Conservative Cabal

That is the essential question of this healthcare debate.

Everyone agrees that the healthcare system in its current incarnation is not perfect. Anyone who has had to deal with an insurance company rejecting a claim, or forcing a certain hospital over another, or who has looked with horror at the cost of an MRI (or some prescription drugs), and been grateful that they have insurance, understands this. The problem, however, is not the revolving 40 million uninsured (if you have an appendicitis, you will get treatment in an ER. You will not, unlike this woman, have to call your insurance company to see if you can get an ambulance while you are in major pain. )

The problem is one of out-of-control costs promoted by trial lawyers, government meddling in the market, and lack of choice. Clearly, more meddling from the government — and on a MASSIVE scale  — is not the answer.

That is, it’s clear to people who understand that regular human beings are able to make decisions for themselves.  Yes, even decisions about whether or not to carry health insurance, and how much. The problem for many uninsured is that the COSTS of private insurance are too high, and they are often unaware that they can even GET private insurance if they aren’t employed. There are ways in the free market to communicate about health insurance programs, and bring costs down without spending trillions of taxpayer dollars (not to mention risking all the many problems of government advisory committees checking on your health and habits).

We need more choice, not less. And one of those choices should not be the federal government, which cannot even attempt to stimulate the economy without putting us into major debt, thus killing all chance of real stimulus. A government “option” would not be an option at all, and would indirectly force other options out of business.

So who will decide whether this passes? Let us hope it is people, through their elected representatives, as God and the Constitution intended, rather than the ghost of Ted Kennedy.

I currently am, over at Crooked Timber…

Liberals genuinely would be happy to have a lively policy debate with moderate conservatives – a debate in which they get to signal tolerant respect for the opponent’s different point of view and, to some degree, different values. By contrast, conservatives would find nothing more dreadful than such a debate.

Please join in.

I added a few new people to the blogroll, some oldies but goodies (The Belmont Club and Blackfive), some oversights (City Journal), and some newer discoveries (Coyoteblog, To Miss…).

Some samples…

From City Journal:

It’s something of a parlor game among the commentariat to compare one era with another. Every time America’s power ebbs, the pundits conjure the fall of the Roman Empire—and every time America’s power increases, they fear it’s the collapse of the Roman Republic. Each new war must be either Vietnam again or World War II. And if we had a dollar for every time a journalist compared the current economic downturn with the Great Depression, the current economic downturn would be over.

From To Miss:

And suddenly the confusion I have always had when discussing with those who believe adamantly in the goodness of the welfare state starts to dissipate. No wonder everyone thinks I am mad. I argue for a society which would allow some people to live in serious poverty. I believe in not handing out free flats and free money. I believe in making people work for their achievements. Why? So that they can know those words: ‘values’, ’self-respect’ and ‘kindness’. To never know these things, no matter how rich one might be, is to live a life which, in my view, is not worth living.

And therein lies the devastating irony: the welfare state does save millions from a life of financial poverty, but in doing so, it necessarily subjects people to a life devoid of value.

Read the whole thing.  Really, just page to the bottom and start reading up there.  Really interesting lady.

From Coyote:

The fact is that this was a normal recession blown out of proportion first by the Bush and later by the Obama administration.  From the very beginning, it looked much like the recession of the early 1980’s or the bank crisis of the early 1990’s, and it recovered for the same reason - there are fundamental strengths in the economy.  In fact, the length of the Great Depression was in fact the aberration, caused more by FDR’s wild proposals (the worst of which was the National Industrial Recovery Act) which tended to dampen the investment that normally picks up at the bottom of the cycle to take advantage of reduced asset values and input costs.

Read it all.  Have fun and check back later for actual posting!

So high that it’s even going to other planets.  From the BBC we have news of methane on Mars:

Scientists in Paris used a computer climate model for the Red Planet to simulate observations made from Earth…

“The problem is if we just take into account the photochemistry as we know it on Earth and if we put it in the model, then we cannot reproduce the model and that was a surprise.”

