The Morning Papers
Once again, I give you my skim quotes so you can read what I don’t have time to…
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There has been talk about the so-called “CrunchyCons” before around these parts—mostly over at Cozy Tea-Blue House. George Nash gives us an introduction to conservative Catholic Rod Dreher’s “CrunchyCon” politics in today’s Wall Street Journal:
Rod Dreher, a columnist and editor at the Dallas Morning News, is a self-confessed member of the vast right-wing conspiracy. As a lapsed Protestant who converted to Roman Catholicism several years ago, he is an unabashed religious and social conservative. He has little use for the morally relativist and libertine tendencies of modern liberalism. Too often, he says, “the Democrats act like the Party of Lust.”
But Mr. Dreher is also a passionate environmentalist, a devotee of organic farming and a proponent of the New Urbanism, an anti-sprawl movement aimed at making residential neighborhoods more like pre-suburban small towns. He dislikes industrial agriculture, shopping malls, television, McMansions and mass consumerism. Efficiency–the guiding principle of free markets–is an “idol,” he says, that must be “smashed.” Too often, he claims, Republicans act like “the Party of Greed.”
If this interests you at all you’ll want to take a look at Dreher’s National Review based CrunchyCon blog, which apparently aims to be a group blog that argues and fleshes out Dreher’s ideas. (Thanks to God’s Body for recently alerting us to it.)
My quick commentary:
Dreher speaks of culture more than political principle. Environmentalism and New Urbanism are sometimes opposed by conservatives because of their proponents desire for excessive government regulation and control, not because anyone likes ugly sprawl or desires to harm the environment. The “small is beautiful” philosophy that Dreher loves was used to great harm by the likes of Jerry “moonbeam” Brown when he was governor of California in the 70s. Culturally speaking, Dreher wants good things—I probably agree with him on lots—but I wonder if he points us to the best way of political action to attain these ends? I don’t know enough to say.
As far as consumerism goes—again, this is cultural, and I would likely agree with him on lots of commentary about culture. However, when speaking about political principles, one has to realize that 1) we have never let capitalism go completely unbridled in this country (does anyone think that CEO’s and most companies are above the law when, on the contrary, they are up to their necks in laws and regulations?); and 2) capitalism is still the best way we know of to keep the most people possible out of poverty. (See the next article I link to directly below these comments.) Again, I don’t know enough about Dreher’s political principles to think that I understand what he is all about, or to be comfortable giving him a thumbs up.
For instance, the WSJ article says that his book “is a reminder of the enduring tension on the right between those for whom the highest social good is freedom. . .and those for whom the highest social good is virtue.” I say that freedom is a necessary condition of virtue—that freedom ought to be understood as in the service of virtue—but that government must first and foremost secure freedom before it can help order it towards the virtue of the citizenry and the common good of the regime. The job of the good government and true statesman is then—to use unfortunate, modern terms—to make the citizen see how his self-interest is the same as the common interest; or, rightly said: how his desire for self-preservation ultimately leads directly and smoothly up towards a more rational and noble desire to defend, love and contribute to the common good. Likely many conservative Catholics sort of, kind of understand and agree about some of these more fundamental notions, but of course they differ widely about how the common good is best accomplished. I wonder about if and how Dreher thinks about the principles of politics and how they promote virtue, as I get the sense he holds deeper principles derived from Russell Kirk and Southern agrarianism that are likely fantastical. So I’m not sure what would happen if one started to push his ideas to their roots in political philosophy. But, hey, I’m all for organic milk—it just tastes better. And thanks to capitalism, I can drink it fresh whenever I want.
