Irving Kristol

From Myron Magnet (City Journal, The Godfather, R.I.P., September 18, 2009).

Irving Kristol, who died today at 89, was famously the godfather of neoconservatism, and he was the godfather of City Journal, too, having urged the Manhattan Institute’s then-president Bill Hammett 20 years ago to start a magazine.

R.I.P indeed. My condolences to his friends and family.

It would be a wonderful thing to face your last breaths knowing that you did everything you could to make the world a better place. In that sense only, Mr. Kristol's death was a wonderful thing.

His was a truly magnificent life and the world will be poorer for his passing.

---

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

The Usual

Ah, yes, the usual "when the Republicans had a majority" canard (Steve Chapman, Reason Magazine, The Republican Health Care Failure: Why the GOP should save a share of blame for itself), September 14, 2009):

But for four years under President Bush, we had not only a Republican president but also a Republican Congress.

And what happened? Nothing. Republicans left health care reform to wait until the Democrats regained power, and now the Democrats have.

Gee, a libertarian organization knocking both Republicans and Democrats. And they do that, why, possibly?

All that a simple majority allows is for the Party with the simple majority to set the agenda. It has nothing to do with getting anything passed. The Democrats successfully blocked victory of anything conservative by using the Filibuster rules, which require a super-majority of 60 seats.

When the Republicans did compromise to get a Bill passed, without leaving it to the Democrats to tackle, we ended up with the Prescription Drug program, a cash cow if there ever was one. That prevented a greater disaster, by leaving it in the hands of Democrats to craft a similar-subject and worse Bill, but it was still horrible. That's the political reality, but I wouldn't expect anyone from Reason to allow reality to enter into the mix.

There are/were liberal Republicans in the mix, just as there are conservative Democrats in the majority the Democrats have now, which is what is stopping the reform the liberal Democrats are trying to push through. The Democrats have a super-majority, but they can't get HR3200 passed because they don't have a liberal super-majority in Congress today, anymore than there was a conservative super-majority during Bush's first term.

You'd think that a group of people who proclaim to be about how unique individuals are would avoid fallacious arguments like this, but in politics, everything is relative, such as in this case, when the leaving out of facts that invalidates your argument. (Hey, Reason, "reason" requires relying on facts, not ignoring them.)

The argument should be that we don't need any reform of the health care industry. The fact that people are crying out for reform is an example of the public being duped by propaganda. The Congress has no authority to "reform" the health care industry... but never allow a political crisis to go to waste, and in this case, use it as an opportunity to assert that libertarians should be in charge, rather than Republicans or Democrats.

H/t Instapundit.

---

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Throwing the 'Bums' Out

One of the common political refrains these days is to throw out all of Congress. It was a recurring theme that ended up on home-painted signs at the March on Washington, D.C. on Sunday. People do not see a difference between Republicans and Democrats, so the response to that inability to see a difference is to throw blame at all members of Congress for the mess we're in today.

While I'm admit that the light that shines between some Republicans and Democrats is as thin as star dust, not all Republicans and Democrats were created equal. What's important to note, however, is that the lack of differences meme works both ways.

If we were to trying to measure how conservative or liberal someone was we might begin to understand that the ideological differences are regional, not Party.

Compare, for example, the voting records of the Blue Dogs versus the Republican contingent from the northeast. The differences are marginal. The Blue Dogs refer to themselves as conservative- or moderate-Democrats and bark when there are programs designed to increase the size of the government's budget.

But that, unfortunately, is where the major differences end. The Blue Dogs might not want to increase the budget of the Federal government, but they have no problem with increasing the power of government (Blue Dog Statement on President’s Address to Congress, September 9, 2009 [pdf]) or behaving like attack dogs in the yards of private industry:

“Blue Dogs believe we have a responsibility to pass health care reform legislation that is deficit neutral, increases the value and quality of care for all Americans, and that takes a responsible approach to controlling costs over the long term."

And:

“Blue Dogs agree with President Obama that the insurance market should be reformed. We must end the practice of denying coverage to individuals with pre-existing conditions, and we must eliminate the waste, fraud and abuse that is currently bankrupting the system."

It is not possible to reign-in health care costs and micromanage the way the Insurance market sets their rates or chooses their clients. If, for example, Congress was to pass legislation which prohibited the auto insurance industry from refusing to insure people with pre-existing auto accidents, it would be clear to everyone that auto insurance would rise for all, to cover the serial accident customer, especially good drivers, because they're the low hanging fruit with respect to raising rates. But somehow, magic would be applied to the health insurance industry to prevent that same outcome.

Congress has no authority to regulate the insurance industry, auto or health, other than applying universal rules to that industry, as they do any other, and that is the issue that few are willing to admit, or tackle. The only authority Congress has with respect to the health insurance industry is to reform Tort and put fraud criminals behind bars. The latter would require that government accept responsibility and actually do something, rather than pointing the finger at evil corporations. The former would target the professions of far too many Democrats in Congress.

A conservative Republican and a conservative Democrat are not the same thing.

Most of this is laziness. People want there to be a number, letter, or other symbol next to a person's name to identify them, to take the guess work out of voting. This is desired for the same reason that some students read Spark Notes rather than reading the text of the book assigned. It might not be forbidden, but it is unethical, and the only person the students are really cheating are themselves.

There are no shortcuts to vetting a candidate before voting for them. Even the ratings services, such as Vote Smart, require more than one search to determine a candidates' voting record or policy positions. Their policy statements often have no basis in fact and a comparison of their record to their policy statements is the only way to determine if they're being honest. But that requires work.

"Throwing the bums out" has been tried before. It never works. Often the new is worse than the old. There are always new bums, but more importantly, the good people get caught in the firestorm. It is simple-mindedness to believe that all of Congress are bad.

I happen to like my Congress folks, especially in my home district. They vote exactly the way I want them to. Why would I desire to throw them out?

"Throwing the bums out" is a punitive act, targeting a group, rather than the guilty. It is borne out of a desire to punish the many for the deeds of the few, and has nothing to do with reforming government. There are no shortcuts here, and the fault is not with Congress, but with us, the voters.

---

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Oh, Lady Lay, Get Over Yourself

For someone so smart, she sure gets it wrong. I will admit that I read Camille Paglia as the last sound voice among Democrats, hoping upon hope that someone who identifies with that Party will show themselves to be something other than a tool fool. At least she writes with an HL Mencken style panache. She is my only guilty pleasure and is the only Democrat to whom I give the time of day, but really it is to remind myself of how morally vacuous they truly are. Reading her is like believing that a cheating husband really means it this time when he says he'll straighten out.

Paglia disappoints again with her latest screed (Salon, Too late for Obama to turn it around?, September 9, 2009):

Democrats have managed to destroy the national coalition that elected Obama and that is unlikely to be repaired. If Obama fails to win reelection, let the blame be first laid at the door of Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi, who at a pivotal point threw gasoline on the flames by comparing angry American citizens to Nazis.

The only national coalition that existed was a fantasy in the mind of Democrats. While they constantly state Obama's election in terms of "landslide," the reality is that the margin of victory was incredibly narrow and was due to the masses of religious-conservatives (formerly Yellow-Dogs) staying home out of protest that McCain, of McCain-Feingold, was their Party's standard-bearer. The conservatives stayed home to teach Republicans a lesson, but the only one getting the punishment good and hard is, well, all of us.

Paglia may have believed that magic coalition was going to put an end to politics as usual, as Obama said he would do, but only fools believed him. What politician hasn't promised that? It was a classic case of wink-wink, nudge-nudge, as everyone to the Left of McGovern ssh'd their actual plans, and said whatever was necessary to fool the masses into temporarily allowing the Democrats a flash of majority. But like a child who has been caught with the neighbor's stolen toy, it will be ripped from their crying hands and returned to the rightful owner.

