I consider to be a core ethical and moral obligation. That is that we look out for one other, that I am my brother's keeper, I am my sister's keeper. And in the wealthiest nation on earth right now, we are neglecting to live up to that call.

Now, we know that Barack Obama doesn't "keep" his actual brother — we remember George Hussein Onyango Obama, the brother who lives a hut....

Did you ever see a football player tackled so hard that it made your teeth hurt, just to watch it?

A true and fair stroke, though.

Smack

Smack!

Our friend Lars Walker does not generally believe in signs and portents.

I won’t go so far as to say that signs never come in our day, but I’m leery of them. Whenever I’ve thought I’ve seen a sign in my own life, it’s turned out to be an embarrassment. My church body believes that, in our time, those who have the Scriptures don’t need any further input on divine matters.

And yet, sometimes…

Sometimes, like today.

Oddities in Rhetoric

Oddities in Rhetoric:

Religious rhetoric from the Left: "We are God's partners in matters of life and death."

From the Right: 'Keep your laws off my body!'

Both are fairly reasonable sentiments, which is why they see use in rhetoric. The latter is a very powerful rhetorical trick in its normal usage, since it elides right past the fact that the laws aren't really interested in your body, but rather the one belonging to the child. The former admits that we normally hope to be aligned with God when we make decisions about life or death: we invoke God's blessing over births and executions.

The Honorable Mrs. Bachmann actually proposes a conservative concept for health care reform during her call. It's a sketch -- you don't get detailed ideas in this kind of format.

The Future of the Past:

In the early 1960s, curators at the Philadelphia Museum of Art noticed something funny about one of their modern-art sculptures: It smelled like vinegar. Worse, the once-clear plastic sculpture had begun browning like an apple, and cracks had appeared on its surface. By 1967, Naum Gabo's translucent, airy Construction in Space: Two Cones looked like Tupperware that had gone through the dishwasher too often.

I think I've talked about this before.

Trust

Trust:

I can see only good in this:

The left likes to say that conservatives hate government. The truth, and it holds for many people beyond conservatism, is closer to what Alfred Hitchcock said when he was accused of hating the police. "I'm not against the police," Hitchcock said, "I'm just afraid of them."

Congress's approval rating sits at 30%. This is a remarkable vote of no confidence in the representative branch of a national government.

In California and New York, the two most economically important and famous of the 50 states, the legislatures have been revealed as incompetent to manage the public's money. The budget crises in California and New York aren't just a normal turn in the fiscal cycle. Those governments have finally hit the wall.

Oblivious to manifest failure, the liberal-progressive idea keeps itself afloat on intellectual water wings—insisting that most people still believe that if government commits itself to accomplishing a public good, it will more or less succeed despite the difficulties and inefficiencies of these great projects. Needed good gets done.

That civics-book faith in the good intentions of government has been on the bubble with a broad swath of the American people who don't know left from right but only public performance. The Obama health-care proposal arrived at a particularly bad moment to be asking voters to "trust us."

Ezra Klein writes:

Americans Hate Everyone, Believe Everything

Wednesday's Wall Street Journal/NBC poll is disappointing stuff. It's not so much that the American people have turned against Obama's health-care reform effort as they've turned against the legislative process in general.

Yes, exactly. The American people trust government with nothing.

That distrust is well earned, and past due. We must solve our problems ourselves, not only without the government, but in defiance of its wish to intermesh itself with our concerns. It's 'the man in the arena,' as Theodore Roosevelt put it, that matters. He is the one fully engaged, heart as well as mind. A bureaucracy can, at best, devote only its mind. These critical, difficult questions are best solved at the lowest possible level, where the heart can be tapped as well.

Volte

Volte:

It's time for some more early music:



If you have eighty-nine cents to spend, try track nine here. If you've double that, and you want to hear a medieval drinking song worth the price, try track thirteen. "Istud vinum, bonum vinum, vinum generosum!"

Ex-soldiers burden

"Ex-Soldiers Don't Need to Be Told They're a Burden on Society"

So says the sub-title of this report, looking at "living wills" from the perspective of the VA.