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Dreher and the rest of us may not like consumerism, which is always the vice of capitalism (or better put: consumerism, which is always the vice of any society that isn’t full of extremely impoverished people), but a guy named Rodney Stark has a new book out called The Victory of Reason: How Christianity Led to Freedom, Capitalism, and Western Success. Some solid conservatives are likely right to admit that he engages in some “exaggeration in the service of correction.” Nonetheless, it still sounds interesting—here is the author’s own words from a recent article:
Augustine, Aquinas, and other major theologians taught that the state must respect private property and not intrude on the freedom of its citizens to pursue virtue. In addition, there was the central Christian doctrine that, regardless of worldly inequalities, inequality in the most important sense does not exist: in the eyes of God and in the world to come. As Paul explained: “There is neither Jew nor Greek, there is neither bond nor fee, there is neither male nor female, for ye are all one in Christ Jesus.”
And church theologians and leaders meant it. Through all prior recorded history, slavery was universal — Christianity began in a world where as much as half the population was in bondage. But by the seventh century, Christianity had become the only major world religion to formulate specific theological opposition to slavery, and, by no later than the 11th century, the church had expelled the dreadful institution from Europe. That it later reappeared in the New World is another matter, although there, too, slavery was vigorously condemned by popes and all of the eventual abolition movements were of religious origins.
Free labor was an essential ingredient for the rise of capitalism, for free workers can maximize their rewards by working harder or more effectively than before. In contrast, coerced workers gain nothing from doing more. Put another way, tyranny makes a few people richer; capitalism can make everyone richer. Therefore, as the northern Italian city-states developed capitalist economies, visitors marveled at their standards of living; many were equally confounded by how hard everyone worked.
I was pointed to the book via this. Poke around at Google Scholar and do some research on the topic.
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Common wisdom about America’s science gap is trashed in this short piece by Robert Samuelson:
. . . it’s emphatically not true, as much of the alarmist commentary on America’s “competitiveness” implies, that the United States now faces crippling shortages in its technological elites.
Only about 4 percent of the U.S. work force consists of scientists and engineers. Having an adequate supply depends on what thousands — not millions –of smart college students decide every year to do with their lives. People choose a career partly because it suits their interests. This applies especially to science. “Physics is like sex,” the physicist Richard Feynman famously quipped. “Sure, it may give some practical results, but that’s not why we do it.” But intellectual satisfaction goes only so far.
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“Nobody writes about the planes that land”
In the early 1990s, a smattering of HIV cases appeared among individuals not then assigned to any known risk group; suddenly AIDS was moving into the general population. (It didn’t, and hasn’t, and likely never will, at least in the United States.) Despite a decade of media-inflamed mad cow hysteria, the government reports just two infected animals in the nation and not a single documented death among U.S.-born citizens. And now there’s bird flu.
Good reading & writing viz. “CrunchyCons”. I’d say I’m a bit confused as well, though. I, too, prefer organic milk & free-range chicken eggs, but not because I thank Mother Earth for so kindly spitting me out of her loving womb. As you say, “it tastes better”, which I suspect is because it’s more natural – which is why I prefer the organic to the artificial. Nature has always been better at her things than man; why not take advantage of her genius when possible?
This goes for man, too… that’s why I think we’re beginning to see something of a return to at least moderately palatable house design, e.g. For the most part, 70’s concrete-and-steel, square-edged, cheaply-built, frankly boring home construction is out; more colonial & classical elements are back. Do I like McMansions? No. But I’d rather live next door to a McMansion than a split-level. And I’d rather live in a lot of homes built in the last 10 years than in any home built circa 1972.
On the other hand, I don’t think this sort of thing should be enforced – it goes back to the nature thing. Over time, people will simply want what is more beautiful, simply because it’s more beautiful. Since organic city design is more beautiful than planned, suburban, cul-de-sac-ian nightmares, I suspect organic city design will gradually come back. We’ll have more Bostons about and fewer Detroits.
But government tends to get things wrong, or at least do the right thing for the wrong reason. So it might work for a while, but without the proper principles in hand or heart, it eventually falls victim to the real principles. Witness welfare in America and health care in Great Britian.