It seems that Paglia believed it, and more sadly, still believes the 1960s hype that Democrats have ever been about liberty rather than libertinism, and insipid emotionalism of the Baby Boomers pouting-ascendancy to Peter Pan-like adulthood, regardless of Lucy and her Diamonds:

I always thought that the Democratic Party is the freedom party -- but I must be living in the nostalgic past. Remember Bob Dylan's 1964 song "Chimes of Freedom," made famous by the Byrds? And here's Richie Havens electrifying the audience at Woodstock with "Freedom! Freedom!" Even Linda Ronstadt, in the 1967 song "A Different Drum," with the Stone Ponys, provided a soaring motto for that decade: "All I'm saying is I'm not ready/ For any person, place or thing/ To try and pull the reins in on me."

It isn't a nostalgic past. It is a fantasy past. Bob Dylan and Linda Ronstadt were always pandering commies, of the Guthrie school of serial wife-abandonment and alcohol abuse. Paglia is stuck in the 1960s vision of a world without bad stuff and the dazzling marketing of it being about peace, rather than getting a piece. Somehow, she manages to forget that the peace her comrades delivered came with the death of millions in the Killing Fields, and mass executions in South Vietnam. But what's a few million brown people dying have to do with that cool dream of a world without war, eh?

You'd think that after all this time, with the bodies piled up for all to see, she'd have figured it out.

Why has the Democratic Party become so arrogantly detached from ordinary Americans? Though they claim to speak for the poor and dispossessed, Democrats have increasingly become the party of an upper-middle-class professional elite, top-heavy with journalists, academics and lawyers (one reason for the hypocritical absence of tort reform in the healthcare bills).

I can't tell if she actually believes that nonsense or if she's repeating it like a mantra in hopes of convincing herself of a past that never was, and a Party that never has been.

The Democrats since Truman have been about one thing, and one thing only: Power. They actually admire the world's thugocracies and authoritarian societies as models of what is possible, rather than something to avoid. She sees it in the current crop of Democratic powerful, but refuses to look into the crystal-ball of history to notice that it was ever thus:

Weirdly, given their worship of highly individualistic, secularized self-actualization, such professionals are as a whole amazingly credulous these days about big-government solutions to every social problem. They see no danger in expanding government authority and intrusive, wasteful bureaucracy. This is, I submit, a stunning turn away from the anti-authority and anti-establishment principles of authentic 1960s leftism.

Because, Camille, self-actualization as practiced by the Baby Boomers has never been anything other than elevating the self above every other self., i.e, I matter and I have power and that comes by taking yours, rather than recognizing that there is abudance enough for everyone, if they just work for it. That's always been what the Me-generation believed, and there's no evidence to suggest that the most spoiled and coddled generation will ever be about anything else except blatant selfishness and materialistic gain. The expanding government authority will be their authority, so it won't be the same authority of their parents, so it will be different, this time! They still don't get that self-actualized, applied to everyone, means that no one is special, and no one gets to elevate their lusts above everybody else's lusts. Self-actualization is about overcoming and controlling lusts, not elevating them as some sort of laudable achievement. I have a really difficult time accepting that she doesn't see this.

The 1960s Democrats don't care about the poor and starving masses yearning to be free and they never did. That was just an excuse for a party and a reason to get high. They just want to have moon-lit parties at the base of the statue as a great backdrop as a party theme. They care about getting laid, getting high, and getting and doing everything else they want, without one shred of recognition that those things have consequences. In fact, it is the consequences of bad decisions that they've been battling with their entire lives. If they wish it really, really hard, perhaps they can continue to escape the banal reality that living life without a net means you really don't have a net, and it will hurt like Hell when the high wears off. They still want someone else to bear the burden of the consequences and feel their pain. The goal has been to figure out a way to make the high permanent.

But dreaming in the 1960s and '70s had a spiritual dimension that is long gone in our crassly materialistic and status-driven time.

No, it didn't. It was always about crass materialistic selfishness, but Paglia didn't see that through the pot fog and the marketing by music companies who released the peacenik-millionaires' pathetic music...

And sadly, she still doesn't.

---

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Reality Land

From Peter Wallsten (latimes.com, Obama is fast losing white voters' support, September 7, 2009):

Still unclear is whether Obama's slide in the polls is due solely to his policies, or questions about his personal background or allegiances.

It is not unclear. It's "all of the above."

The article is swimming in left-wing bias. Take this, for example:

...in which some conservatives accused him of socialism

We've been accusing him of socialism since he entered the race. It's now obvious to anyone with an above 4th-grade reading-level that the accusations (at the time considered smear-tactics) are true.

And then there's:

But the drop in support among whites also comes as some conservatives have stoked controversies...

By stoking controversies, he means, "reporting on the facts," but let's not quibble on the details, eh?

One such episode came to a head Sunday when Van Jones, Obama’s green jobs czar, resigned after a week of criticism over past inflammatory statements and for signing onto conspiracy theories questioning whether the U.S. government played a role in the Sept. 11 attacks. A White House official acknowledged Sunday that Jones had been vetted less rigorously than other officials.

Jones was vetted "less rigorously" than, say, the other dozen people who resigned or couldn't pass Congressional scrutiny. That's rich. The "past inflammatory statements" was a nice touch, too, and lets on to how the Democrats are going to spin that one in the future: It was in the past they'll say, and don't we all have skeletons in our past? It wasn't representative of how he is now. Silly conservatives, always predicting future behavior by actual evidence of the past behavior, rather than those hope-and-changey emotions!

There are a few more examples given how those mean-old conservatives have stoked fires, ending in:

These controversies have followed conspiracy theories that the president was born overseas and is ineligible to hold office, and that his true religion is Islam -- false rumors that some Democrats worry could be affecting the public's view of the president and his party.

Nice one, but the public is no longer buying it. Trying to lump legitimate criticisms in with the small segment of extremists worked until Democrats started accusing Tea Party attendees of being nutters. Those are people's friends and neighbors they've been slandering. The complicit media have to cover the President and hiding Obama's faults and disasters is getting more and more difficult. Blaming someone else for your troubles works for a while, but Americans really do believe that "the buck stops with the President."

What's important to remember is that Americans are willing to give a new President some slack, and expect a few stumbles as they get their Administration staffed. It becomes difficult to continue to blame Obama's mistakes on newness or staff ineptitude. Eventually, the only reasonable conclusion is that the flattering opinion of Obama was a mistake. The flattery was based on Obama being an unknown quantity, with people reading into the blank slate what they wanted to see. That's no longer the case.

During the campaign it was possible for Team Obama to distance the candidate from his socialist sympathies (few actually researched Obama's voting record or took seriously his association with former-criminals, his friendliness for left-wing dictators, or read his American-apologist/ progressive agenda spelled out in his books). But this (despite the White House staff confusion on the matter) is no longer Candidate Obama. He is now President Obama and the people ready to give him a pass for his history can't dismiss the reality appearing on the news every night.

I'll go so far as to make a prediction: While Obama will have a bit of a roller-coaster ride in the polls over the coming years, the general trend will be lead balloon. He won't get renominated by his own Party.

I don't know of a precedent for a President becoming a lame duck in their first year in office, but Obama has always been about beating odds. If Obama is half as smart as his supporters thought he was, he'll feign some sort of illness to allow him to step aside. I'm not certain that a narcissist of Obama's league can handle being loathed by so many.

When a politician can make Joe Biden seem like a brilliant statesman, you have to know how bad things really are in reality land.

H/t Instapundit.

---

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Succint

From Paul Howard (City Journal, It’s the System, September 3, 2009):

The real health-care problem isn’t moral, as the president claims, but structural.

What he said.

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Neo-Federalists and Competition

Wendell Cox provides us with proof that New York's current government policies are driving people from the state (City Journal, Escape from New York, September 1, 2009):

Not only is New York losing talented people to the rest of the country, then; it is also losing enormous financial resources at a time when it can least afford to.

