Category Archives: Marketplace of ideas

There is no table. Or is there?

We’re having a lot of trouble communicating here. I knew that we would when I started this, but I’m a glutton for punishment. I continue to believe, in spite of years of frustration, that it is possible to reason with people. But that assumes a common language, common terms, and at least the rudiments of agreement upon basic reality.

It’s hard to get much done in a round table discussion if the participants don’t agree that the thing between them is a table, or that it is round. (This is worse than the Paris Peace Talks. If I remember correctly, the argument there was over the shape that the table should be, not whether there were such a thing as a table, or whether it was really a chair, or…)

The problem is dramatized by Doug, who inspired the thread to start with (you’ll have to scroll down after you follow the link):

Your fawning over our system of government is remarkable. You admire
politicians like some people admire athletes or actors… ascribing all
sorts of heroic attributes to a group of people who are mainly
interested in power and personal gain. You act as if these people are
altruistic financial wizards working solely for the will of the people.
Fat chance. I have to ask — what color is the sky in your world????

OK, let’s address that paragraph. "Fawning over our system of government." Yes, I believe in the system of representative democracy embraced by the Founders, and institutionalized in the Constitution. I have a lot of problems with the system we have in South Carolina, which was built to be inefficient, extremely resistant to change, unaccountable to the people, and protective of the status quo for the benefit of an established aristocracy (thanks again, John Locke). But the American system? I will not reject "fawning," with all its contemptuous connotations, because almost any word that suggests admiration, respect, even reverence will do. As for contempt — well, I confess that I harbor contempt for those who regard the American system of government in contempt. That would apply to the "Blame America" set on the left, and the "despise government" folk who tend these days to congregate with the right. But I am trying to hold my contempt in check for the sake of a civil, good-faith discussion. That’s a little hard to do when an interlocutor boasts of humiliating his parents by showing them that he and his employer were funding most of their Social Security payments. I’m a much more conservative, "honor thy father and thy mother" kind of guy. So let’s move on.

"You admire politicians…?" Let me try really hard to give that statement some credence, and say that I suppose it depends on the politician. There aren’t many I would say I "admire, in the sense that most people would use the word. John McCain is one. Joe Lieberman is another. My admiration for Lindsay Graham has been growing steadily. I have long admired Joe Riley and Tony Blair. When I look at the entire category — well, I would be hard-pressed to say that I admire our governor specifically, or the governor before him, or the one before him… I don’t think anyone who reads what I write would say that, either. As for most of the Legislature — well, as a body, they are hardly worthy of praise. I’d say "disgust" is a more frequently felt sentiment than admiration. But if you’re speaking in generic terms, do I consider public service (whether elective or appointive, a momentary thing or "career") a higher calling than those of, say, "athletes and actors?" Of course. I’m sure many athletes and actors also do admirable things, but there is nothing inherently admirable in being able to run fast or look good on camera (and I realize Doug wasn’t saying I should admire actors and athletes, but since that’s the comparison he made, I’m exploring that). There is something admirable in wanting to serve others, whether by working in government service — military or civilian (yes, even "bureaucrats") — or running for office to represent one’s fellow citizens in our republican system. Just stepping out to offer your services, you know that millions will immediately sneer at you for being a "politician," and that’s just the beginning. Your opponents will slander you, insult you, lie about you, do anything they can short of sticks and stones to hurt you. I suppose in some people, the willingness to put up with that is pathological. In others, it is indeed admirable.

"ascribing all sorts of heroic attributes…" when did I do that? Just now was the closest I’ve come to that, and I only did so because I was reaching as far as I could to meet you in this discussion — going as far out on the "admiration" limb as I could scoot. But heroic? When did I, in this discussion and before Doug said that, speak of anything heroic?

Once again, we’re getting into the realm of impulse — of powerful feelings. The contempt that Doug holds for those in public service is quite palpable, and seems akin to his resentment of his labor going to the benefit of others — except, of course, under circumstances and conditions that he entirely controls. It’s another thing that puzzles me. Where does that come from? Did a city councilman or a policeman beat him up when he was young? There is often, in libertarian rhetoric, something that sounds a good bit like fear, or a sense of one’s own smallness or vulnerability in the face of something of overweening power. I don’t recall having felt that way in my time in this country. I can see how a Saudi might feel that way, but not an American.

Don’t you think "people who are mainly
interested in power and personal gain" would be wiser to stay in the private sector? When it comes to power, what politician in this country will ever have the monarchical power of a CEO — even one with an outspoken board? Look at what politicians actually encounter when they try to accomplish something — unrelenting opposition, usually to the point of completely frustrating the intended action. To be able to make a decision and have it stick at your own company — that’s power. "Personal gain?" Oh, come on. Government service is definitely the wrong place.

"Altruistic financial wizards?" When did I ever suggest such a thing? Do you ever read what we write about the Legislature’s budgetary priorities and decisions? That’s so far from easily verifiable reality, I don’t know why you would level such a charge.