If President Obama wants to better understand why America's discomfort with end-of-life discussions threatens to derail his health-care reform, he might begin with his own Department of Veterans Affairs (VA). He will quickly discover how government bureaucrats are greasing the slippery slope that can start with cost containment but quickly become a systematic denial of care.

Last year, bureaucrats at the VA's National Center for Ethics in Health Care advocated a 52-page end-of-life planning document, "Your Life, Your Choices." It was first published in 1997 and later promoted as the VA's preferred living will throughout its vast network of hospitals and nursing homes. After the Bush White House took a look at how this document was treating complex health and moral issues, the VA suspended its use. Unfortunately, under President Obama, the VA has now resuscitated "Your Life, Your Choices."

Who is the primary author of this workbook? Dr. Robert Pearlman, chief of ethics evaluation for the center, a man who in 1996 advocated for physician-assisted suicide in Vacco v. Quill before the U.S. Supreme Court and is known for his support of health-care rationing.

"Your Life, Your Choices" presents end-of-life choices in a way aimed at steering users toward predetermined conclusions, much like a political "push poll." For example, a worksheet on page 21 lists various scenarios and asks users to then decide whether their own life would be "not worth living."

The circumstances listed include ones common among the elderly and disabled: living in a nursing home, being in a wheelchair and not being able to "shake the blues." There is a section which provocatively asks, "Have you ever heard anyone say, 'If I'm a vegetable, pull the plug'?" There also are guilt-inducing scenarios such as "I can no longer contribute to my family's well being," "I am a severe financial burden on my family" and that the vet's situation "causes severe emotional burden for my family."

Let's all factor that in to our concept of what the Obama adminstration was thinking about with its push to universalize 'end of life' planning.

Co-ops

Profits in Health Care:

The AP has an odd Q&A piece on the "co-op" idea that ObamaCare advocates are floating, now that they've lost the fight to have the single-payer system they wanted, or the "public option" that was their second-best wish. The piece states that such co-ops have a "checkered" history, and that it is "unclear" if they would drive private insurers out of business. None of that is very helpful.

The oddest thing to me, though, is the question about how a co-op might be better. The answer is that the co-op advocates presume it could eliminate some costs, "including profits."

Profits are costs? That's a remarkably awful understanding of a basic economic concept.

Profits are revenue minus costs -- they're what is left over after you've paid for everything. Taking out the profits doesn't reduce the costs, which are the same either way. You can reduce profits by increasing costs, or by reducing revenue.

"But," one might object, "if you eliminate profits, you can make do with lower revenue. So, the price to the consumer is lower, because they don't have to provide profits for the co-op. It's enough that revenues meet costs, rather than surpassing the costs."

That revised concept still fails to grasp what profits are for. Profits are not costs, and the wise man doesn't seek to eliminate or reduce them.

Rather, profits are incentives. They encourage you to do something good for society, by providing you with something good in return. We want health care, right? Therefore, when someone offers to provide us with health care, we want to make it worth their while.

If we do that, more people will want to provide health care. They will be smarter people, too, the sort of people who could choose to do something else instead. That's good for everyone.

Profits are also responsive. Mark Steyn's point in his piece below was that, in a for-profit system, if your hospital isn't clean you can move to the one down the road. In the mandated, socialist system, that's not an option. Even if it were, though, why would the one down the road be any cleaner? There's no money in it. In America, being the cleanest hospital could quickly become a point of competition if attention were focused on it -- a competition leading to rapid improvements.

Lacking profits, the only way to motivate people is through negative consequences. If there's no positive incentive, you're left with regulations, punishments, and drafting unwilling people into service. You have a stick, but no carrot.

Profits are not costs. They're incentives. They're good. We should want more of them.

Hopsitals Kill

Hospitals Kill:

The Atlantic has an article that blames a father's death on the American health system.

Almost two years ago, my father was killed by a hospital-borne infection in the intensive-care unit of a well-regarded nonprofit hospital in New York City. Dad had just turned 83, and he had a variety of the ailments common to men of his age. But he was still working on the day he walked into the hospital with pneumonia. Within 36 hours, he had developed sepsis. Over the next five weeks in the ICU, a wave of secondary infections, also acquired in the hospital, overwhelmed his defenses. My dad became a statistic—merely one of the roughly 100,000 Americans whose deaths are caused or influenced by infections picked up in hospitals. One hundred thousand deaths: more than double the number of people killed in car crashes, five times the number killed in homicides, 20 times the total number of our armed forces killed in Iraq and Afghanistan. Another victim in a building American tragedy.