Mr. Cox also details where the people in New York are migrating to, which includes:

• Florida
• New Jersey
• Pennsylvania
• North Carolina
• Georgia
• Connecticut
• Virginia
• South Carolina
• Maryland
• Texas

It would be reasonable to conclude that some of the people who are leaving New York to go to Florida are doing so as part of their retirement strategy (Florida, humorously referred to as "God's Waiting Room"). Some of the outmigration is for retirement, but not all of it. This means that people are discovering that there are greater freedoms and prosperity in other states in the nation.

California has similar outmigration statistics (with more productive citizens leaving the state than going to it).

That's all fine. If people want to move to other states in the nation, they have every right to do so. When looking at the unemployment statistics, it is easy to understand why people are leaving some states (New York, California, Michigan, etc.) in greater numbers than those going to them.

That's what competition is all about. States, like Texas, have become "business friendly" to encourage more people to come to the state to work and to create new businesses. This, of course, irritates the Democratic-majority states, because it means that there will come a point where their onerous taxes and regulations cause a person to run to a state without those burdens. It also means that these states will be left with the whey and not curds of society.

States have the right (and some would include duty) to make their state attractive to their current residents and to future residents. They can do this in many ways, but the significant methods include low taxation, recognition of rights, and greater job opportunities in traditional employment and in starting new businesses. When a state puts in place onerous restrictions on starting a new business, or penalizes the self-employed/small business owner over the employed-by-others citizens, it is not surprising that entrepreneurs are going to respond to the carrots being offered in other states.

This is why the Left has been doing its darndest to level the playing field. Neo-Federalists attempt this by inventing Federal authority to regulate more and more areas at the Federal level.

The recent attempts to Federalize health insurance and health care is just one example. As more and more of the entitlement dollars are fed through the Federal coffers (rather than through State coffers as the Constitution clearly stipulates), the competition between the states for productive and entrepreneurial citizens is diminished.

The goal of Neo-Federalists is to make the states indistinguishable so that their ideas of entitlements and socialism are imposed on all states, making escape from these types of tax burdens moot. In other words, the Neo-Federalist goal is to homogenize America by intruding on the legislative authority of the individual states.

Some states have or have attempted to make laws to weigh outmigrants with the tax burdens of the state, long after they have left the state. New York, for example, wanted to make it a requirement that businesses who move out of the state have to continue to pay New York taxes for 10 years. The idea that a one state can impose taxation on a business or individual who establishes residency in another state is a kind of indentured servitude (and it is unconstitutional).

Unfortunately, the Federal government has done just that, by rejecting residency as the single condition of tax liability. For example, if a U.S. citizen leaves the country and establishes a business in another country, they are liable for U.S. taxes. They are liable for those taxes, regardless of country of residency. All other countries rely on residency rules for taxation, not citizenship. Further, if that citizen renounces their citizenship, taking citizenship of another country, they are still liable for U.S. taxes for a period of ten years. We are the only country to do that.

That type of tax liability discourages people from starting businesses in a particular state, or in the U.S. in general. We also have one of the highest corporate taxes in the world, discouraging foreigners (and citizens) from creating new businesses in the U.S.

We must compete with other states and with other countries for tax dollars based on incentives, not punitive measures, if we want to stop the John Galt effect and the exodus of productive and creative entrepreneurs from our nation. Each state has the right to legislate their tax code in any manner they choose. They also have the right to regulate commerce in their state, imposing onerous rule and requirements or to be "business friendly."

Today, U.S. citizens have the right to vote with their feet, as many in New York are doing in response to the onerous regulations and taxes in New York. We must do everything possible to keep it this way. Reversing the trend and schemes of Neo-Federalists would be even better, restoring the legislative and taxation authority to the states, but that will require a Republican-party super-majority in the Congress.

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Power

From Heather B. Armstrong comes a post about the power of Twitter (Number 26, Containing a capital letter or two, August 28, 2009). I won't quote it, but ask that you read the whole thing.

The post is about a mother with a newborn who went through two months of Hell trying to get her brand new washing machine fixed. But that isn't really what the post is about. The details of her purchase and repair history is background for the result.

The result is that after an exhausting battle to get her new and expensive washing machine repaired, she resorted to complaining about the company on Twitter. That Twitter lashing worked.

For decades, most people were helpless. They had no recourse and no power to spread the word about bad customer service or a company failing to live up to its obligations. Social networking sites, like Twitter, have given the ordinary person the ability to get the attention they shouldn't need to get, just to get a company to do what they should do, without sounding an alarm that can be heard by nearly everyone in the world.

When Thomas Jefferson looked to the future of America, he hoped that a Free Press would enable citizens to call attention to failure, to Charlatans, and to a time when everyone had a voice. It took us over 200 years to develop the mechanisms whereby every citizen had the ability to publish truthful reports of their experiences, but it was worth the wait. Thomas Jefferson was focused on the people having the power to shed light government actions, but I think he'd be just as thrilled with these powers being used to further the experiment of an empowered people:

"No experiment can be more interesting than that we are now trying, and which we trust will end in establishing the fact, that man may be governed by reason and truth. Our first object should therefore be, to leave open to him all the avenues to truth. The most effectual hitherto found, is the freedom of the press. It is, therefore, the first shut up by those who fear the investigation of their actions."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1804

"The selfish spirit of commerce... knows no country, and feels no passion or principle but that of gain."

-Thomas Jefferson, 1809

Everyone now has a voice and access to a Free Press, and if that's what it takes to reform American industry, to make them accountable for what they do and what they sell, great.

It shouldn't require the Herculean efforts Mrs. Armstrong went through. Companies should have a moral code that prevents them from putting their customers through Hell. But they don't. But we'll make them restore that moral code and we'll use whatever lawful means necessary to do so.

It may seem like a trivial thing, making a stand about a faulty washing machine, but these things matter. They matter in big ways, because for too long companies could get away with this sort of thing... but they can't get away with it anymore.

We have the mechanisms to shed light on their failures. The Iranian government attempted to shut down communications through Twitter. The dissenters in Iran used Twitter and demonstrated that it is possible to use these tools as a communications organ to coordinate an organized, justified revolution against a tyrannical government. It is also possible to use these tools for evil. Using them to shed light on injustices, however grand or bland, is a power for the good, and we'll take the bad, because the power to do good is so much more valuable.

We have power unlike any we've ever had before.

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

---

H/t Instapundit.

Living Alone

I recently had a casual, personal, business dealing with a seemingly wonderful middle-aged woman. She lives alone. She didn't blurt out her living status, but the nature of our business transaction, and the conversation surrounding it, made it obvious. In lieu of a roommate or significant other, she had several pets.

The truth be told, I'd never really thought about this subject before (in this context). The idea that a middle-aged woman, who wasn't crazy and who was reasonably attractive and stable, should be living alone seemed tragic to me. Because I have children and a husband at home, the idea that I could be alone, totally alone (as this woman was), was something that began to fester in my mind.

So much of my socializing is focused on my family. There are constant, small interchanges: what's for dinner, is there coffee, the announcements of comings and goings, do we need milk or bread, and the usual assortment of good night/good morning greetings. Every night I share my bed with my husband and all the happiness and security that provides enables a kind of reset on the day's trials and tribulations.

The woman I met had none of that, although I'm certain she mimicks those family niceties and interchanges with her pets.

Man is a social animal and it has always been my belief that a madness of solitude can develop when people do not have an intimate social group (i.e., family). It keeps us humble, sane, and provides a minimum standard of happiness that everyone should enjoy. Research on couples has been interesting in this regard. Many of the studies I've read conclude that couples have the ability to keep each other on the straight and narrow.

Our culture has changed so radically in the last 50 years that I fear we're tinkering with disaster. When we look at programs (such as Social Security), the idea that people live alone and bear the entire burden of their housing and living costs, is something that is unsustainable. Living alone is not a state that will be able to continue once Social Security is modified, reduced, or means-tested. From that perspective, we need to be prepared for our social reeingineering to correct itself when these economic realities are forced on our culture.