Bottom-line: I’d like to drive winding streets in a hydrogen-cell powered SMARTcar while wearing birkenstocks and eating an organic cereal bar; but, I’d like to get there on my own.
matt
February 22, 2006 at 5:39 pm
Every time I turn these ideas in my head, sooner or later a process of questioning leads me back to “and that would work out great, if men were virtuous”
Now there are, of course, certain ways to set up a regime that make it more likely for practical reason, and therefore virtue to rule- but in the end no system can substitute for virtue. One of the lamentable aspects of the right is that they continually seek substitutes to promoting virtue- they don’t even seem to talk about it.
I’m not pollyannic enough to think that people can be made virtuous, or that there is some magic bullet government answer, but I do know that nothing can act without an end, and so we need to put up virtue first as a sort of goal that every program can crawl toward. If not, then any plan: organic products, small cities, etc. runs the risk of becoming the tool of human degradation. We have to at least recognize that virtue is the goal. Does anyone on the left or the right so much as SAY this?
shulamite8810
February 22, 2006 at 6:16 pm
More later, but I linked to the Stark article partly because he says that Christianity promoted freedom for the sake of virtue–and I linked to Dreher partly because he is trying to say somthing similar. The WSJ article (read all of it) asks at the end what our freedom is for–and from the article I would guess that Dreher would say something like our striving towards God, which certainly implies virtue. If asked, I think he would SAY that virtue is the end.
As far as political parties go, each will in a way say that they are for the promotion of virtue; each will also say in a way that they have nothing to do with the promotion of virtue. Heh.
Don’t expect the virtue party to start anytime soon, but I see your point. Although government on a practical level is concerned with more practical things that are the necessary condition for virtue to exist, if it does not see the promotion of virtue as part of its end (achieving the common good of the citiznes), all else will in some way be rotten. Both the first two articles I link to are interesting in this respect, yet partly for reasons quickly elucidated above I am a littly unsure of Dreher’s principles.
In any event, I think underneath the accidents of political parties one of the real battles at present is between those who see virtue as an end of law and those who do not, regardless of what anyone is saying out loud or realizes.
kodiak
February 22, 2006 at 7:07 pm
Most people in the culture wars who are fighting against abortion, gay “marriage,” etc. do indeed realize that they are fighting for government to promote virtue.
See my point above about the middle class–if one looks and listens closely, there is an assumption among many Americans that the middle class is a sort of “moral majority.” And there is a certain truth to this.
Claiming publicly that government exists in order to promote virtue, however, makes us nervous these days–and not just for bad reasons of modern ideas, as of course you well know.
For instance–to Achilles–thanks for the comments–I largely agree. Why?
Because although I think Dreher should take heart and fight for all the things he sees as leading to the good (and to virtue)–I also think that for the most part the government would make things worse in all those in between areas like urban planning, etc.
kodiak
February 22, 2006 at 7:32 pm
I think it might help to make a practical distinction between principle and end. Just as knowledge of the triune God is both principle and end of all human knowing, so is (or ought to be) virtue both principle and end of all human law.
To the point at hand, there is then difference between saying “virtue is our end” and “virtue is our beginning.” I think a political party could well say “virtue is our beginning”: assuming the moral foundations of Western Civilization based on Judeo-Christian principles, a political party may work to enact laws consistent with that beginning. It may be rhetorically acceptable to occassionally mentioned that virtue is also their end – but as a platform motto, it sounds vague, theoretical, pretentious. I suppose it’s because no one can claim that “virtue is our beginning” is a bad motive; but, saying “virtue is our end” opens one up to the charge of hypocrisy when one doesn’t live up to it.
Furthermore, if virtue really is the beginning, it will also be the end, de facto. It might be helpful to remind oneself of the relationship of the principle to the end – in fact, it might help seeing whether the right thing is being accomplished. Nevertheless, I think there can be a legitimate reason for shying away from describing oneself as belonging to a “Virtue Party”, and not only because one may be ashamed or opposed to virtue.
Does that make sense?
achilles
February 22, 2006 at 8:37 pm
I did get some pause from the statement about abortion and gay marriage, clearly those people are promoting some kind of moral good.