Oddly enough, that was precisely Mark Steyn's complaint with the Canadian health care system.

My father is currently ill, and the health "system" is doing its best to ensure it's fatal. When an ambulance has to be called, they take him to a different hospital according to the determinations of the bed-availability bureaucrats and which facility hasn't had to be quarantined for an infection outbreak. At the first hospital, he picked up C Difficile. At the second, MRSA. At the third, like the lady above, he got septicaemia. He's lying there now, enjoying the socialized health care jackpot — C Diff, MRSA, septicaemia. None of these ailments are what he went in to be treated for. They were given to him by the medical system.

Now, the first fellow says that those 100,000 deaths are "caused or influenced" by secondary infection. That "influenced" muddies the waters quite a bit. We don't know how many of those deaths are from the infection, versus from the original disease (with the infection just 'influencing' the course of that disease).

This study shows that the Canadian system infects 250,000 people a year with diseases. It lists only 8,000 deaths caused by those infections -- but it doesn't say how many are "influenced" by the infections. It's quite possibly rather more than 100,000.

The solutions being proposed in both cases are remarkably similar: clean your hands. Go through a basic checklist to make sure instruments are clean. A fair number of doctors aren't doing it in either country.

The problem isn't the payment system, then. The problem is the fact that hospitals collect people whose immune systems are already taxed by one disease or injury, and expose them to many other people with different diseases, many infectuous. The problem is that a number of sanitary techniques are not fully implemented. The Atlantic asserts that a government-run system would do it better, but the evidence suggests that there is no reason to believe that is the case.

Zombies

The Zombie Menace:

A screen shot from Memeorandum:



Hmm...

170th Infantry

170th Infantry Brigade:

Perhaps the Army's newest unit heraldry -- technically, it isn't even active yet, since it's approval date is not until 16 October, 2009 -- was designed by a friend of mine. The 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 1st Armor Division, reflagged as the 170th Infantry following their recent mission in Iraq. A new 2/1 AD will stand up here at home. The soldiers of the old 2/1 AD ("Iron Brigade") remain forward-deployed in Germany. Designing the new distinctive unit insignia was one of very many tasks handled by a certain lieutenant I could name (who was a captain by the time he left).



As tasks go, I thought that was a pretty cool one.

NO FAT CHICKS

A new PETA billboard campaign that was just launched in Jacksonville reminds people who are struggling to lose weight -- and who want to have enough energy to chase a beach ball -- that going vegetarian can be an effective way to shed those extra pounds that keep them from looking good in a bikini. "Trying to hide your thunder thighs and balloon belly is no day at the beach," says PETA Executive Vice President Tracy Reiman.

Yup, I think that's going to convince people. Really.

(via American Digest)

Man on Fire:

Dennis, over at Dennis the Peasant, has been laid up of late, and is using his convalesence to blog up a storm, principally on the failure that the Obama administration is becoming.

Just keep scrolling.

Like anybody should be surprised at this:
For the Left, war without Bush is not war at all

Remember the anti-war movement? Not too long ago, the Democratic party's most loyal voters passionately opposed the war in Iraq. Democratic presidential candidates argued over who would withdraw American troops the quickest. Netroots activists regularly denounced President George W. Bush, and sometimes the U.S. military ("General Betray Us"). Cindy Sheehan, the woman whose soldier son was killed in Iraq, became a heroine when she led protests at Bush's Texas ranch.

That was then. Now, even though the United States still has roughly 130,000 troops in Iraq, and is quickly escalating the war in Afghanistan -- 68,000 troops there by the end of this year, and possibly more in 2010 -- anti-war voices on the Left have fallen silent.

I remember the same sort of thing happening after the abolishment of Apartheid in South Africa, too.

Skara Brae

Skara Brae in Peril:

Not the cold, as you'd expect, but the sea threatens the oldest city in the North.

The city was abandoned five thousand years ago: a thousand years before this extraordinary find of an early British hero.