Surprise?  The model doesn’t match the data.  But gosh, we’re certain we’ve got all the physics in there.  Just like those earth-bound models that keep predicting things that aren’t happening.  But we know we’ve got it right.  Now, in the defense of those studying Mars, they admit there must be something going on they don’t understand, unlike our friends in climate science.  Wattsupwiththat (read the link first or the quote won’t make all that much sense) has a great take down of the missing hot spot in the tropics the modelers have been trying to ignore for a decade now:

Yet surprisingly, some proponents of global warming alarmism actually resort to this very strategy. “True,” they say, “the hot spot isn’t developing. But that is because the heat is being stored up elsewhere—it’s “in the pipeline”—and one day it will burst forth with even greater severity and vengeance.”

What can we make of that claim? Well, thinking back to Fred again, it amounts to this: We use our temperature probe in Fred’s darkened bedroom and we see a pattern like that in (E) above, corresponding to no blanket: Fred should be freezing! But actually, the heat has all gone into Fred’s body, despite the complete absence of the hot air which is the mechanism for making it do so. In other words, Fred got warmer by disobeying the second law of thermodynamics—in other words, by magic. Likewise, if someone says heat is being secretly stored somewhere by global warming, despite the absence of the very mechanism that does the warming, they are saying global warming is happening by magic. That is the harsh truth of the matter.

Bang.  Of course, the modellers of earth can’t admit they don’t know what’s going on because the whole global warming myth is built on those models.  Nothing in the observed data record leads anyone to believe there is anything going on but a small, gradual and harmless warming of the earth that has occurred many times before.  The models are the only thing that allows governments around the world to take over the economies of the free world and to tax the US exorbitantly.  So the models must be right, the measurements must be wrong and you and I are just recalcitrant luddites.  hrmph.

This pretty much sums it up.

One of the great demonstrations of the universal value of Democracy and Liberty is that no matter how despotic and corrupt a regime is, it will always mouth the platitudes of Liberal Democracy.  N. Korea dutifully has elections, as does Iran.  All the worst places in the world are “People’s Republics” or “Islamic Republics”.  No one just says outright, “hey, I’m just a plain old despot claiming the absoulte right of kings.”  They have to couch their thugocracies in the trappings of Western Civilization because we have discovered something that borders on a universal human truth.

So, in a way, we might already have won if we would only hold all these petty dictators to account through the international bodies that exist.  Sadly, the UN is the playground of these same petty, corrupt dictators, so absent starting something else (and leaving the UN altogether for non-humanitarian issues), we’re not going to make much headway in that direction.  But I digress…

Over at the Contentions blog, Jennifer Rubin has been writing about Sotomayor’s sudden transformation into a rule of law girl now that she’s been nominated to the Supreme Court.  Never mind her years and years of giving speeches and handing down rulings in direct contradiction to the idea of judicial restraint, now that she’s on national television, she’s as Federalist as any Federalist out there.

If legislating from the bench is so wildly popular, why the need to lie about it during confirmation hearings?

And the same question could be asked of about a dozen of the Left’s legislative priorities.

They don’t want to nationalize health care, they swear. Even as they pass legislation geared to do exactly that.  They have no intention of raising taxes, even as “cap and trade” becomes the largest tax grab in the history of the US.  No one has ever been a stronger friend of Israel, even as we lean on them and put no pressure whatsoever on Hamas or Abbas or Syria or Iran.  Name one demand that Obama has made of the PLO.  I certainly can’t think of one.

But he and his supporters swear there has never been a better friend to Israel in the Oval Office.

Hogwash.  And hogwash again on Healthcare which the Left has been trying to socialize it since the 60s.  And hogwash again on taxes.

And hogwash again on Sotomayor’s judicial restraint.

But think about it.  If the West has already won the important debate about the truth of Democracy and Liberty and our evidence is the hypocrisy of Castro and Kim JongIl and the Ayatollahs; then what does the hypocrisy, not to say perfidy, of the Democratic party here in the US say about the domestic policy debate?

And if we’ve already won the battle of ideas (as I believe we have), then why aren’t our elected officials at least trying to do a better job of holding the government to account.  We know why the press won’t do it (they are on the other side).  But our congressmen should at least try to point out the utter ridiculousness of their opponents across the aisle saying one thing and doing another.