I guess I made my comment in the context of the crunchy cons, or even a large part of the conservative movement. It’s easy to forget the end that all this stuff is ordered to, and the necessary condition for carrying it all out.
The better part of social help with virtue comes from culture: stigmas on those with bad behavior, the promotion of gentlemanly examples, the sense that certain behavior is “low class” and another kind is civilized. The government can do things too- the laws are some of the most powerful teaching tools we have- I don’t know. My concern is that things lean more in the direction of people wanting primarily to “be left alone” when it comes to moral questions in politics. But there are some encouraging signs there too.
shulamite8810
February 22, 2006 at 9:27 pm
The government can indeed do a lot more–we are in the midst of an enormous and slow moving political, legal, and cultural battle on these fronts.
I think Achilles makes a smart distinction when it comes to the use of the word virtue in politics. After all, no matter how they try and cover it up, most of the debate is over what and whether certain policies lead to virtue or vice.
As a Catholic I see my end, and the end of the Church, as more properly relating to virtue. Government has this end as well, but only as the tippy top point of departure of all that it aims to do. Justice, to be particular, is what the law seeks above all, of course. But the government can only help make virtuous citizens…lots to hash out on this score…
In any event, I have sympathy for CrunchyCons (go to that blog–interesting discussions there relating to these very issues) insofar as they (as the WSJ article says) say that “the highest social good is virtue,” but I’m little puzzled as to their principles. Once you flush the Kirk and Southern agrarian stuff out of the bushes, you can often dig up some rotten roots.
kodiak
February 23, 2006 at 1:32 am
Yes, but if the roots are organic, they’ll taste good – so who cares?
And I guess I’m only half joking, too…
achilles
February 23, 2006 at 10:54 am
One thing you all forgot when discussing virtue and the like. There are several sins that cry to heaven for vengance: Willful murder [you mention abortion in this]; Sodomy [y'all mention gay marriage]; but what about defrauding the laborer of a just wage? We can talk about virtue, vice, policies and politics all we want but as our economic and cultural selfishness is rampant, state-sponsered, and supported by otherwise well-meaning individuals, then I guess this is all just a waste of time. Capitalism – in and of itself – unbridaled – is an evil. It leads to the current virtue lacking malaise we have now – directly. Until we concern ourselves with this, we will never begin to change the virtues and viciousness of society.
beitiathustra
February 23, 2006 at 12:26 pm
I don’t think capitalism is unbridled in this country. As a matter of fact, this is true. There are tons of state and federal laws that bridle businesses and their relationships to their workers. (minimum wage laws, time worked laws, hiring and firing and discrimination laws, workers comp. law, anti-trust law, worker safety laws, etc., etc.,)
I suppose the question is whether or not we need more or better laws relating to worker’s wages. I know you have more specific complaints–and I would be interested to hear them.
kodiak
February 23, 2006 at 12:49 pm
No, we don’t need better laws regulating wages in this country, especially when this fosters overseas labor farming. Why pay a UAW plant guy 35 bucks an hour, when you can do it in Mexico for 4? Capitalism is like women’s suffrage. It may not look like a bad thing on the surface, but it tends to divide (like giving voting to women tended to divide the household, possibly leading to an increase in divorce rates? Perhaps?) But I guess [with a dash of vitriol] it is easier to blame Roe v. Wade and rock music than to blame the individualism that accompanies a free market economy. We, culturally, lack charity. We follow the Puritan ideal that hard work = money = virtue. We have a health care crisis in this country, and all I hear from “conservatives” is that these people should make more money to afford insurance, lazy bastards. Or maybe those people should stop having so many kids. . . oh the same people who are “against” abortion are in favor of stopping people from breeding, maybe by – birth control?? The use of I think tends to an increase in abortion.
My main issue, summed up, is this: Conservatives pay lip service to virtue and morals and so forth, but the root causes of the evil is something that everyone takes for granted as good. The mind should not be able to abide a contradiction.
beitiathustra
February 23, 2006 at 6:52 pm
“No, we don’t need better laws regulating wages in this country, especially when this fosters overseas labor farming. Why pay a UAW plant guy 35 bucks an hour, when you can do it in Mexico for 4?”