The carved capstone had sealed the grave so well that organic materials including wood, bark and leather survived intact as well as various metal objects. The man, who is believed to have been an important figure, had been laid out on a bed of quartz pebbles in sand, in a birch coffin, inside a larger stone chamber. He was buried with a valuable bronze dagger with a gold band — still in its leather sheath. There was also evidence of the remains of wooden possessions and floral tributes.

Whenever you find soft, organic material in one of these sites, it's exciting. To find it from four thousand years ago is amazing.

Conservatives

Conservative Nation:

I'm working on a piece on Federalism v. Progressivism; self-described "progressives" seem to be the chief enemy of the idea of pushing government down to lower levels. As that solution allows people with fundamentally different ideas about right and wrong to live in peace, it's a difficulty for a divided nation.

That said, and as I've often noticed, conservatives are the ones with the most to gain by concentrating Federal power. At the moment, though, it makes sense -- liberals have few friends anywhere except the Federal bureaucracy:

Self-identified conservatives outnumber self-identified liberals in all 50 states of the union, according to the Gallup Poll.

At the same time, more Americans nationwide are saying this year that they are conservative than have made that claim in any of the last four years.

In 2009, 40% percent of respondents in Gallup surveys that have interviewed more than 160,000 Americans have said that they are either “conservative” (31%) or “very conservative” (9%). That is the highest percentage in any year since 2004.

Only 21% have told Gallup they are liberal, including 16% who say they are “liberal” and 5% who say they are “very liberal.”

The 2008 exit poll, showing a disaster for Republicans, had a conservative advantage by 34/22.

Now, if only there were a conservative party.

Speaking in defense of my status as a lifelong Democrat, by the way, I'd like to point out that the effective opposition to the health care bill is largely coming from conservative Democrats. I've seen a few Republicans trying to claim credit, but the only one who seems to have done anything demonstable is Mrs. Palin -- now retired to private citizenship. The guys who are actually forcing the change in the policy are wearing D's.

A Crocodile

A Crocodile in Frolic:

I don't know what I like better about this story: the second photo, or the comment by Woz from York.

"Tick tock."

(H/t: Fark.)

Ayers != Emmanuel

Dr. Emmanuel:

In the comments to a post below, a commenter called "RV" stated that "Emmanuel is the new Ayers." Both Ymar and I objected to the characterization, and for good reason. Ayers was a terrorist, and to this day remains an unrepentant and proud one. Knowingly associating with him is a black mark on anyone's character, because he is an enemy of us all. The fact that he escaped judgment is not due to his lack of guilt, which he confesses -- proclaims! -- freely; and wishes only that he might have "done more" of the bombing and killing on which he built his name.

Dr. Emmanuel -- who states, Mrs. Palin noted in her piece, that his 'thinking has evolved' since his piece on rationing became public -- is someone who has a philosophy with which we disagree. He arranged for a friendly journalist to provide his version of the business here. The issues are laid out precisely as the Doctor -- and the President -- would like them understood, without questioning of any sort; but we've seen the other side, so read theirs also.

A final aside: I didn't realize he was Rahm Emmanuel's brother. I knew the Obama White House was a Chicago Way operation, but I didn't know it was quite that... ah, close-knit.

Or perhaps it's just more of that Obama luck, that his chosen medical advisor just happens to be his chief of staff's brother. The President has moved in very small circles here in America: the Ivy League, the Chicago machine, not much else.

Gene Wolfe

Gene Wolfe on J. R. R. Tolkien:

In the last days of my second tour in Iraq, I found myself with a sudden excess of time on my hands. I was done; all that remained was shipping myself home, giving a few last 'lessons learned' lectures on the way. Where there had been fifteen to eighteen hour days, though, I suddenly had a few hours each day to myself.

At the MWR, looking for anything at all to read, I saw a little yellow book called The Knight, by an author named Gene Wolfe. I normally cannot abide fantasy novels written after the death of Fritz Leiber; but it turns out that Gene Wolfe is of an age to still be writing good old fashioned ones.

That is to say, they are books that have the courage to believe in what they are telling you.