Looking at it purely from an economic perspective, it is very wrong-headed, but looking at it in dollars and cents seems a bit callous. That said, living alone is an indulgence—a living arrangement that for economic reasons never existed before (in any great numbers).

There is no reason for that woman to be living alone, except that our culture has changed so dramatically that having a stable mate, or living with extended family, are no longer the norm. This is primarily a result of us having smaller families. At one time, this woman would have moved in with her sister, brother, or her parents if she found herself without a mate. She would have helped raise the children of her siblings or cousins. She might also have moved in with a long time friend (the stereotype of the two spinsters comes to mind), but the decision to live alone would not have been acceptable (because people from previous generations, although not as cool and progressively-minded as we are today, somehow knew that people were better off living among a stable family). That is not to suggest that women have never lived alone, only that it wasn't the norm.

Now it is difficult to explain why the various studies on couples show the data that they do (that couples are more mentally and emotionally stable than their single peers, as well as more financially stable and successful). Is the relationship itself casual to the outcome, or are the people casual to a successful relationship? It is possible that the reason couples remain couples is because of their generally good emotional health. It could be that the people who are prone to abuse their children, or prone to abuse themselves, find themselves as single parents (or single without children) because of those tendencies and issues. That said, it seems to be a reasonable conjecture that the everyday burdens of life are less of a burden with the cradle of stability of a relationship, even if the people themselves are more vulnerable to psychological instability, and it is that stability of the relationship itself that prevents those daily-life-burdens from diminishing our psychological health, when they are shared with another person. Couples tend to prop each other up.

I just can't get the woman's predicament out of my mind. What happened to our culture that enabled a sweet and nice lady to be so alone?

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Dark Humor/Play on Words

Yesterday my husband read a post about Ted Kennedy's death (I do not know where he saw it) that included the Latin phrase:

"De mortuis nil nisi bonum"

It literally translates to:

"Of the dead say nothing but good"

It is the source of the the English phrase, "Never speak ill of the dead."

But, applying the Latin literally to Ted Kennedy's death, the poster responded:

Ted Kennedy is dead?

-Good.

I was chuckling about it all day.
Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Ted Kennedy Dead

Ted Kennedy is dead (Senator Edward Kennedy dies at age 77 - Yahoo! News).

I have nothing good to say about the man and this news comes as no surprise. I have sympathy for his family, but I cannot help but think that his passing is good for America. There is a small chance that his replacement in the Senate will be less liberal than he, but at least there is hope that this illiberal legacy could end.

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Great Communicator

No, I'm not referring to Ronald Reagan with this title. I'm referring to Bill Whittle (of EjectEjectEject.com and Afterburner on PJTV). Bill's latest Afterburner episode (August 24, 2009) is brilliant!

PJTV: Afterburner, MSNBC and The Great Liberal Narrative: The Truth About The Tyranny of Political Correctness

Bill has a gift. He has the ability to distill history (and make it interesting) to validate his opinions. His optimistic view of America is very similar to Ronald Reagan's... which brings me to another great communicator, Faoud Ajami* who wrote a smashing essay about Obama's Humpty-Dumpty fall from the wall. In the essay (WSJ, Obama's Summer of Discontent, August 25, 2009), Mr. Ajami writes a bit about Ronald Reagan:

At the core of the Reagan mission was the recovery of the nation's esteem and self-regard. Reagan was an optimist. He was Hollywood glamour to be sure, but he was also Peoria, Ill. His faith in the country was boundless, and when he said it was "morning in America" he meant it; he believed in America's miracle and had seen it in his own life, in his rise from a child of the Depression to the summit of political power.

And:

At no time had Ronald Reagan believed that the American covenant had failed, that America should apologize for itself in the world beyond its shores. There was no narcissism in Reagan. It was stirring that the man who headed into the sunset of his life would bid his country farewell by reminding it that its best days were yet to come.

While Mr. Whittle doesn't yet have the wisdom and experience of Ronald Reagan, he certainly shares his optimism and exuberance about America, even if it is occasionally unfounded or rose-colored-glasses idealistic.

(*I had never heard of Faoud Ajami before, but if the WSJ article is an example of his typical writing performance, I can't wait to read more of him. WSJ states that he teaches at the School of Advanced International Studies, The Johns Hopkins University. He is also an adjunct fellow at Stanford University's Hoover Institution.)

But back to Bill Whittle...

I will admit to being a fan, while still maintaining my objectivity (I believe). Mr. Whittle manages to complain about leftist-intellectualism, while still maintaining a connection to average Joe, but he is clearly an intellectual himself (although not of the leftist persuasion).

This contrast sometimes causes a contradiction for Mr. Whittle, such as in his Afterburner episode about Sarah Palin's ill-treatment by the press (The Media, The Left and GOP Elitists vs. Sarah Palin: A Lesson on How to Destroy a Leader, July 27, 2009). Mr. Whittle makes a jab at intellectualism in that episode (transcript from EjectEjectEject.com):

She needs to be destroyed because the one thing that can never be allowed to happen is this: you cannot have a voice in this political debate. You know who I mean. You rubes, you hicks out there in flyover country. Your job is pay taxes, vote for who they have decided over cocktails makes them feel better about themselves, and occasionally provide your inbred idiot sons and daughters for the army or police force or whatever you people without Ivy League educations do with your tawdry little lives.

Meanwhile, the Harvard-educated elitist geniuses will run the country according to their infinitely brighter intellectual and moral lights.

[Emphasis mine.]

I think it unwise to tango with an anti-intellectualism/education message. It is also possible for conservatives to have Ivy League educations and be Harvard-educated elitist geniuses. It is possible to do all of that and not come out of school as a socialist-sympathizing drone. There are some who manage to get into Harvard or other Ivy League schools who don't have the necessary backbone and intellect to become something other than Useful Idiots. The concept of Garbage-In, Garbage-Out applies to their outcome.

While these degrees no longer confer the integrity and value they once had, the degree itself is not a disqualifer. We still have to do our own due diligence, regardless of the letters after a person's name or the letters on their parchment. Let me restate that in a different way: the degrees are neither a qualifier nor a disqualifier, in the sense of conferring superiority over the average Joe, but intellectual superiority exists (it just shouldn't be assumed if a person has a specific name on their college degree).

That intellectual superiority doesn't mean the average Joe has any less right to vote, any less command of his faculties or liberties, or is any less of a good person. It just means that the average Joe doesn't rise to the intellectual capacity of others, and those others include Mr. Whittle himself. That is why we qualify Joe with average when we speak of the majority of people in the country.

The moral sense, or conscience, is as much a part of man as his leg or arm. It is given to all human beings in a stronger or weaker degree, as force of members is given them in a greater or less degree. It may be strengthened by exercise, as may any particular limb of the body. This sense is submitted indeed in some degree to the guidance of reason; but it is a small stock which is required for this: even a less one than what we call Common sense. State a moral case to a ploughman and a professor. The former will decide it as well, and often better than the latter, because he has not been led astray by artificial rules."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1787

That's the contradiction of both Ronald Reagan and Bill Whittle. They manage to cloak their intellectualism in a way that makes it possible for them to communicate with Peoria, Ill. They relate to Peoria and Average Joe without a dumbed-down charade. I do not recall, however, that Ronald Reagan ever dismissed the value of education, in the way that Mr. Whittle did in the his Sarah Palin piece.

What Ronald Reagan never did, that Sarah Palin does (and Bill Whittle slightly stepped over the line in his episode on Sarah Palin) is pandering to the common man. Speaking plainly and directly doesn't mean speaking down to any one, nor does it include speaking in a colloquial manner, almost a stereotypical gum-chewing/smacking manner, as Sarah Palin does. Average Joe deserves more respect than that. The Office she held and the office she sought deserves more respect than that.