OK, so you agree with me.
“But I guess [with a dash of vitriol] it is easier to blame Roe v. Wade and rock music than to blame the individualism that accompanies a free market economy. We, culturally, lack charity.”
Individualism is an -ism. It is, to put it mildly, a slippery fish. There is no official government proclamation of culture that forces individualism upon everyone–I suspect it is simply a way of describing the downside of being FREE and RICH. Human beings, when free, and rich, tend to get selfish. We are free-er and rich-er than the rest of the world and a lot of history. Although we also give more money away than any other nation does, and private money funds most of the charities in this country, it is true that our culture lacks charity, and it is also true that there is an evil spirit of selfishness and greed and looking to one’s own that sometimes plagues the land.
Roe v. Wade and rock music are specific things that we can specificly argue about as causal of our problems. One allowed people to kill their unborn child, and hundreds of thousands of them are killed each year. Yes, this is a pretty clear cut thing to “blame” when it comes to “lack of charity.”
You know the arguments against rock music–this isn’t as serious a thing, but perhaps its much more serious than we realize.
Its not necessarily easy to blame either thing for anything bad in most of culture, but, yes, many conservative Catholics would agree with me there. So? When the hell did agreeing with people you think are right become a crime or a sign of being wrong?
A free market economy is simply the best way to promote charity. If you have any better ideas, feel free to offer them. The other examples I see in history and at present aren’t very effective of charity.
However, no rules and regulations over business would be absurd and lead to all manner of uncharity. So we have laws against monopolies, etc. Do you have a specific complete or suggestion as to health care laws and funding? OK, out with it then. I’m listening.
Its easy to make the general claim that “individualism” is responsible for “uncharity.”
Now, do some people, obviously some republicans, think that money=virtue? Yes. As long as there is money, some people will think this. Its been the root of oligarchy for thousands of years. You have more of a chance with the free market economy than you do with any other system.
But again, health care probably is all screwed up. Ideas are welcome. There are lots of people who want to make it right arguing about what is the best way to solve the problem. Do some conservatives not care–are some of them elitist? Sure.
Do some people not understand birth control but see abortion as wrong? Sure.
Politics works by finding the common points of agreement and using them to get things done for the good. Parties are intentially big and dumb (two party system guarantees this) so that they have to be moderated. Parties are bundles of compromise. They aren’t on “your” side, they aren’t ever going to be “Catholic” etc., etc. My advice is–not just to you, but to the many other Catholics I hear and read on a daily basis–GET OVER IT. Then calmly sit down and see which party is most on your side. Then join that party and work within it whatever way one CAN (maybe this is nothing–thats fine with me too.)
There are lots of people working for virtue as the end of the regime, some of whom really do understand some things…but all I see are arrogant Catholics who take a dump on anything near the good because its not perfect–whether their notion of perfection is Thomism or anarchocapitalism, this is idiotic.
In. My. Opinion.
kodiak
February 24, 2006 at 1:43 am
OH the health care crisis is an easy one. Sometime back in the late 19th century doctors convinced people that they (the doctors) new more than they really did. Then everyone began to expect doctors to actually know how to heal people (which is, for the most part, not true). Well, doctors mess up, people die. Somewhere along the line people thought it would be a good idea to start suing on behalf of the patients who weren’t healed. This cost money. This raised the cost of health care. Then insurance came along to defray these costs to the common man. So hospitals and doctors started ripping off insurance companies by charging, oh $8 for a tongue depressor. So heath care became more expensive. So everyone started getting insurance. But then in 1999 the market took a crap, insurance companies lost their asses, and rates tripled overnight. Suddenly employers could no longer afford to insure their employees (at least a lot of them).