I see why, having run across this piece today. He speaks of Tolkien's ability to use art to convey an ethical vision of beauty:

As a child I had been taught a code of conduct: I was to be courteous and considerate, and most courteous and most considerate of those less strong than I -- of girls and women, and of old people especially. Less educated men might hold inferior positions, but that did not mean that they themselves were inferior; they might be (and often would be) wiser, braver, and more honest than I was. They were entitled to respect, and were to be thanked when they befriended me, even in minor matters. Legitimate authority was to be obeyed without shirking and without question. Mere strength (the corrupt coercion Washington calls power and Chicago clout) was to be defied. It might be better to be a slave than to die, but it was better to die than to be a slave who acquiesced in his own slavery. Above all, I was to be honest with everyone. Debts were to be paid, and my word was to be as good as I could make it.

A story that conveys that artistically is indeed a thing of beauty. This is what the old sort of writing was about. The dragon might be legendary, but the virtues were as real as stone.

How Strange!

How Strange!

What could account for this?

But the president, whose popularity and powers of persuasion may well make him the reform effort's most effective spokesman, encountered the same difficulty he faced at a town hall meeting this week in New Hampshire: For the most part, the critics were nowhere to be seen.

Goodness, how odd. It's like how last week he asked a little girl at random, who turned out to be the child of someone who had donated thousands of dollars to Obama. Just bad luck, I guess.

Afghanistan's Women

The Shia Women of Afghanistan:

Some of you may recall that earlier this year, the Afghan government came under fire for approving a Shia marriage law that was unfair to women. It resulted in some protests by Afghan women, which are unusual, and so the government promised to go back to the drawing board.

The new law is reportedly not much better. Unfortunately, the text is not available online as yet. Human Rights Watch, which has taken quite a bit of criticism over the years, claims to have seen a copy of the final law.

The law gives a husband the right to withdraw basic maintenance from his wife, including food, if she refuses to obey his sexual demands. It grants guardianship of children exclusively to their fathers and grandfathers. It requires women to get permission from their husbands to work. It also effectively allows a rapist to avoid prosecution by paying "blood money" to a girl who was injured when he raped her....

The law regulates the personal affairs of Shia Muslims - who make up between 10 and 20 percent of the population - including divorce, separation, inheritance, and the minimum age for marriage. The initial version of the law included articles that imposed drastic restrictions on Shia women, including a requirement to ask permission to leave the house except on urgent business, and a requirement that a wife have sex with her husband at least once every four days.

This law sits in a very strange place in the Afghan legal system. The Afghan Constitution has some fairly clear and explicit statements about the rights of its citizens.

Article Twenty-Two

Any kind of discrimination and distinction between citizens of Afghanistan shall be forbidden. The citizens of Afghanistan, man and woman, have equal rights and duties before the law.

The Shia "exception" is here:

Article One Hundred Thirty-One

The courts shall apply the Shia jurisprudence in cases involving personal matters of followers of the Shia sect in accordance with the provisions of the law. In other cases, if no clarification in this Constitution and other laws exist, the courts shall rule according to laws of this sect.

Finally, there is a relevant article in the section on changing laws.

Article One Hundred Forty-Nine

The principles of adherence to the tenets of the Holy religion of Islam as well as Islamic Republicanism shall not be amended. Amending fundamental rights of the people shall be permitted only to improve them.

It would seem that Article 22 is exactly the kind of "clarification in this Constitution" that Article 131 considers. It seems reasonable to believe that the law should be unconstitutional for that reason.

Article 149 complicates the matter. To the degree that it declares Islam to be the model for Afghanistan, it harmonizes with 131 but clashes with 22. Shia jurisprudence is certainly Islamic, and certainly admits to the model the law proposes. On the other hand, it states that anything that could be considered an amendment to basic liberties is not constitutional -- unless it improves those liberties. (We could use a version of that language in our own Constitution!)

I don't know how Afghanistan's government resolves a constitutional clash like this. I'm guessing, since it is patterned on our own form of government in key respects (like having a nine-member Supreme Court), that it would look to its court system. The oath of office repeats the verbiage from 149, with two additional invocations to underline the importance of adhering to Islam: "In the of God, Most Gracious, Most Merciful, I swear in the name of God Almighty to attain justice and righteousness in accordance with tenets of the Holy religion of Islam, provisions of this Constitution as well as other laws of Afghanistan, and to execute the judicial duty with utmost honesty, righteousness and impartiality."