This is discouraging — this cognitive disconnect over our respective statements. I’m not even getting off on any of the comments I’ve read from others in this discussion that indicate that they perceive reality in ways that seem very, very strange to me — such as John saying that someone else’s hyperbolic description of creating a permanent underclass is "EXACTLY WHAT WE HAVE TODAY," or Weldon "breaking" it to me that the government doesn’t own the property (what I said was that NO ONE owns property without a system of laws that set out, support and maintain the purely theoretical concept of property rights; this is a very difficult concept for libertarians to grasp, so I can hardly blame him I guess), or Eric’s very overwrought cry of "Should one not vote for or choose a collectivism justified by majority
rule they are still forced to comply with the charity of the state via
gunpoint," (oh, lighten up; why do you people feel so extremely and dramatically put upon when you lose a political argument? That’s life.), or Lee’s "definition" of "communitarianism." (You see why I hesitate to use the term? It’s sufficiently esoteric that he felt free to just make up his own definition to advance his argument. He managed to use "communistic," but I guess he couldn’t figure away to work any other epithets in. One thing I won’t let him get away with, though, is "feelings without any attempt at intellectual justification." I’m not much of a feelings guy, and communitarianism is so over-intellectualized that it never seems to make it into popular conversation.)

What am I supposed to do to facilitate a constructive discussion here? How can I do so, when even my most carefully explained thoughts come back to me in such a bizarrely distorted form? How do we settle on the fact that there is or is not a table before us, so that we can reach more substantive agreements?

To recap my view: "Government" is neither God nor the Devil. In this country, it is just a set of arrangements that a free people came up with for carrying out their common affairs. I believe that most people who are past adolescence should understand that the world is not about them and their almighty, individual will. They must somehow live their lives with some accommodation for the fact that they will live in a community of some kind, and that community will order things in ways that will often differ from the individual’s preferences. In applying that set of arrangements, government (in our system) is no more or less coercive than we, as a community, decide that it will be. If we want to enforce speed limits, we will (in South Carolina, we have decided not to). If we want to let people get away with tax evasion, we will. Plenty of people do. I suppose tax evaders are neither as respectful of government as I am, nor as afraid of it as some of my interlocutors here seem to be.

Anyway, back to the discussion: What is the root of this passionate, angry rejection of having obligations placed on one by the community at large?

Help me understand the libertarian impulse

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Folks, one of our regulars said something in a comment in the last day or so that prompted me to ask a question that I would really like to have answered. I think it’s important to understanding a lot of conversations we have here. Anway, Doug Ross was responding to something another commenter said about retirement systems, and he said:

I would agree with you on portable pensions as long as that means I own
every penny of what my employer and I contribute and I am not
responsible for paying the retirement for somebody else.

That prompted this question from me, which I would now like to offer more prominently, in the hope of increasing the chances I can get an answer I understand:

Doug, why do you feel that way — about wanting to make sure that you’re not expected to help anyone else in retirement?

That might sound facetious, or provocative, but I’m sincere about wanting to know. The concern you express seems to be at the heart of the whole libertarian impulse, which I find it so impossible to connect with. And one thing I keep wondering is, how do people develop an attitude of "this is mine; it’s just for me; don’t anybody expect me to share it?"

It might be that it’s a perfectly natural impulse, as many would maintain, and that some of us just have it conditioned out of us — or, we become conditioned to be embarrassed to express such a thought, whether we have the impulse or not. Our mother tells us when we’re young that it’s mean not to share. Or we hear the Bible story in which Cain acts like the Lord is out of line by suggesting that he should in any way be his brother’s keeper.

But I’m not sure I feel that impulse at all. I mean, if somebody came and took all I had so that I was hungry and cast into the cold, I’m pretty sure I’d feel like saying, "Hey, that was mine! You can’t do that." But when I’m able to get by, however hard it might be paying bills from month to month, I just don’t even feel a murmur of protest at the idea of paying into a system that makes sure nobody else starves in old age, or into a system that makes sure no one will be turned away when they need medical care.

It would be one thing to say, "I don’t think the plan would work," or "there are better ways to build a Safety Net," or whatever. But when you say that WHATEVER the system, you want to make sure you’re not paying in to help somebody else — that it’s the INTENT of doing that that bothers you — you leave me bewildered.

So why do you think that way?

Here’s how we fail to understand each other

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I got a very nice e-mail from a very nice person who was complimentary of my column Sunday, but then it went on to say something that seemed to perfectly illustrate the point of the column. Here’s the message:

Dear Brad,

I very much enjoyed and agree with your editorial
"Policy isn’t about personalities". However, is
this not the reason why The State (and the media
in general) ignores the FairTax? This plan will
unburden American citizens and businesses and
create economic prosperity by making US-made
products globally competitive. The benefits to our
country are enormous, so I must ask, is it the
proposal itself or is it because Neal Boortz
co-wrote the FairTax book and the legislation is
sponsored by a Republican? (This is what I have
been led to believe). As your column suggests,
ideas should not be judged based on who supports
them.

I welcome your comments.

And here was my response:

No and not. And now I have to ask you:
— Who is Neal Bortz? I’ve never heard of him.
— Why on Earth would you or anyone else have the impression that we would ignore something "because … the legislation is sponsored by a Republican." That’s bizarre.
With all due respect, I think your note is another illustration of my point. Only someone who thinks very differently from the way I do could think my interest in something could be turned on or off by an individual or the party associated with it. Those are alien concepts to me.
As far as the "Fair Tax" is concerned, is that the thing Jim DeMint was pushing back when he ran for the Senate? If so, we examined it pretty carefully at the time, and weren’t too crazy about it. No one has brought it up to me since then. I’ve been vaguely aware there was an effort out there to revive the idea — I think there was a meeting or something at the same time that everybody was busy with the GOP debate, and I saw a banner about it at the luncheon that Fred Thompson spoke at. That’s about all I know.

— Brad Warthen

So now I guess I’ll have to look up this Fair Tax thing at some point, and this Neal Bortz guy too (I mean "Boortz," Google corrected me, sorry for not reading the message more carefully), and I have no idea that I will find either particularly interesting. But I’ll look, when I get time. Right now, I’m processing e-mail. I provide the links so you can look, in case you have time today.