A solution, you ask? Go back to causes, don’t try to just stop the bleeding. There’s a Scandanavian counry (I forget which one it is right now, but I have it in a book) that only allows doctors for women’s pregnancy if there is a risk of a problem. All other cases are referred to midwives. This country had one of the lowest infant mortality rates (much lower than the U.S.) and the lowest instance of c-section [an alomost completely unnecessary procedure]. This is meant as an illustrative example. Cut out the unneeded procedures – this saves money. Limit lawsuits on doctors – because health care is like [if one were Socratic] pastry-baking. Perhaps this isn’t possible, because there aren’t any neighborhoods or extended family in the same area anymore, but I would like to see heath care only in cases of trauma or near death. The rest of the time, the body heals itself. But it was probably a lot easier back when an aunt or grandmother was around to give her “diagnosis” and remedy. But that goes back to culture again. This is the same society that allows commercials for meds on TV so that people can invent symptoms to get drugs fromt he doctors. [that Lunestra butterfly freaks me the hell out, I don't think I could sleep with that thing in the room]. And once medicine became a business and not about helping people – well, there’s your free market in action again.
Finally, in the ramble, a person can see the necessity of private property and still support socialized medicine.
beitiathustra
February 24, 2006 at 9:35 am
Oh, and it sure the hell isn’t liberals who farm out to overseas sweat shops where there is truly a wage-slave. That’s big business owners who are -typically – fiscally conservative republicans.
I guess that goes back to the question “who is my neighbor?”
beitiathustra
February 24, 2006 at 9:39 am
One thing needs to be emphasized–the Lunestra butterfly is evil and scary.
Bwhahhaha…and represents a lot that is wrong, sure.
I’m willing to say that health care is a common good, and as such the government is within its proper bounds to do stuff about it. What would be best to solve the current problems–I don’t know. I think you make some points, but I don’t think Canada or the European countries are good examples–taxes are sky high and health care still leaves much to be desired–there is an even greater gap between the treatment of the rich and poor. But maybe I am wrong.
As to the wage slaves–look, I think a lot of big companies will push until the law smacks them down. Too true–human nature being what it is.
But I’m not too sure about the sweatshops thing. Are there some companies doing this–yes. But they are all paying more to the people working there than those people can get elsewhere–often thousands apply for jobs to these companies. It is in the companies interest to keep them happy for the sake of keeping up the workforce and to avoid the bad press they’ll get.
When the free market rolls into these towns, things can be rough and abuses do happen. But other things start happening too–schools and civilization spring up sometimes too…
When companies have to pay UAW guys 35$ an hour to do work that a lot of other people are capable of doing, they will simply act like any rational person and look for alternatives. Are there problems with globalization–sure. But I’m not convinced its all bad.
And I’m sure as hell not convinced that the problem of sweatshops and health care approaches the level of abortion and marriage laws. But, I do think that health care is something conservatives should care a lot more about. (There is probably a shiteload of literature on the subject trying to figure out a solution–yes, by conservatives.(
Now, all that being said, I am reading that CrunchyCon book—I think you would like it, or at least find it interesting.
kodiak
February 24, 2006 at 10:02 am
Kodiak, beitiathustra –
I’m not going to pick up the red flag of socialism and march on the head office of Blue Cross/Blue Shield (although believe me I was close when living in Boston), but beitiathustra pretty much has the health care fiasco wrapped up, in my understanding and in my experience. For instance – I think you’re wrong, Kodiak, when you say that there is an equal or at least comparable poor/rich health care divide in Canada as there is in the US. In the province of BC, for example, basic health care (which covers everything except dental and a couple other things) costs an individual $54/month, a couple $96/month, and a family of any size $108/month. Furthermore, even with such rates, BC/Health Canada STILL offers generous premium assistance (up to 100%) to low- or no-income citizens! Putting aside the 14% combined sales tax on most items, and putting aside the higher average cost-of-goods relative to the US, it is still a fact that this relieves Canadians of a huge financial burden.