It is import to remember that President Bush has a Harvard degree. President Bush's accent and slight speech-impediment prevented him from earning the title of great orator. President Bush was a decent president who nobly rose to the occasion to handle the terrorist attacks of 9/11. He was the minimum standard of the intellectual capacity of a president. We don't have to raise the level to the Winston Churchill standard, but we should go no lower in our expectations with the bar set by George Bush.

If Sarah Palin has a superior intellect, she's done a fairly good job of hiding it. If she rises to the level of President Bush's, it remains to be seen. Reagan didn't hide it, he just didn't wear his intellectual superiority on his sleeve or rub anyone's nose in it.

This is better explained by Rudyard Kipling in his If letter to his son:

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings - nor lose the common touch;
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much;
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds' worth of distance run -
Yours is the Earth and everything that's in it,
And - which is more - you'll be a Man my son!

[Emphasis mine.]

Sarah Palin, by Mr. Kipling's standard is not a man. Of course we know that she is a woman, but the poem's message can apply equally to a woman. It is a poem about duty and responsibility, about both honor and integrity, and dealing with success and failure, and winning and losing with grace and dignity. Man is merely a shortcut for all that is admirable and needed in an individual to live up to his/her human potential.

I accept the basic premise that Sarah Palin got a raw deal with the press and continued to be plagued by nuisance lawsuits while Governor of Alaska. In my opinion, however, she whines too much and allowed what happened yesterday to demonstrate that she fails in the "neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you" Kipling requirement.

It is similar to the way that Obama continues to blame President Bush for all the troubles he faces today, rather than taking ownership for his policies. Harry Truman's famous "the buck stops here" remark sums up the quality so necessary in the President of the United States. Sarah Palin's raw deal is no excuse for her showing weakness to her current and future enemies.

Showing weakness was the quality most dangerous in John F. Kennedy, so much so that it created a dangerous situation for the United States (and resulted in the Russians acting upon the placement of missiles in Cuba). The Russians didn't consider putting missiles in Cuba on Eisenhower's watch (nor would they have considered such a thing under Ronald Reagan's watch). Weakness has proven to create an unncessary danger, encouraging bold actions from our enemies.

The Iranians knew to release the hostages captured during Jimmy Carter's term when Ronald Reagan was sworn in.

Superior strength is not a quality unique to men, in the strength of character and convictions sense, not the physical sense. No one would have found either Margaret Thatcher or Golda Meir lacking strength. Those women had balls!

Strength matters and so does intellect in leadership. It matters not only in our Executive, but in our citizens, but for the latter, not as much.

Sarah Palin may have left the governorship of Alaska for Alaska's sake and benefit, but it did a disserve to the entire country in the longer term. It is akin to the policy of not negotiating with terrorists. It may benefit the 20 or so current hostages to negotiate for their release, but the success of that negotiation, of getting something out of the act, sends a signal that kidnapping and terrorism is a worthwhile venture. So, too, with Sarah Palin's resignation as governor of Alaska, by sending the message that a form of legal terrorism can be successful. We all lose when swarms of nuisance lawsuits cause officials to leave their elected posts. Expect to see much more of it as a result of Sarah Palin surrendering to it.

Sarah Palin should have recognized that long term risk, and the fact that she didn't demonstrates that she didn't have the backbone, nor the foresight of the bigger, long term picture. It is those bigger, long-term pictures that education provides, once unique to the Ivy League schools, but possible to be gleaned from lesser known institutions, or by those driven to achieve greatness in intellectual development by self study and perseverance.

"That every man shall be made virtuous by any process whatever is, indeed, no more to be expected than that every tree shall be made to bear fruit, and every plant nourishment. The brier and bramble can never become the vine and olive; but their asperities may be softened by culture, and their properties improved to usefulness in the order and economy of the world."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1822

Not everyone is capable of rising to the same level. That is not a handicap for being a good person or a good citizen, but it should be a handicap for higher office.

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

- George Santayana

Obama fails the test on every count, but that is no excuse for conservatives to lower the bar, or dismiss the value of intellect, strength, and education. Let the Democrats pander to the common man, but require that our own, we conservatives, respect and speak directly (and honestly) to the average Joe, while simultaneously recognizing his intellectual limits.

"Above all things I hope the education of the common people will be attended to, convinced that on their good sense we may rely with the most security for the preservation of a due degree of liberty."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1787

As Ronald Reagan commanded that politicians "never speak ill of another Republican," the additional commandment I would add is: "Conservatives should never speak ill of education."

The glorification of ignorance and pandering will be our undoing.

"The mass of our citizens may be divided into two classes -- the laboring and the learned. The laboring will need the first grade of education to qualify them for their pursuits and duties; the learned will need it as a foundation for further acquirements."

- Thomas Jefferson , 1814

Bill Whittle, I believe, made a few mistakes in his Sarah Palin episode, but he demonstrates that he has the ability to deliver to a praiseworthy performance in his piece on MSNBC/Political Correctness—the latter is a five star package. Sarah Palin, on the other hand, has yet to demonstrate greatness, stamina, strength of conviction, or an understanding of the value of education and the intellectual grounding it provides to see the big picture, and to avoid history's mistakes. She may do so at some point, as Mr. Whittle has done in his episode of yesterday, but Sarah hasn't done it yet... and I refuse, absolutely refuse, to lower the bar for conservatives, simply because the Democrats have done so.

---

H/t Instapundit.

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Keep Yours

I cannot claim to military service and officially taking the oath to protect and defend the Constitution from enemies both foreign and domestic, but I agree with the sentiment. I think the gentleman in this YouTube video is one example of where Americans have found their voice.



If more Americans speak up and speak out as this gentleman has, perhaps documenting the decline and fall of this website's mission will be unnecessary.

The most important thing is to vote—and vote for candidates who understand the strict limits of the Constitution. The Federal government has no authority to regulate health care or to create a universal health care plan, but if we do not elect representatives who comply with those limits, it doesn't matter what the Constitution says.

Here is the beginning and the end of what the Constitution authorizes Congress to do:

Article I: Section 8:

• To borrow Money on the credit of the United States;
• To regulate Commerce with foreign Nations, and among the several States, and with the Indian Tribes;
• To establish an uniform Rule of Naturalization, and uniform Laws on the subject of Bankruptcies throughout the United States;
• To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures;
• To provide for the Punishment of counterfeiting the Securities and current Coin of the United States;
• To establish Post Offices and post Roads;
• To promote the Progress of Science and useful Arts, by securing for limited Times to Authors and Inventors the exclusive Right to their respective Writings and Discoveries;
• To constitute Tribunals inferior to the supreme Court;
• To define and punish Piracies and Felonies committed on the high Seas, and Offences against the Law of Nations;
• To declare War, grant Letters of Marque and Reprisal, and make Rules concerning Captures on Land and Water;
• To raise and support Armies, but no Appropriation of Money to that Use shall be for a longer Term than two Years;
• To provide and maintain a Navy;
• To make Rules for the Government and Regulation of the land and naval Forces;
• To provide for calling forth the Militia to execute the Laws of the Union, suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions;
• To provide for organizing, arming, and disciplining, the Militia, and for governing such Part of them as may be employed in the Service of the United States, reserving to the States respectively, the Appointment of the Officers, and the Authority of training the Militia according to the discipline prescribed by Congress;
• To exercise exclusive Legislation in all Cases whatsoever, over such District (not exceeding ten Miles square) as may, by Cession of particular States, and the Acceptance of Congress, become the Seat of the Government of the United States, and to exercise like Authority over all Places purchased by the Consent of the Legislature of the State in which the Same shall be, for the Erection of Forts, Magazines, Arsenals, dock-Yards, and other needful Buildings;--And
• To make all Laws which shall be necessary and proper for carrying into Execution the foregoing Powers, and all other Powers vested by this Constitution in the Government of the United States, or in any Department or Officer thereof.