Perhaps calling Sotomayor on her silliness is a good start.

Krauthammer on Friday let loose on the Obama administration for kidding itself on so many levels and once again letting down the Iranian people…

Unfortunately for the United States, the country Obama represents, the prospective treaty is useless at best, detrimental at worst…

Obama says that his START will be a great boon, setting an example to enable us to better pressure North Korea and Iran to give up their nuclear programs. That a man of Obama’s intelligence can believe such nonsense is beyond comprehension.

And that’s really the question.  Can Obama and the Left in general really believe that arms control works or that America cutting down from 2500 nukes to 1500 is going to change the strategic calculus for thugs in Iran butchering their people in the streets or thugs in N. Korea starving a people into non-existence?

Can they really believe it?  Another example, in an article ostensibly on the side of the Iranian people…

Who’s going to win? In the short run, the victors may be the thugs who claim to rule in the name of God: the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the Basij militia and the other tools of an Islamic revolution that has decayed and hardened into mere authoritarianism. They have shown they are willing to kill enough of their compatriots to contain this first wave of change.

“Decayed and hardened”?  Really?  Can Ignatius really believe that the Islamic Republic has been anything but “mere authoritarianism” since the day it took 53 Americans hostage?  The Iranian government has supported the worst forms of terrorism all around the world, actively butchers its own people in public executions, stifles freedom of the press, has never had a free election.  If there’s a fascism and totalitarianism index, Iran is right near the top.  There is nothing but mere totalitarianism in the very ideals of the “Islamic Republic.”  It is, as most Islamism is, nothing more than a warmed over version of the fascism of Europe with Islam taking the place of the Master Race.

How could Ignatius and Obama be so deceived about the nature of this terrible regime?  What causes intelligent people to take absurd positions vis à vis Iran and other obvious enemies of Civilization?

The answer is ideology, an ideology that focuses all the sins of the world in one place, America.  The Soviets weren’t bad, we were.  The Maoists weren’t (or aren’t) bad, we were.  We were the aggressors, we were the bad guys.  I mean, sure they had the gulag, but we don’t even have Universal Health Care!  Still!

Who here sees a replay of the Carter years coming?  Carter was the nicest, most understanding, most apologetic President we’ve ever had and what did it get us?  A more beligerent USSR, a hostage crisis in Iran, aggresive terrorism throughout the Mideast and Europe.

When you apologize to thugs, they don’t take it as a kindness, they take it as weakness, and they quickly move to exploit any weakness they see.

And another thing, well two things actually; one on Putin and one on missile defense.  When Bush looked into “Putin’s soul” and saw a man he could do business with, he was universally derided on the Left as a fool who had been duped by Putin.  Of course, Bush never gave Putin anything, excepting maybe being a little less concerned with human rights in Russia than some wanted.  Obama flits over to Moscow and in a couple of days gives the Russians exactly what they have wanted for six years, a veto on our missile defense plans, selling out our allies and NATO members Poland and the Czech Republic in the process and he’s a genius for our time, .  Are you kidding me?

And what about missile defense?  The Left always screamed it wouldn’t work and even if it could shoot down one or two missiles, the Russians and the Chinese were going to send thousands at us, so what’s the point?  Of course, now it does work.  We’ve shot down missiles and satellites and just about anything else we’ve had a mind to over the past few years, so we don’t hear too much about the impossibility of hitting a bullet with a bullet anymore.  And yet the Left still vehemently opposes missile defence.  Confusing, no?

And the threat has changed as well.  We’re not worried about Russia throwing a thousand nukes over the North Pole at us, we’re worried about five from Iran or ten from PyongYang, exactly the kind of threat that missile defence, properly deployed could eliminate.

And yet the one place Obama chooses to save money next year is in cutting missile defence.  His one big “win” on the foreign policy circuit is giving away our right to defend ourselves and our allies to Russia.

The blind belief in disarmament has been part and parcel to the Left since Vietnam.  It has never been more dangerous.  It is of a piece with the belief that it is possible to make a deal with Iran’s thuggee rulers.  The Left as a matter of faith that if only we will repent of past wrongs, pay absolution and resolve to sin no more, then the world’s worst will accept our love, beat their swords into plowshares and we will all live happily ever after.