To illustrate how bad things are in the States (Beitia – I think there was an earlier misunderstanding about my opinion of US health care. As you can see.)… when living in Massachusetts, I discovered that by law health insurers can deny health coverage for 6 months if the insured cannot demonstrate coverage for the prior 6 months… and that to secure health insurance starting at the end of that “waiting period”, one has to pay the full premium, while remaining uninsured, for the intervening 6 months. How insane is that? Oh, and that waiting period applies to pregnant people, old people, people on dialysis, etc etc. Everyone.
Furthermore, the cost was unbelievable – over $1,000/month for a reasonable level of coverage. As a result of all of this, of Massachusetts 6.3 million residents, a staggering 500,000 are uninsured.
So yes, there is a huge problem, it is largely the fault of those who make the biggest profit (namely, the insurers), and at least one country with a socialized health system looks a lot better than America.
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On the other hand, I would disagree that health coverage or health care needs only be extended in cases of trauma or near death… unless by trauma you include conditions such as dialysis, diabetes, lupus, cystic fibrosis and all manner of “non-traumatic” diseases/conditions that, left untreated, will result in painful, early death.
Okay, so people die, shit happens, and the world kept spinning even when the life expectancy was much shorter… but at this point, we can’t turn back the clock on medical advances, and someone’s going to have to pay for them somehow.
Again, this doesn’t destroy your larger point that the notions of private property and socialized health care are not necessarily mutually exclusive… but it’s a reasonable qualification of a side-point, I think.
So why is it still this way? Well according to a show last year on NPR (National People’s Radio? Not generally my favorite station), the discussion on the Federal level is non-existent, because Repubs generally agree that if you can’t afford insurance then you need to work harder you lazy bastard, and Demos generally agree that you shouldn’t ever have to work for anything, and health insurance most of all. Hence, states are left to hobble together half-assed fixes that don’t really address the problem and generally create worse issues than the ones they were meant to solve.
My solution is simplistic because I admittedly don’t have all the pieces together in mind, but it seems like a solution might be a mixed one… similar to Canada, in which the government partially subsidizes the cost of health care. In exchange for helping people pay for health costs, the government would be able to exert greater regulatory control and keep the whole thing more sane.
But what do I know?
achilles
February 24, 2006 at 2:28 pm
ALRIGHT!
Now we’re talking. I’m perfectly willing to admit that I’m wrong on those points, as I said up there. Now have it out on the particulars.
Then, once you are done, think about how best to get this plan accomplished. You will have to work with other people, and you won’t be able to just trash the entire groups of people because they get some one thing wrong or don’t quite emphasize exactly what you would. Welcome to politics, welcome to life.
The same thing works, albeit in a different way, for philosophy itself.
If the manner in which you try to know the truth is such that you rigorously critique all other thinkers and throw them out as soon as you think you find something wrong, you will ultimately fail to know much yourself–and possibly just give up. The presumption is that you yourself are the one who is able to critique all others.
Similarly, with politics–just because you make a judgement that a group or party or individual is wrong about something, does not mean that you let go of the whole thing, or say “screw politics.” Instead, one has to take stock of all the things one knows or sees, and make a rational judgement comparing the less known with the more known. Which thinker is more often correct, or which politician is more right.
There is a difference between the sorts of arguments and certainty of the political and the philosophic, but I’ll back the principle I just summed up anytime, anywhere.
For this reason, I don’t trust philosophers who espouse a philosophy that doesn’t require one to change one’s life–to DO things a certain way.
kodiak
February 24, 2006 at 2:59 pm
I’m still going libertarian
beitiathustra
February 24, 2006 at 6:13 pm
Oh, and Matt (G. not P.) I used pregnancy and c-section as an example because the rate of c-section in this country approaches %50. This is and should be astounding. According to American medicine, we shouldn’t exist because people wouldn’t be born without doctors, including our ancestors. They push painkillers and epidurals – for money – and don’t tell women that this lengthens the labor increasing the possibility of forcing a c-section. C-sections cost three times as much as well, and if there is insurance, well everybody makes out financially.