There is nothing in there that allows Congress to take over the health care industry or to provide health insurance to anyone. The Congress has the authority to regulate commerce between states, but not to regulate all commerce. It is merely the authority to resolve inter-state issues and conflicts, as they occur, but nothing in-state.

If the people in a given state wish to entertain such an idea, it is within their authority to do so, but not at the Federal level.

Amendment X:

The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

Opting Out

I didn't intend for this site to become all Obamacare, all the time, but with 17% of the economy at stake, and the pending doomsday scenario of Obamacare, it seems like a worthwhile dalliance. On Instapundit today (They Can't Handle This, But They'll Handle Health Care?, August 20, 2009), Prof. Reynolds remarks:

They promised FedEx, but they’re delivering the Post Office. . . .

It is wise that Prof. Reynolds reminds us how inefficient the government can be, but it isn't necessary to predict that the handling of Obamacare would be akin to the Cash for Clunkers program--no crystal-ball gazing is required. It is appropriate to look at how the government currently handles Medicare reimbursements (apples to apples comparison).

Exhibits:

• Low Medicare Reimbursement Rates Hurt Hospitals in Iowa And California (Kaiser Health News, June 3, 2009):

Television Station KHQA 7 reports on how Iowa hospitals are losing millions of dollars a year because of low payments from the state and federal government. "For years Medicare pays 14 percent less than what it actually costs for hospitals to provide the care to patients. Medicaid payments are even lower and many times are late in coming..."

• Medicaid Payment Delays Deter Physician Participation (Health System Change, November 18, 2009):

"Medicaid payment rates matter, but the hassle factor also matters, and this study strongly suggests that higher Medicaid fees won't have the desired effect of increasing access if physicians have to wait months to get paid," said HSC Senior Fellow Peter J. Cunningham, Ph.D., coauthor of the study with HSC Senior Researcher Ann S. O'Malley, M.D., M.P.H.

• Doctors Are Opting Out of Medicare (Julie Connelly, New York Times, April 1, 2009):

Early this year, Barbara Plumb, a freelance editor and writer in New York who is on Medicare, received a disturbing letter. Her gynecologist informed her that she was opting out of Medicare. When Ms. Plumb asked her primary-care doctor to recommend another gynecologist who took Medicare, the doctor responded that she didn’t know any — and that if Ms. Plumb found one she liked, could she call and tell her the name?

• Medicare and Its Impact on Patient Care (Association of American Physicians and Surgeons, February 4, 2000):

• Almost 25% of doctors refuse to treat new Medicare patients;
• 20% of those who refuse to accept new Medicare patients, do so because of hassles and/or threats from Medicare carriers;
• More than one-third of doctors have trouble finding referral doctors for Medicare patients;
• More than one-third of doctors surveyed are restricting services to Medicare patients;
• Almost one-fifth of doctors give Medicare patients a lower priority for appointments;
• More than 80% of doctors have an increased fear of investigation or prosecution;
• More than one-fourth of doctors are restricting services to Medicare patients because of hassles/threats from Medicare.

The Federal government does a pitiful job with Medicare. There is no reason to think that Obamacare would make things better. In fact, it is reasonable to conclude that the lack of competition would make the problems even worse. Beyond their pathetic handling of payments and the low rates of reimbursement, the Federal government has one additional feather in its cap to make things even worse: The threat of imprisonment. While we could all point to a story about some notorious doctor-fraud ring, the reality is that the vast majority of physicians are not committing fraud; yet, the slightest error in Medicare forms can generate the full force of the government. Why would any physician want to engage in activities where they can easily misstep, resulting in imprisonment? If Medicare was fast to pay and paid the equivalent of the insurance company's negotiated rates, then the higher risk of fraud charges would be irrelevant, but with a trifecta of risk (late pay, low pay, fraud charges), doctors are simply saying "no" to Medicare.

With Obamacare, the "no" option would be taken off the table. Most people realize that lack of competition makes a business sector lazy and unresponsive to customer demands, but this is even worse than that. A business sector is always vulnerable to a new player who does respond to customer demand with a better product, but the government doesn't have a competitor, nor a threat of one.

"Government as well as religion has furnished its schisms, its persecutions, and its devices for fattening idleness on the earnings of the people."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1815

Cross posted at From the Maenianum Secundum (comments are open there).

In a Nutshell

From an article by Nat Hentoff (JWR, I am finally scared of a White House administration, August 19, 2009):

"Remember that legislation itself is only half the problem with Obamacare. Whatever bill passes, hundreds of bureaucrats in the federal agencies will have years to promulgate scores of regulations to govern the details of the law.

The above is the beginning and the end of the debate on "Obamacare."

The establishment of a Health Commissioner (and the creation of the department he/she runs), means there is no limit to the regulations and requirements imposed on insurance companies and doctors.

It doesn't matter if "end of life" discussions are in today and out tomorrow, they can be added by the Health Commissioner at a future date.

The various Democratic Bills are not "reform." That's the wrong word. Reform would reexamine Tort law, remake how Medicare works (making it more efficient), and would address issues such as the enormous cost of bringing new medicines to market. Reducing costs would be refusing to pay for the medical expenses of illegal aliens, in concert with border closing measures. Those would be reforms. What these Bills are attempting to do is regulate and nationalize the health insurance and medical industries.

Creating a new government department and a Commissioner is not what America should be doing, regardless of the details in the Bill today. They are, as Mr. Hentof suggests, the health issue slippery slope.

This is not a new thing. The Democrats have always used incrementalism ("baby steps") to get to their ultimate goal. Putting a dozen things in the Bills today, that Americans can point at and fuss about, that are taken out "in the spirit of compromise" are red herrings (see Co-ops: A ‘Public Option’ By Another Name, Michael D. Tanner, CATO @ Liberty August 17, 2009).

What needs to be taken out is the entire concept of a Health Care Bill, and any talk of a Commissioner and government department to oversee and regulate medical insurance. Taking that out would be the same as voting "No" on whatever the Democrats put forward.

The only way to prevent a slippery slope is not to play.

H/t Instapundit.

Not Stupid This Time

"The materials now bearing on the public mind will infallibly restore it to its republican soundness... if the knowledge of facts can only be disseminated among the people."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1799

The Republicans have been justifiably called the Stupid Party for many reasons, mainly because they've failed to demonstrate they have any balls. But not Jessey Kelly, as this report of a townhall demonstrates:

Rep. Giffords canceled her town hall in Sahuarita/Green Valley and Jesse Kelly scheduled an appearance in the same venue at the same time and place. From the looks of the video below it was very successful. Both sides were allowed to speak for two hours and with no problems. You would think that a 2 term congresswoman could manage to put on a town hall during the one month August recess.

Read/watch the whole thing at Gila Courier and AZ 8th ( Jesse Kelly town hall a great success, August 14, 2009).

My favorite part is when the Democrat steps right into it and says show me where it says that in the Bill and Mr. Kelly proceeds to show her hand-out after hand-out documenting where each of the false accusations are contained in the Democrat's Bill.  I don't often use 21st century jargon, but that's a pOwned if there ever was one. (Or, as Prof. Reynolds would say, "heh"!)

Republicans are often falsely accused of being The Party of "No," but as the video above demonstrates, that is mainly because their counter-proposals don't get media time.

To find out what the Republicans have offered with respect to health care reform, see Health Reform GOP-Style (Jo Ciavaglia, phillyBurbs.com, August 13, 2009).  As mentioned in the link, Kaiser Family Foundation has an interactive tool to allow you to research the various proposals in a side by side format.  A PDF of the various Bills may be viewed here.

The Democrats got away with this sort of thing for decades.  They would get their unchallenged 15-second sound byte on the news (with a complicit media), but the Internet/Blogosphere has changed all that.  The mainstream media still manages to control the major networks and nearly-bankrupt newspapers, but there are now other methods of getting the truth to the American people.