(Tomorrow Mike comes back, and I go back to being only a couple of people, instead of three or four.)

Policy isn’t about personalities. Or at least, it shouldn’t be

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By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR
LAST WEEK, I saw a clip from Martin Scorcese’s 2004 film about Howard Hughes, “The Aviator.” I had seen it before. But this time, I had a different reaction when Leonardo DiCaprio, as gazillionaire Hughes, went into a compulsive fit, helplessly repeating:
“Show me all the blueprints. Show me all the blueprints. Show me all the blueprints. SHOW ME ALL THE BLUEPRINTS….”
The first time, I thought, Whoa, that’s messed up. This time, I thought, I can identify….
Over the past weeks I’ve found myself saying something over and over — sounding just like Howard Hughes, only without the money:
“How we should proceed with regard to Iraq should not be determined by our opinion of President Bush. The best course in Iraq is not dependent upon personal regard for the president. Success in Iraq isn’t about Bush. Iraq isn’t about Bush. Iraq’s not about Bush. It’s not about Bush!”
Whether we should give Gen. David Petraeus more time to pursue his strategy that actually seems to be starting to work — whether a cause that Americans have fought and died for for more than four years will lead to a good result — is far more important than what we think or feel toward the guy in the White House.
Compared to this profoundly important strategic decision, it simply doesn’t matter whether you think Mr. Bush lied to you before the invasion (he didn’t) or whether he applied grossly inadequate policies and strategies over the next three years (he did).
Nor is it relevant that you think Dick Cheney must be what Darth Vader looks like without his helmet on (I’m not arguing with you there).
But listen to how every development of the “decision-making” (most of the participants decided a long time ago, of course) process in Washington is expressed. It’s always about Bush.
Democrats are said to be trying to deliver a setback to the president. John McCain is said to be steadfastly loyal to the president’s strategy (despite the fact that the “surge” was closer to his idea all along than to the Bush/Rumsfeld “do it cheap” approach). Dick Lugar is described as breaking with the president.
Folks, the president isn’t the one fighting and sacrificing and bleeding and dying for this cause. It’s some of the bravest young people this nation has ever produced. It’s also a few million ordinary Iraqis who, brave or not, don’t have anyplace else to go.
And as what I said a moment ago about the vice president suggests, not even this “not about Bush” rant I’m on is about Bush. It’s not even about Iraq. It’s more about whether a free people can govern themselves through a system of representative democracy. Not just in Iraq, but right here.
We’re personality-mad, from the people on the tabloids who are famous just for being famous (what is it that Paris Hilton does again?) to deciding which course history will take depending upon who suggested the direction.
Consider one of the most devastating arguments leveled against the late immigration bill — I mean, when critics got tired of saying “Grahamnesty” — Ted Kennedy’s for it. Whoa. OK. Case closed.
(Yes, I realize that, just as with Iraq, many people who rose up against the immigration bill have detailed, point-by-point arguments based on a careful, critical reading of all the available facts. But you know and I know that for some folks, “Teddy” was enough. That’s why we heard it so often.)
Sometimes, of course, a person is the issue. But even then, what’s most important to our society is what that person in the news represents in a larger sense. Thomas Ravenel’s drug problem, as described by his father, is a personal and family tragedy — and none of your or my business. But the indictment of the state treasurer, about whom the voters knew little beyond the fact that he photographed well, points to the serious flaw in our system for determining who’s going to hold our money for us.
It’s up to Tommy Moore whether he wants to be a state senator or work for the payday lending industry. Forget him. What the rest of us should think about is how much longer we’re going to tolerate our Legislature rolling over for special interests instead of acting in behalf of the greater good.
Finally, it’s not about Mark Sanford. Yes, he’s a pain with his ideology-over-reality shtick, up to the point that we endorsed Tommy Moore over him — even though our opinion of then-Sen. Moore was such that none of us was terribly shocked last week.
But when he says we should restructure government to make it accountable, he’s right. When he says you shouldn’t dictate local laws from the state level, he’s right. He’s right about a lot of stuff. But lawmakers take a particular delight in sticking it to Mark Sanford personally. Sure, he gives them cause, but that’s not what they’re there for.
South Carolina isn’t just about Mark Sanford.
I could go on and on about the problems with making political judgments personal, but let’s face a critical fact: Either you get my point by now, or you stopped reading about 20 inches ago because you don’t trust that stupid Brad Warthen anyway. In which case you just proved my point.

Katon Dawson vs. poverty

More views on whether voters are idiots

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Seems that folks over on this side of the pond are a bit slower than the Brits in perusing Mr. Caplan’s treatise on what idiots voters are.

And they are less charmed.

In today’s editions of both The Wall Street Journal and The New Yorker, we find somewhat bemused ponderings over what the reviewers seem to regard as Mr. Caplan’s earnest wish that the world be run by economists rather than voters.

Both give Mr. Caplan (The Economist and WSJ keep referring to him as "Mr.," but I wonder whether, in his world, he is known as "Dr."?) his due, as far as it goes. From The New Yorker:

The political knowledge of the average voter has been tested repeatedly, and the scores are impressively low. In polls taken since 1945, a majority of Americans have been unable to name a single branch of government, define the terms “liberal” and “conservative,” and explain what the Bill of Rights is. More than two-thirds have reported that they do not know the substance of Roe v. Wade and what the Food and Drug Administration does. Nearly half do not know that states have two senators and three-quarters do not know the length of a Senate term. More than fifty per cent of Americans cannot name their congressman; forty per cent cannot name either of their senators. Voters’ notions of government spending are wildly distorted: the public believes that foreign aid consumes twenty-four per cent of the federal budget, for example, though it actually consumes about one per cent.