So: what wins out? The 'tenets of Islam,' or the Constitution's explicit text? They appear to be in direct conflict.

One Man Shall Drive a Hundred

Mrs. Palin Presses the Fray:

One man shall drive a hundred,
As the dead kings drave;
Before me rocking hosts be riven,
And battering cohorts backwards driven,
For I am the first king known of heaven
That has been struck like a slave.

The lady was handled as roughly and unfairly as anyone could dream, when she first came onto the scene; not only her, but her children. Yet Senators and Presidents recoil from her, and she presses her claim.

I join millions of Americans in expressing appreciation for the Senate Finance Committee’s decision to remove the provision in the pending health care bill that authorizes end-of-life consultations (Section 1233 of HR 3200). It’s gratifying that the voice of the people is getting through to Congress; however, that provision was not the only disturbing detail in this legislation; it was just one of the more obvious ones.

As I noted in my statement last week, nationalized health care inevitably leads to rationing. There is simply no way to cover everyone and hold down the costs at the same time. The rationing system proposed by one of President Obama’s key health care advisors is particularly disturbing. I’m speaking of the “Complete Lives System” advocated by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, the brother of the president’s chief of staff. President Obama has not yet stated any opposition to the “Complete Lives System,” a system which, if enacted, would refuse to allocate medical resources to the elderly, the infirm, and the disabled who have less economic potential. Why the silence from the president on this aspect of his nationalization of health care? Does he agree with the “Complete Lives System”? If not, then why is Dr. Emanuel his policy advisor? What is he advising the president on?....

In the fall, when the Senate and the House must come together in conference, perhaps it may not matter. Yet if it does, she will have won this battle as a private citizen, writing arguments on her Facebook page. She's nothing more than that: not a governor any more, not a candidate for any office. Just a blogger, really; another citizen, like any of us.

Like any of us but for one thing: she has a bigger audience, paid for with the slanders and cruelty aimed at her children. They struck her, and now they must answer her.

Music, Story

Change the Music, Change the Story:

The New Axis of Evil

The New Axis of Evil:

It's you, according to the Senate Majority Leader. He does have the good grace to be slightly ashamed of having said it out loud.

Palin on Death Panels

Palin on "Death Panels":

Mrs. Palin -- who, as a private citizen, has the honor of having the President address her arguments by name -- responds to certain claims today.

A few days ago, when we were discussing her earlier letter, I said that I didn't think she was talking about Sec. 1233. In today's piece, she discusses her reading of 1233 at length, since the President interpreted her comments as pertaining to it; but adds at the end:

My original comments concerned statements made by Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, a health policy advisor to President Obama and the brother of the President’s chief of staff. Dr. Emanuel has written that some medical services should not be guaranteed to those “who are irreversibly prevented from being or becoming participating citizens....An obvious example is not guaranteeing health services to patients with dementia.” Dr. Emanuel has also advocated basing medical decisions on a system which “produces a priority curve on which individuals aged between roughly 15 and 40 years get the most chance, whereas the youngest and oldest people get chances that are attenuated.”

I had a feeling that was where she was pointed, because that's where you get a "panel" whose job it is to make recommendations about who lives and who should be let to die. Pro-health-care-reformist Mickey Kaus notes that Obama's own words strongly indicate that he favors such a panel:

He's talking about a panel of independent experts making end-of-life recommendations in order to save costs that have an effect at an individual level. And he thought it would be in the bill that emerges. ... It's also pretty clear that something like the "IMAC" panel is what he has in mind. Whether or not the IMAC would actually do this--Harold Pollack says end-of-life issues are well down the curve-bender's list, for example--Obama thought it would do it. . .

Indeed, what the President said was that "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives are accounting for potentially 80 percent of the total health care bill." If that's true, any savings would almost have to come out of care for them: almost all the money is being spent there to start with. Add in the fact that his advisor, Dr. Emmanuel, is pushing to focus our efforts on the remaining 20% of cases, and you can be pretty clear about what the President is thinking. We're going to save money, and we're going to do it by cutting the amount we spend on "the chronically ill and those toward the end of their lives."

Mrs. Palin is right about that. In spite of the arm-waving, she's quite correct to say that this is the vision being advocated.