Oh, and I feel your pain on the insurance front. I am going to wave the red flag and march on Washington (I kid). But as far as trauma and so forth that I mentioned is considered, I meant that as an example of media creating need. When the deregulated (in accord with free market economic principles) drug companies, the ad campaigns started. Everyone knows that media creates a need where there really is none. People who don’t eat healthy get heartburn. “Oh, I need the purple pill!” Doctors visits and prescriptions needlessly. And drug companies do pay doctors to prescribe a certain thing – believe me, I have first hand horrid experience of this (but my post is too long to elaborate anyway) lets just say I hate every OBGYN. f**k [asterisks for the sake of the host] them all.
beitiathustra
February 24, 2006 at 6:30 pm
Yes, there are way too many c-sections and epidurals compared to actual need… and even if you don’t attribute the rising rate of c-sections to the $$$ factor (although I would find it hard to believe that it doesn’t motivate at least some % of doctors), you can definitely attribute it to fear of lawsuit. If you can get the lady to agree to a c-section, BAM there goes about 90% of the chance that something messy will happen. Of course, there also goes about 90% of the chance that the lady will have more than 4 kids… but nevermind that…
Bah.
achilles
February 24, 2006 at 7:46 pm
Let me also add that experience is the best (and hence, in a way, the worst) teacher. I would have been hard-pressed to consider even the possibility that US healthcare is a criminal embarrassment until I had personally been in the situation of trying to obtain it apart full-time employment, a school or my parents.
achilles
February 24, 2006 at 7:57 pm
Wait until you have a kid. The strong arm tactics and “doctor knows best” bulls**t get insane. And if you don’t take the high road like we did with kid #3 and have it at home, the threats from the medical community, the violence, the inhuman treatment, the violation of basic human dignity – wow I could tell some stories, I could. Tack insurance and insane prices on top of that, and you do have a criminal market. But it is based on free market, competetion and the like. This is why I rail against UNBRIDALED capitalism. It just doesn’t work in certain aspects of human life, but the American culture doesn’t allow for that – it is all or nothing.
beitiathustra
February 24, 2006 at 8:33 pm
Oh and one thing I disagree with on the c-section note, Mr. matt g., something messy is more likely to happen there. It is major abdominal surgery. You need anethesiologists, and all sorts of ills associated with that and alergies and everything. Being put under and going under the knife is much less safe than a natural process left undesturbed. (But since the painkillers and so forth that doctors give women put them in this position in the first place, maybe in that qualified sense your are correct.)
beitiathustra
February 24, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Nature is always better than man and his art at doing what she was specifically ordained to accomplish.
“Duh” seems to echo around, but when sight of the obvious is lost, it suddenly demands repeating…
matt
February 25, 2006 at 3:22 pm
Check out today’s NYT article on the contracting out of health care that the Canadian government’s system can’t handle in anything like a timely fashion. This is not to trumpet laissez-faire medicine, but to note that Beitiathustra’s somewhat harsh suggestion that health care be restricted to cases of trauma and near death is in response to a very real concern. Publicly or privately provided, if a society thinks it needs modern medicine to fix EVERYTHING, there will be an unbearable strain on the system. Nevertheless, I’m with Achilles when he says that we can’t just “turn back the clock” on medicine as it is now. The Canuck scenario brings this out nicely; the government is finding it increasingly difficult to maintain that outlawing private medicine is legitimate.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/02/26/international/americas/26canada.html
Led Zep
February 26, 2006 at 1:27 am
How about a middle road, in the health care problems. I don’t think that my criticisms are too harsh, we have become a very soft society running to the “experts” on everything. From health care to any other aspect of our lives (we contract the education of our children to the state, psychologists tell us how to feel, media tells us what’s attractive, there are entire television channels telling us how to garden – why not go out and do it? – the “idiot’s guide” series has one for everything. . . I digress) Anyway, why not make emergency health care available at no cost to everyone (trauma and near death) and if people want to go to the doctor every time they have the sniffles they can pay for it themselves. This way we could have a semi-subsidized system that makes sure people can have NECESSARY care without taking out a second morgage.
beitiathustra
February 26, 2006 at 11:42 am