But they are less kind about his conclusions, and The New Yorker is drily dismissive of his "solutions:"

He offers some suggestions for fixing the evils of universal democratic participation (though he does not spend much time elaborating on them, for reasons that may suggest themselves to you when you read them): require voters to pass a test for economic competence; give extra votes to people with greater economic literacy; reduce or eliminate efforts to increase voter turnout; require more economics courses in school, even if this means eliminating courses in other subjects, such as classics; teach people introductory economics without making the usual qualifications about the limits of market solutions. His general feeling is that if the country were run according to the beliefs of professional economists everyone would be better off. Short of that consummation, he favors whatever means are necessary to get everyone who votes to think like a professional economist. He wants to raise the price of voting.

I’m into civility and all that, but I did rather enjoy that parenthetical. The WSJ was, if less sarcastic, equally critical. It was cruel enough to throw some inconvenient facts at the author:

As an analysis of how far voters are out of step with settled economic thinking, Mr. Caplan’s argument seems irrefutable. Yet as a work of political theory it is pretty dismal. Survey data do indeed show that Americans hold some irrational views. But nowhere in "The Myth of the Rational Voter" does Mr. Caplan demonstrate that dumb voter bias triggers bad public policy.

Take free trade. Mr. Caplan reports that support for free trade hit bottom in 1977, when only 18% of Americans favored eliminating tariffs. Yet three years later, Ronald Reagan campaigned on a platform of free trade and proceeded to sign historic free-trade agreements with Canada and laid the groundwork for free trade with Mexico. Later administrations have fought to grant China most-favored nation trading status. True, there has been a lot of populist noise against free trade, but for decades not a single presidential nominee from either party has run for office while waving the protectionist flag.

Personally, I suspect the thing that keeps the country ticking is that, contrary to public whim, our Founders were bright enough to opt for a republic rather than a democracy. We’ve been pulling hard in the opposite direction for more than two centuries now, but occasionally elected officials still do the right thing. But on the rare occasions when I can’t escape hearing the partisan nonsense over the Controversy Of The Day on 24/7 TV "news," I wonder how much longer the vestiges of that can last.

I just blew my chance to be on the Lehrer show

Are voters idiots?

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No, seriously. Hold off with the glib, partisan comebacks and think about it. It’s kind of important.

Cleaning up my desk, I glanced through a copy of The Economist and saw a "Lexington" column from June 14 headlined, "Vote for me, dimwit."

It was about a book called The Myth of the Rational Voter by Bryan Caplan, an economics professor at George Mason University. An excerpt from the column:

The world is a complex place. Most people are inevitably ignorant about most things, which is why shows like “Are You Smarter than a 5th Grader?” are funny. Politics is no exception. Only 15% of Americans know who Harry Reid (the Senate majority leader) is, for example. True, more than 90% can identify Arnold Schwarzenegger. But that has a lot to do with the governor of California’s previous job pretending to be a killer robot.

Many political scientists think this does not matter because of a phenomenon called the “miracle of aggregation” or, more poetically, the “wisdom of crowds”. If ignorant voters vote randomly, the candidate who wins a majority of well-informed voters will win. The principle yields good results in other fields. On “Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?”, another quiz show, the answer most popular with the studio audience is correct 91% of the time. Financial markets, too, show how a huge number of guesses, aggregated, can value a stock or bond more accurately than any individual expert could. But Mr Caplan says that politics is different because ignorant voters do not vote randomly.

It turns out that Mr. Caplan is of a libertarian mindset — he thinks the answer to the problem that voters want stupid governmental policies is to leave less up to the government. This, of course, is ironic, since most libertarians believe individuals always act rationally, so their voting should be rational, but as you see above, Mr. Caplan says politics is different. (Now if more "the market is God" types would realize people don’t act as rational consumers with regard to health care, either, we might get somewhere as a nation with THAT problem.)

But as "Lexington" says about Mr. Caplan, he’s "better at diagnosis than prescription." So back to his diagnosis — do voters vote rationally? Judging by how many politicians who seem like smart people choose to act like dumb people to get elected, one might doubt it.

Or, to refute the Ibsen reference Karen McLeod brought up on another thread, is the majority always right? I give up. What does the audience think?

If only Haig WERE in control…

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Everybody makes fun of poor ol’ Al "I’m in control" Haig, but the general has a lot of sense, and we could do worse — and would probably be much better off — if he were in charge now.

Admittedly, I’m just basing that on this short op-ed piece in The Wall Street Journal today, but common sense seems in such short supply these days, I get all worked up when I run across it. An excerpt:

John Quincy Adams warned us against going abroad "in search of monsters to destroy," and some argue that the war on terror is just such a case. I disagree. On 9/11, the monster found us asleep at home and will continue to find us inadequately prepared unless we muster more strength and more wisdom. Unless we break with illusionary democracy mongering, inept handling of our military resources and self-defeating domestic political debates, we are in danger of becoming our own worst enemy.

Actually, that was a tough piece to excerpt in a truly representative manner. I recommend you go read it. It won’t take long.

Unintentional terror target

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Whenever any kind of bomb goes off, there is likely to be collateral damage. At least, that’s the case with our bombs, since we’re not trying to hurt the innocent when we drop them.