Maybe Republicans are learning. They may have to own-up to and address being the Stupid Party, but that's far better than being the Evil Party.

"The most effectual engines for [pacifying a nation] are the public papers... [A despotic] government always [keeps] a kind of standing army of newswriters who, without any regard to truth or to what should be like truth, [invent] and put into the papers whatever might serve the ministers. This suffices with the mass of the people who have no means of distinguishing the false from the true paragraphs of a newspaper."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1785

H/t Instapundit.

Half Right

Bill Whittle's latest PJTV Afterburner segment (Beyond the Angry Mobs: Only You Can Bring Congress Back From the Abyss of Corruption, August 10, 2009) focuses on the idea that people should participate in government, by considering a run for office.  It is half right.

I agree with the concept of more "regular" citizens responding to a call to serve. Where I disagree is with Mr. Whittle's assertion that it was never the Founding Fathers' intention for public service to be a life long career. In fact, just the reverse is true.

It is necessary to differentiate between the Founders' understanding that an educated populace was necessary for the concept of self government (i.e., a government of and by the people) to work and preparedness for public office. Both require education, but one is not the other and we should never conflate the two.

1. Regarding the first concept, of educating the people so that they could maintain vigilance on their elected leaders:

"I do most anxiously wish to see the highest degrees of education given to the higher degrees of genius and to all degrees of it, so much as may enable them to read and understand what is going on in the world and to keep their part of it going on right; for nothing can keep it right but their own vigilant and distrustful superintendence."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1795

"A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps, both. Knowledge will forever govern ignorance; and a people who mean to be their own governors must arm themselves with the power which knowledge gives."

- James Madison, 1822

"Every government degenerates when trusted to the rulers of the people alone. The people themselves, therefore, are its only safe depositories. And to render even them safe, their minds must be improved to a certain degree."

- Thomas Jefferson, Notes on Virginia, 1782

"If a nation expects to be ignorant and free in a state of civilization, it expects what never was and never will be."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1816

"[The] provision [in the new constitution of Spain] which, after a certain epoch, disfranchises every citizen who cannot read and write... is the fruitful germ of the improvement of everything good and the correction of everything imperfect in the present constitution. This will give you an enlightened people and an energetic public opinion which will control and enchain the aristocratic spirit of the government."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1814

"And say, finally, whether peace is best preserved by giving energy to the government or information to the people. This last is the most certain and the most legitimate engine of government. Educate and inform the whole mass of the people. Enable them to see that it is their interest to preserve peace and order, and they will preserve them. And it requires no very high degree of education to convince them of this. They are the only sure reliance for the preservation of our liberty."

- Thomas Jefferson to James Madison, 1787

2.  Regarding the second concept, of creating long-serving public servants through education:

"Nor must we omit to mention among the benefits of education the incalculable advantage of training up able counselors to administer the affairs of our country in all its departments, legislative, executive and judiciary, and to bear their proper share in the councils of our national government: nothing more than education advancing the prosperity, the power, and the happiness of a nation."

- Thomas Jefferson, Report for University of Virginia, 1818

"The aim of every political constitution is, or ought to be, first to obtain for rulers men who possess most wisdom to discern, and most virtue to pursue, the common good of the society; and in the next place, to take the most effectual precautions for keeping them virtuous whilst they continue to hold their public trust."

- James Madison, Federalist No. 57

"The tendency of a longer period of service would be to render the body more stable in its policy, and more capable of stemming popular currents taking a wrong direction, till reason and justice could regain their ascendancy.

- James Madison, Notes on Suffrage, 1810

"Laws will be wisely formed and honestly administered in proportion as those who form and administer them are wise and honest; whence it becomes expedient for promoting the public happiness that those persons whom nature has endowed with genius and virtue should be rendered by liberal education worthy to receive and able to guard the sacred deposit of the rights and liberties of their fellow citizens; and that they should be called to that charge without regard to wealth, birth or other accidental condition or circumstance. But the indigence of the greater number disabling them from so educating at their own expense those of their children whom nature has fitly formed and disposed to become useful instruments for the public, it is better that such should be sought for and educated at the common expense of all, than that the happiness of all should be confined to the weak or wicked."

- Thomas Jefferson, Diffusion of Knowledge Bill, 1779

"I will not say that public life is the line for making a fortune. But it furnishes a decent and honorable support, and places one's children on good grounds for public favor. The family of a beloved father will stand with the public on the most favorable ground of competition. Had General Washington left children, what would have been denied them?"

- Thomas Jefferson, 1808

As I stated at the beginning, the idea of people responding to a call of public service is a noble one. I quibble only with the idea that the Founders were against the idea of a career of public service and, by extension, that everyone is capable (having the "genius" Jefferson spoke of) to do it wisely, and the character necessary to perform the duties with restraint.

We should never discount the importance of an educated populace entering the voting booth. If we believe that our elected leaders are not properly performing their duties, the problem is with the mass of voters, not the system (or the concept of a perpetual public servant). We have far too many ignorant citizens exercising the vote. The solution is not to limit how long our representatives may serve, but to educate the citizens so they exercise their vote in such a way as to replace their elected representatives with people better qualified to serve.

If we are capable and called, it is our duty to serve, for as long as that service is needed and useful. There is no time limit or fixed amount of time that one may serve, or a magic number that suggests that one has served too long.

"The man who loves his country on its own account, and not merely for its trappings of interest or power, can never be divorced from it, can never refuse to come forward when he finds that she is engaged in dangers which he has the means of warding off."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1797

The Founders were examples of career politicians themselves, and became a permanent class of elected officials.

"Though I... am myself duly impressed with a sense of the arduousness of government and the obligation those are under who are able to conduct it, yet I am also satisfied there is an order of geniuses above that obligation and therefore exempted from it. Nobody can conceive that nature ever intended to throw away a Newton upon the occupations of a crown. It would have been a prodigality for which even the conduct of Providence might have been arraigned, had he been by birth annexed to what was so far below him. Cooperating with nature in her ordinary economy, we should dispose of and employ the geniuses of men according to their several orders and degrees."

- Thomas Jefferson, 1778

The critical part is that the Founders were not at all concerned with a permanent ruling class, as they were the first generation to do so. They required a permanent ruling class of geniuses of good character. That is not every citizen, by any stretch. Those not endowed with genius or the ability to be restrained in their behavior to good character may vote, and that is enough, and more charitable than the Founders' intended by discussing limits to the franchise, such as to those only able to read and write.

Finally, there are many ways to serve one's country. Service is not exclusive to public office.  Mr. Whittle himself provides public service, by educating the populace through his website and Afterburner broadcasts.

The End Is Near

Here's a comment I left at Fabius Maximus (Beginning Of The End Of The Republic’s Solvency. Soon Come The First Steps To A Reformed Regime – Or A New Regime, August 14, 2009) regarding health care and entitlement reform.  I was responding to responding to Maximus's comment:

"Fabius Maximus replies: You are ignoring the specfic example I gave of rationing — spending $36,000 on care in the last year of life. Much of it neither increasing lifespan or quality of life. First, I doubt that people will spend that money themselves — or that most Americans could afford it. Second, experience at other nations disproves your theory."

My response:

Means-testing is coming, but I do not think you’ve thought through rationing or the basis of “few can afford it” with respect to the last year of life expenses.

Many seniors, especially the aging Boomers, have property. It is reasonable to require that people use their own assets before dipping into the public troth. The Boomers have not done a good job of managing their wealth for retirement, in the abstract, but many/most have property to sell. I expect to see some sort of reverse mortgage products appearing for the sole purpose of paying medical expenses (or government liens against property for this purpose, payable when the property is sold).

The idea that one retires and is able to maintain the same lifestyle when working is over. In addition, the idea that people “retire” was a temporary glitch of the last 50 years (not a concept that existed before). Boomers might not stay in the workforce in traditional jobs, but they might have to live with their children (say, providing daycare for their grandchildren). The Greatest Generation will be the last to have golfing/vacation style retirements.