It’s daft.  It turns the rest of the world into mere reflections of America, absolving and infantalizing them at the same time.  Iran’s leaders have no interest of their own save resistance to American hegemony and American crimes.  Once those crimes are cleared up, all will be right with the world.  Iran’s belligerance is seen merely as a resistance (a legitimate resistance, I might add), to the monsters here in America.

We are the only bad guys, and we the only actors in this drama.  Everything revolves around us.  Obama doesn’t need to engage in tough diplomacy, he needs only change us and the messy world, with all its intractable problems, will simply melt away.

This is the fantasy that Obama and others like him hold dear.  Let us pray they wake up before it’s too late.

From parts mostly known.  Known to all who have children anyway.

Where to begin?  The Anchoress has a post which I shall quote liberally for its essential humanity:

…my point was about understanding who we are and our intrinsic worth; we too often treat our lives, our bodies, our intellects, our blessings and our various gifts like they are nothing special, and so we devalue them.  We forget that - as Jesus says in Matthew:

Are not two sparrows sold for a small coin?  Yet not one of them falls to the ground without your father’s knowledge.  Even all the hairs of your head are counted.  So do not be afraid; you are worth more than many sparrows.

We forget that we are royal children; loved into being; that our lives are not meaningless or accidental - that we do not pass unnoticed, whether we’re grocery shopping, or meeting friends for drinks, or weeping in our closets…

Read the rest here.

What else…  Johnson perhaps..

A shining dress, like a weighty weapon, has no force in itself, but owes all its efficacy to him that wears it.

Or a voice, mellifluous or not, which has no weight without character behind it.  And I think the rest of the world has seen through the show of the Obama adminstration.

And Acton, I simply must quote Acton after being away so long…

There is another world for the expiation of guilt, but the wages of folly are payable here below. - Acton, Lectures on the French Revolution. (here)

Sadly, the costs are often born by other than the fool.   And we shall all bear the price for the ridiculousness pouring out of Washington these days; healthcare and climate change legislation being two of the worst and most prominent nightmares currently passing through Congress.

More later.  Happy to be back.

Climb by Mark Steyn on National Review Online

I come out of hiding very very briefly to note this article. I honestly HEART Mark Steyn (what right-thinking person doesn’t?). Colin Powell and other “moderates” are making the same complaints about the Republican Party that they always have. They just want the Republican Party to be less conservative (and by conservative they almost always mean socially conservative).

Can we PLEASE stop breaking down conservatism into these various areas — social, war, fiscal — and say that current conservatism may indeed a state of mind, as I believe Russell Kirk said, and that that  is OKAY. It’s a state of mind that loves freedom, but understands and accepts boring adult responsibility, without being told to by the nanny state.

American conservatives desire freedom from tyranny and freedom from overreaching government,  but they recognize that true freedom — freedom that can last and is not just a theory — cannot come without a recognition of human limits.  And so we recognize those institutions  — the social networks, if you will –  that have strengthened our civic communities and our nation, and that force the admission of our limits and our frailties.  Families (ideally with two parents), respect for  marriage, respect for life and property, respect for religion, and respect for law. Even respect for your political opponent (which Ms. Sykes seems not to understand, but I digress).

The GOP and Republicans are often blamed for being too individualistic, but in fact, it is conservatism — classical liberalism — that puts the burden of social welfare in its proper place — society. You and me. Not some invisible government hand that may eventually crush us.

We almost missed Earth Day! But hope you had a pleasant one … at least a less mournful one than these folks.

h/t to Un-Liberaled Woman (and Ace)

Classic indeed. Meanwhile, let’s all be sure to remember the man who founded Earth Day, Ira Einhorn, who loved the Earth more than he loved his girlfriend.

And a sidenote, from that gruesome story, “Arlen Specter, currently Pennsylvania’s senior United States Senator, was Mr. Einhorn’s attorney. He managed to get the bail set at the unheard of amount of $40,000 for the suspected murderer.”  This really isn’t surprising. Even 30 years later, Arlen Specter still disappoints.