With terrorists, it’s sort of different. The randomness of the victim’s identities is sort of the point. The more random, the more a bomb is likely to spread terror.

But at least in the case of these intended bombings, it seems highly unlikely that the whackos intentionally tried to damage Paul DeMarco’s campaign for single-payer health care.

And yet, what are we to think when the British National Health Service intentionally recruits foreign doctors, and they turn out to be terror-minded?

Well, I’ll tell you what I think: Keeping our current system is no way to avoid that problem. If you don’t think we’re drawing a lot of foreign medicos to this country, you haven’t been to a major hospital or to a local doc-in-the-box lately.

This is not to cast aspersions upon physicians with accents. It is to say that as long as we remain the kind of country that attracts the educated and ambitious from abroad (we can agree on that, can’t we, even though a lot of y’all out there don’t want to attract folks to come pick our strawberries?), we will be vulnerable — unless those societies over there change.

Hence my preference for offense over defense in the war on terror. And in baseball, for that matter — I certainly prefer batting to standing in the outfield. Don’t you? Sure, we have to play some tenacious D, but it’s crazy to let the bad guys be the ones batting all the time.

I want us to remain a free and open land of opportunity. That means encouraging other countries to be the same.

Claudia weighs in

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Poor Claudia. I told her via e-mail that her name had come up in this thread, and she tried to weigh in on the discussion, but came in as I was changing my comments policy — twice.

So she sent me what she wanted to say by e-mail. Here it is:

Hello Brad, Herb… thank you for thinking of me… I’m flattered! I just read the email you sent, Brad, so I’m late joining this particular fray. As to the "subject at hand", are we discussing the banning of LexWolf, Brad’s mendaciousness or the management of blogs in general?? To comment on all three, well, I won’t miss Lex. Sorry, Lex, but you come off like the guy at the party everyone tries to avoid. Know-it-alls are annoying, but tolerable. Slatheringly aggressive know-it-alls don’t make many friends and, truth be known, I had taken to simply ignoring your posts because any value they contained was buried beneath so much hissing vitriol that it simply was no longer worth my time to read them. Secondly, is Brad a liar? Oh come on guys, really! Brad has opinions and philosophies just like all of us who post on this blog. Mostly he defends them with a clarity and articulateness that I envy… sometimes not so much! But, hey, this is a discussion, not an academic treatise, and it’s more like an oral argument than anything else. I don’t always agree with Brad, or several others that post here, but I respect his intellectual honesty and that of many other authors on this blog. Finally, on how to run a blog, I have no idea. Personally, I began posting on this one with a pseudonym, Lily. Yes, Herb, there were personal security concerns… thank you for understanding that! But, at the same time, it began to feel somehow dishonest… I have a reputation amongst my friends and associates as a "what you see is what you get" kind of person, and it’s something I try to remain true to. Yes, my real name is Claudia, but I prefer not to share my last name. It is quite unique, even more so than my first name, and there are some seriously crazy people in this world. My opinions are not always popular ones, especially in this state, and I while I would love to shout them from the top of the Confederate battle flag on the state house grounds that probably wouldn’t be the smartest thing to do.

Thanks for inviting me in, folks… I’ll try not to be a stranger!

Claudia

You mean the insurance industry is AGAINST it?

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Check out the letters to the editor today and be edified.

It seems that a guy who speaks for the insurance industry doesn’t like our own Paul DeMarco’s idea for a single-payer health-care system. Well, that settles that. If the middlemen, who would be completely eliminated along with all their lovely profits, think it’s a bad idea, why on Earth should anybody listen to a mere physician such as Paul?

Anyway, for y’all who are too lazy to click, here’s the letter:

Government monopoly won’t help health care
Guest columnist Paul DeMarco (“Really fixing U.S. health care,” June 5) argued that single-payer health care should be implemented in America.
Although Americans are clamoring for health care reform, this is one proposed solution that should be taken off the table.
Under a single-payer system, the government could hold a monopoly over health care coverage, offering only one insurance plan option. If the government decided to reduce funding or deny coverage for medical technologies or procedures, Americans would either have to forgo potentially life-saving procedures or finance them out-of-pocket.
Under the current system, if people are dissatisfied with their plan, they can simply switch insurance carriers.
Any possible savings from a single-payer system would be quickly eaten up by increased use, and bureaucratic inefficiencies would replace functioning free-market systems. The result would be an overburdened, underfunded system that is more cumbersome to navigate than the current one.
We should seek alternatives to a single-payer system to ensure health care for all.

ED BYRD
President
S.C. Association of Health Underwriters
Columbia

I was interested in how he brushed over the "any possible savings" part. Savings, of course, would be inevitable, because you would eliminate the third-party profits. Whether that were "quickly eaten up" in the way he suggests or some other way is certainly possible, but not inevitable.

Divided We Fail

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Just about every morning, I run into my friend Samuel Tenenbaum at breakfast, and we talk about various wonkish things, and have a high old time ingesting caffeine and blueberries.

And just about every morning, he mentions that it’s past time I should write about AARP’s program, Divided We Fail. Essentially, it’s an effort by AARP to get candidates in the presidential campaign talking about important domestic issues such as health care.

Shortly after he started working at AARP — and Divided We Fail is his particular mission — I dropped by his office and shot this video (with my phone, sorry about the low quality), which is essentially his answer to my question, "What are you doing here?"

At around that same time, Jane Wiley and others from that organization came by to see the editorial board and talked to us about the same thing. And we have yet to write about it, whereas others who don’t run into Samuel all the time have already written about it. That’s Jane pictured below. (If I shot video at that meeting, I’m having trouble finding it now.)