It is immoral to think that you can check out of life and live off your children and grandchildren. It may not be what the Boomers want, but it is what they are going to get. It may require that we bankrupt the nation before the reality of the situation sinks in, but the reality is that Boomers will not have the same retirement as their parents. Bankrupt nation or before, the coffers are empty (and always were, by original design of Social Security) and there is no amount of taxation that will produce the amounts required to pay to the Boomers what they think they’re entitled to receive. The unfunded liability for the Boomer’s retirement years is projected to be 120% of GDP. 100% taxation on working people wouldn’t be enough. The Boomers might whine, but it is their fault. They were the stewards of the government for the last 40 years and they didn’t make sure the government was managing the budgets as they should. The Boomers have already spent their retirements by being the most coddled and spoilt generation in history.

Spilt Milk

From Mort Zuckerman (NY Daily News, Drowning in debt: Obama's spending and borrowing leaves U.S. gasping for air, August 9, 2009):

The Government Accountability Office estimates that by 2040, interest payments will absorb 30% of all revenues and entitlements will consume the rest, leaving nothing for defense, education or veterans' pensions.

I know that many economic folks are predicting that we'll recover from this recession on X date or Y quarter, but I think they're wrong.

There is no recovery from this amount of debt. The only recovery is to stop spending and no special interest group is going to give up their entitlements.  More from Mr. Zuckerman:

Everybody is dazed and confused by all this talk of additional indebtedness in the trillions of dollars. Our soaring national debt will require cataclysmic adjustments to accomplish the restoration of a balance in our fiscal position.

Otherwise, we face a dramatic erosion of U.S. economic and financial standing, raising the risk of skyrocketing interest rates and a crash in the value of the dollar. Americans can no longer rely on their stocks and the soaring value of their homes to put their kids through college and support early retirement. For the first time since the Depression, U.S. companies are not only cutting jobs; they are cutting wages. We are undersaved and underpensioned, and we will have to adjust to a more frugal life.

The Social Security nightmare has hit home and until we address that issue, the recession will remain.

From Shannon Love (Chicago Boy, The Dangers of Decompartmentalized Health Care Spending, August 12, 2009):

The elderly consume 70% of all health-care spending.[updated here and here] That means that when it comes to cost control they will bear the brunt of the burden. If we don’t cut spending on the elderly we can’t reduce costs without simply denying care for everyone else. When it comes down to a choice between spending on old people and children, the elderly know full well who we are going to pick. The elderly themselves will choose to spend money on their grandchildren rather than themselves.

It doesn't appear that this Congress or this Administration is serious. Sane people knew that giving the debt keys to a Democratic Congress was a stupid mistake, but this isn't a mistake that can be solved simply by voting in Republicans next term.  The money will be spent and the debt will be there to be paid off.  The debt remains, even if the legislators are no longer home.

And speaking of no longer home (Alan Zibel, AP/Yahoo News, Foreclosures rise 7 percent in July from June, August 13, 2009):

WASHINGTON – The number of U.S. households on the verge of losing their homes rose 7 percent from June to July, as the escalating foreclosure crisis continued to outpace government efforts to limit the damage.

Foreclosure filings were up 32 percent from the same month last year, RealtyTrac Inc. said Thursday. More than 360,000 households, or one in every 355 homes, received a foreclosure-related notice, such as a notice of default or trustee's sale. That's the highest monthly level since the foreclosure-listing firm began publishing the data more than four years ago.

Ugly things are likely to happen before this is truly solved. I'm not advocating it, only forecasting the truth.

H/t Instapundit (here, here, and here.)

Feeding Frenzy

As this article from Freep.com (Detroit Free Press, Tempers flare over health care plan, August 7, 2009), there is a kind of feeding frenzy occurring over the socialized medicine Bill.  Regardless of how this is decided, people are angry.  But the type of bitterness we're seeing over the health care issue is irreconcilable, as there are factions on both sides of the issue who are unwilling to compromise.

One camp believes that health care is a right, and a prosperous nation (like ourselves) has some sort of duty to provide health insurance to every citizen.

The other camp believes that extending health insurance to everyone is a bad idea, while at the same time, crying foul when there are solutions presented to address the insolvency of social security or medicare.

The reality is somewhere in the middle, but "middle" is seldom how these issues are decided, which means that the divide and conquer approach (i.e., the building of waring factions) is how the political class will decide the matter.  Social security and medicare ARE insolvent and some sort of rationing or means testing will have to be decided at some point.  If we'd never created Social Security or Medicare, we wouldn't be having this discussion, nor would we have the problems they create (both economically and politically).  Once we have a government entitlement program, the press (and the politicians) always have a crying mother being stripped of her child or an old granny living on cat food to create photo-ops for the opposing side.    It is damned near impossible to get rid of a government revenue stream once it is in place.

This is not a new method of handling a matter among the political classes.  Creating issues to create a tug-o-war is not unique to the health care debate.

The abortion issue is exactly the same.

1. We have the not ever camp.


2. We have the only if camp.


3. We have the what's wrong with it, abortion shouldn't have moral considerations camp.

We can change the words, ever so slightly, for issues like school prayer.  Education has become political, where the political classes war over the hearts and minds, just as the health care issue is becoming politicized.  Regardless of how the health care issue is eventually decided, there will be winners and losers, if we allow the government to realize the objective of making it something the government involves itself.

Imagine, for just a moment, that there were no public schools. There might be a chattering class arguing for the creation of something like it, but we'd have developed other methods of addressing it.  Most parents, the vast middle class, would pay for cheap schools (probably chain type corporations offering mediocre, but not awful programs at an affordable price).  There would be a larger market for more expensive private schools, with the private sector donating to charities to allow poor children with prowess to attend them. The most the government might do is to allow everyone (rich and poor) to deduct the cost of education from their taxes.  We wouldn't get to the point where we'd discuss the pros and cons of vouchers, because the government wouldn't have inserted itself in the process to make it a compromise solution to a terrible problem.

The larger point is that education would not be a political issue.  There would be no arguments about prayer in school, the teaching of sex education, or if evolution or creationism should be taught. Each parent would make those decisions and it wouldn't create caverns between political camps.  Sure, people would have their opinions on the various subjects, but each wouldn't be able to remake the Jack Booted Thug the enforcer of their opinion.

Abortion is still a huge issue today.  If Roe v Wade had not been decided the way it had, each state would still be making the decision about its legality.  Planned Parenthood and NARAL would be running cheap abortion flights or shuttle buses from Mississippi to California, with protestors standing on the runways to try to prevent women from boarding the planes.  But, it wouldn't be a divisive issue at the national level, creating a situation where one party supports X and the other party supports -X.

I want Y, not the binary choice of X or -X.

If, for no other reason than the above, the health care issue should not become any more political than it is.  When the government controls the issue or delivers the service, the people will always be arguing about who should get what, as sharks fight over prey when they smell blood. They'll stop considering the option of the government not being involved at all, and allowing the private sector to handle the matter.  The private sector will no longer be a viable solution in its entirety, because the government's intrusion in the matter will have broken down parts of the infrastructure which allow it.

We already have enough issues to divide us.  Government-run health care, especially given the enormity of the costs and the life/death aspect adding fuel to emotions, is the last thing we need. In other words, the last thing we need is for the government to get involved at all.  The government will, inevitably, screw it up and where a politician stands on that issue will become a party platform, forcing people to choose one extreme position or the other, with suggestions and schemes on how to fix the mess.  If the government doesn't get involved at all, then there will be nothing to fix.  It will still be a mess, because few things are ever perfect, but the government just makes enemies of us all.

In 20 years, do we really want a politician's worthiness to be determined by how they'd decide on a particular health care rationing decision?  We're protesting for or against inclusion of heart transplants or cesareans at the national level?  That's what will happen if we create any additional government health care entitlements.