Well, we’ve had the Legislature winding down, etc., and all sorts of other excuses. But Samuel (and Jane, in her lower-key way) is (are) right to nag me about it.

This is one of several efforts going on in our state that do the very same thing, only with different issues. I wrote previously about the folks trying to raise the profile of global warming in the campaign. There’s also something going on backed by Bono of U2 and saving-the-world fame, and something else pushed by Bill Gates and his lady. I plan to do a column on the whole phenomenon, now that it’s summer.

But in the meantime, check out the grainy video, as Samuel summarizes it better than I could, and then look at the Web site.

I will return to this subject. Yes, I will…

Jane_wiley

What about Ken Wingate?

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When I first heard Ken Wingate was being appointed to fill in as interim treasurer, I had these thoughts:

He’s a good guy, a good choice. I first came to know him during the epic battle to outlaw video poker; he helped run the "vote No" campaign on the referendum that never happened. I believe
that campaign’s efforts is what caused video poker to panic and sue to stop the vote — which backfired and ended up in the industry’s being banned. He then ran for governor, which was overreaching for a guy who hadn’t held public office before. But when he was knocked out in the 2002 GOP primary, he got behind nominee Sanford, and eventually headed the governor’s MAP commission, in the early days when we still had hopes for the Sanford administration.
He’s a morally and socially conservative family guy — a real one, instead of the phony one that Thomas Ravenel tried to project in last year’s election — and there’s one thing I can say with certainty: We won’t see Ken Wingate rolling up our money to snort stuff up his nose.
What was the hurry? The governor should not have acted so precipitously; it seemed like he was picking the first guy who said "yes." This was a great opportunity to show that the governor would do a better, more thoughtful job of hiring a treasurer than we could get through popular election, and rushing the job was no way to give that impression. But I was apparently wrong (remember, I’m describing first impressions here). Somebody had to be in that seat to sign checks, starting right away. So, good one there, governor.
One other concern, and this one remains. The governor didn’t necessarily need to pick one of the people who had run for the office; in fact, this was a good opportunity to go beyond that self-selected group — even though Greg Ryberg would have been fine for the job. But what about a professional — someone who already knew the workings of the office and could keep it running smoothly during this temporary period, thereby avoiding upsets to the important but highly routine work it must do? Why an outsider? I could see if you had specific plans for changes, and wanted a new broom. But you don’t do that with a temporary appointment (the Legislature could appoint someone as early as today if Ravenel resigns). Why introduce two jarring disruptions in a brief period? That’s not good management. As fine a pick as Wingate is personally, the message sent by such a decision is troubling. Here’s the connotation: Someone from the private sector is always better than an experienced public servant (read that "bureaucrat," and make a face like you smell something), whether he knows anything or not, and even if he doesn’t have time to learn where the men’s room is before he’s gone. It suggests a carelessness with regard to the public good, the making of an ideological point ahead of efficiency and accountability. This is just a small caveat right now, and I suspect Mr. Wingate will do a fine-enough job that he will soon put it out of my mind. But for now, I make note of it.

I’ll come back later and comment on the nasty things the Democrats are saying about Ken. (NOTE: Earlier, this paragraph said "later today." The way the day’s been going — those videos took a while — it might be more like tomorrow.)

Reading the numbers

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Reading proof for our Monday page, I again run across that famous statistic, "one cat and her offspring produce 420,000 kittens over seven years." It’s in a letter promoting spaying and neutering.

You know, one of these days I’ve got to see that cat. That’s got to be some cat.

Speaking of statistics, there’s an interesting column in The Wall Street Journal today about another one you may have heard before:

Call it the reading income gap: Children from
low-income households average just 25 hours of shared reading time with
their parents before starting school, compared with 1,000 to 1,700
hours for their counterparts from middle-income homes.

These oft-repeated numbers originate in a 1990 book by
Marilyn Jager Adams titled, "Beginning to Read: Thinking And Learning
About Print."

Here, according to columnist Carl Bialik, "the Numbers Guy," is where that stat came from:

Ms. Adams got the 25-hours estimate from a study of 24 children in 22
low-income families. For the middle-income figures, she extrapolated
from the experience of a single child: her then-4-year-old son, John.
She laid out her calculations and sources carefully over five pages,
trying to make clear that she was demonstrating anecdotally the
dramatic difference between the two groups.

Mr. Bialik isn’t arguing that the general trend Ms. Adams is trying to describe is false. He notes that the stat "makes sense. It’s a hard thing to measure and therefore hard to contradict; and the figures meld with related research."

But still, he warns against the temptation to which various child-advocacy groups succumb, that of citing the numbers as though they are statistically defensible. They are not. Using data such as that can hurt your credibility, even when you’re right in the overall point you’re trying to make.

Brooks on Blair, Iraq and communitarianism

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As you probably already know, The New York Times has erected a significant barrier to the free flow of ideas on the Internet. It has some of the best op-ed writers in the country, but it won’t allow anyone to post their stuff or link to it on the Web. On the Times‘ own site, you have to pay a premium to read them.

So when I refer to Tom Friedman or David Brooks or one of those people, I can’t just link you straight to the entire piece I’m talking about.

But let me see if I can give you the gist of a Brooks piece I referred to in my column today, and stay within the "fair use" boundaries.

Here’s the excerpt, from a piece headlined, “The Human Community:”

Blair’s decision to support the invasion of Iraq grew out of the essence of who he is. Over the past decade, he has emerged as the world’s leading anti-Huntingtonian. He has become one pole in a big debate. On one side are those, represented by Samuel Huntington of Harvard, who believe humanity is riven by deep cultural divides and we should be careful about interfering in one another’s business. On the other are those like Blair, who believe the process of globalization compels us to be interdependent, and that the world will flourish only if the international community enforces shared, universal values….
As prime minister, he tried to remove the class and political barriers that divide the British people. Abroad, his core idea was also communitarian…
This meant moving away from the Westphalian system, in which the world and its problems were divided into nation-states….
In his 1999 speech, Blair maintained that the world sometimes has a duty to intervene in nations where global values are under threat. He argued forcefully for putting ground troops in Kosovo and highlighted the menace posed by Saddam Hussein.

If that’s not enough for you, here’s a PDF of the page of The State on which the column appeared.

Little Italy column

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Immigration,

individualism

and Italian ices

By BRAD WARTHEN
EDITORIAL PAGE EDITOR

MY ELDEST daughter and her husband returned Sunday from a trip to Italy. Big deal. Her Mom and Dad walked through Little Italy in lower Manhattan over the weekend, which is just as good, and cheaper.
No jet lag. All the authentic Italian eateries you could want, from pasta to espresso to exquisite pastries. Sure, it’s a little touristy, but so is the other Italy.
And if you get tired of it, just walk a little further down Mulberry Street, cross Canal, and bada-bing! You’re in Chinatown. A whole other country, as Forrest Gump would say. Sidewalk tables with old guys
gesticulating and hurling Italian at each other give way to old Chinese guys playing chess at park benches. The sudden shift, the stark cultural, ethnic and linguistic contrast, is stunning to anyone who is accustomed to living in… well, America. No assimilation, no melting pot, no tossed salad, or any of those other metaphors that make me hungry (did I tell you about the pastries?).
But I wouldn’t have it any other way. This is what we came for, the ethnic pageantry. That, and the Italian ices. We went there to experience something we can’t get in West Columbia — unless, of course, we were to enter a Mexican tienda for one of those Cokes that taste better than the ones bottled for sale in this country (or so I’m told).
Which brings me to David Brooks’ column earlier this week, endeavoring to explain all the passion over illegal aliens.
I appreciate that he trashed the notion that this is some sort of simplistic left-vs.-right flashpoint. You can find just as much anxiety among “progressives” who worry about wages and working conditions as among know-nothings who simply don’t like foreigners.
But ultimately, when he tried to explain what the dichotomy was as opposed to what it wasn’t, he got it wrong:

Liberal members of the educated class celebrated the cultural individualism of the 1960s. Conservative members celebrated the economic individualism of the 1980s. But they all celebrated individualism. They all valued diversity and embraced a sense of national identity that rested on openness and global integration.
This cultural offensive created a silent backlash among people who were not so enamored of rampant individualism and who were worried that all this diversity would destroy the ancient ties of community and social solidarity. Members of this class came to feel that America’s identity and culture were under threat from people who did not understand what made America united and distinct.

Mr. Brooks should read the comments on my blog sometime. He’ll discover that the most adamant Goodfellas
individualists — the strident libertarians, who tend to bridle at the very word “society,” much less the idea of paying taxes — are most likely to call our senior senator “Lindsey Grahamnesty.”
What is America’s “identity and culture”? We owe a huge debt of gratitude to those English-speaking white men who drafted our Constitution. But America is also about opportunity for all. It is about bigness, and the ability to absorb. It’s about pizza and hamburgers and chili con carne. We’re not threatened by that stuff, we dig it. Bring it on! Our appetite for the big, messy smorgasbord of cultures sloshing around and swapping juices is our thing; it’s what we grow on.
OK, that sounds kind of like the first group Mr. Brooks described — except for the “individualist” part, which is key. If I can be categorized, it’s as the opposite, a communitarian. My attitudes toward the richness of the American stew arise from the same impulses that Mr. Brooks described when he wrote recently, in a piece headlined “The Human Community,” that Tony Blair’s commitment to Iraq arose from his communitarianism.
I’m surprised at Mr. Brooks.
America doesn’t define “community” in terms of everybody looking, speaking or eating alike. We Pastries
leave that kind of self-defeating smallness to ethnic cleansers in the Balkans, or traditionalist jihadists in the Mideast. We’re selling something else, and it’s so big and rich and free that you can’t stop it. Once you narrowly define a thing and say it’s this and not that, you limit it, and this country is not limited.
It’s an essential part of who we are that you can’t easily pin down who we are.
A place like Little Italy or that tienda on Sunset would seem to run counter to that, to embody ethnic homogeneity and specificity to the point of rejecting essential Americanism. But they don’t.
If we were satisfied with McDonald’s and Pizza Hut and white bread sandwiches from the chain supermarket we’d be who the French think we are, and they’re wrong about us.
We have a place like Little Italy because we can afford it. We’re big enough, and sure enough of who we are, to have it all.
Last Saturday, we continued through Chinatown and walked across the bridge to Brooklyn. On the way Bridge1
over, we kept passing Manhattanites coming back from Brooklyn carrying pizzas. It’s one thing for a tourist to make the trek, but to walk to the next borough and back for a pizza? What was that about?
When we got there, we saw where they were going. The place sat alone on a dreary block right under the bridge. There was a long line outside just for takeout. People from Asia, from Europe, from Africa, all waiting eagerly, and untroubled about the long walk to get there. Apparently, the pizza was just that good.
I still don’t know how to philosophically characterize all the passion over immigration or how to address the very legitimate concerns (beyond the passion) about the many ways our immigration “system” fails to work.
But I know that as long as the pizza is this good in this country, they’re going to keep coming.

Manhattan

How would you end an “endless war?”

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Set aside for a moment the increasing shrillness of the releases I get from antiwar groups. More and more, I find myself having trouble understanding what these folks actually want the United States to do. Take this release today, for instance:

Americans Against Escalation in Iraq
http://www.NoIraqEscalation.com

MEDIA ADVISORY FOR                            Contact: Moira Mack
Thursday, June 14, 2007                                     202-261-2383

"IRAQ SUMMER" BEGINS TODAY

Nearly 100 Organizers Begin Work
in Key Congressional Districts

Coalition Turns Up Heat on "Endless War" Republicans

WASHINGTON, DC – “Iraq Summer” begins today as Americans Against Escalation in Iraq prepares to dispatch nearly 100 organizers to the home states and districts of Republican Senators and Representatives who have opposed setting a timeline to end the US war in Iraq. The program is modeled on the “Freedom Summer” civil rights project. Organizers will be in fifteen states from Nevada to Maine, a total of 40 congressional districts.

Organizers will spend ten weeks in their assigned districts working with local veterans and advocacy groups to pressure targeted lawmakers to reject President Bush’s Iraq policy and instead vote to bring a responsible end to the war. A barrage of events, letter writing campaigns, endorsement efforts, and local legislative events are planned for each targeted state or district, building to large nationwide rallies at the end of August. The rallies come just in advance of anticipated votes on the war and the so-called “surge.”

With no real progress expected on the ground in Iraq, AAEI aims to turn growing nation-wide opposition to the war into intense political pressure to end the war responsibly. By mobilizing thousands of outraged citizens, AAEI will demonstrate that continued support for the war in Iraq has political consequences for those representatives seeking re-election in 2008. A recently released New York Times/CBS poll indicates that 63% of the public wants a timetable for withdrawal in 2008.

“Opposition to the war in Iraq is reaching a boiling point and this summer Republican members of Congress will be feeling the heat from their constituents,” said Moira Mack, spokeswoman for Americans Against Escalation in Iraq. “As more and more rural and suburban voters turn against President Bush’s Iraq war policies, the President’s supporters in Congress will be facing their own political vulnerability. We will force Members of Congress to make a choice: continue to support President Bush’s wildly unpopular policy of endless war in Iraq and face the political consequences or side with the majority of Americans and vote to responsibly end the war.”

Most of the organizers in the program are local to the regions where they will be working, and are a mix of veterans, military family members, students and community organizers. They gather this weekend in Washington, DC, for four days of training and planning.

AAEI will be holding a press conference call to officially kick off the program.
            ###

I had to write back to Moira Mack to ask:

Moira, reading your release, I have a question.
Saying you oppose "endless war" suggests that you propose to end that war somehow.
What is your plan? Since you don’t think the surge or anything like it will bring the fighting to an end, what action do you propose to keep the various factions in Iraq from killing people?

I’ve been wondering about that for years, but the question is taking on a new urgency as more and more people say things like that, things which make no sense.

The "endlessness" of this war is not a policy; it’s a fact. The issue is, what do we do in the face of that fact?

And no, having a "timeline" is not a plan, unless the plan is to get the jihadist insurgents and Sunni and Shi’a combatants to agree to the timeline, which would be a neat trick.

Paul DeMarco taking the lead again

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It’s just not enough for our own Dr. Paul DeMarco to solve our education problems. Now he’s fixing health care. I like what he says, anyway. Who am I to argue? He’s the doctor, after all. In case you don’t know what I’m talking about, check out his op-ed piece that was in the paper today. An excerpt:

It is a complex issue, but it comes down to whom to trust: an industry
that deals with patients at arm’s length and is ruled by the almighty
dollar; or physicians, who deal with you face-to-face, who suffer with
you when you are unable to access essential care and whose oath calls
them to service, not just to higher income.

Unlike some people I could mention, Dr. DeMarco doesn’t just talk; he acts. To wit:

That’s why I am eager to announce the formation of a new group devoted
to creating a single-payer plan for our state and country. The
organizational meeting for a South Carolina chapter of Physicians for a
National Health Program will be held at 2 p.m. Saturday at Thorny’s
Steakhouse, 618 Church St. in Conway. The national group was founded in
1987 and now boasts more than 14,000 members (everyone is welcome; you
need not be a physician to join).

Dr. DeMarco is doing his bit. What are the rest of us going to do?

Anderson celebrates what little there is to celebrate

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A colleague points out the editorial in which the Anderson paper over the weekend celebrated the demise of efforts to slip the whole taxpayers-subsidize-private-schools thing into the open enrollment bill. An excerpt;

An attempt to further frustrate improvements in public schools in South Carolina was defeated in the Senate last week. The addition of private school vouchers to a bill allowing open enrollment within the public school system was dismissed nearly two-to-one, according to published reports. Debate continues on the original proposal, despite this latest pass at – and latest failure of – supporting private education with public money.

That’s good. But isn’t it a shame how, in South Carolina, we almost never get to celebrate any really good, bold, positive measures passing our Legislature — such as real DOT reform, or a comprehensive tax revamp, or addressing the profound problems in the Corridor of Shame, or setting local governments free to govern locally, or anything really helpful.

No, the best we get to do is celebrate when something really, really awful fails to pass.

Sad.

bradwarthen.com

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