Hal O'Brien

"Libertarians Fly to Haiti to Stop Statist Meddling by Rest of World"

Insert Yemen, Afghanistan, or Somalia in that headline, and it's just as applicable.

Say what one will about communists, at least they were willing to fight for their principles in the Spanish Civil War.

I'm not kidding, below. They really do make the claim Hawking couldn't survive under NHS. {hat tip to Talking Points Memo}

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Sirs:

I will mention only in passing your Gross Factual Error about how physicist Stephen Hawking "wouldn't have a chance in the U.K.," since he's been a U.K. citizen since his birth there 67 years ago and thus has lived his life under their National Health Service ("How House Bill Runs Over Grandma," unsigned editorial, Friday, July 31, 2009 4:20 PM PT). My guess is you've received voluminous feedback about your journalistic carelessness.

No, I'm here to write about your disingenuous tone regarding how you are shocked, shocked! that anyone would apply a cost-benefit analysis to health care. Are you really of the opinion such analyses are not done today by U.S. health insurance companies? Are you either so naive or protected to think individual Americans who have no insurance don't do the same? Have you heard from no doctors who grieve over patients who have been refused care either from their insurance companies or their checkbooks?

Must you complain of the mote in health care reformers' eyes, while you studiously ignore the beam in your own?

Sincerely,

etc.

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UPDATED TO ADD:

Howard Dean, MD, on yesterday's "THIS WEEK WITH GEORGE STEPHANOPOULOS" on ABC:

I don't want somebody in between the doctor and the patient. I don't want the possibility of losing your health insurance. I don't want people setting standards or denying care. That's all what we have now under the private health insurance system. That's what happens.

Look, I've practiced -- I've practiced for 10 years. My wife is still practicing. Never once did I have a Medicare bureaucrat tell me what I could or couldn't do for a patient, but all the time we have bureaucrats from the insurance companies calling up and saying, we're not going to cover this, and we're not going to pay for that, and we're denying coverage of that.

The system we have right now is broken. We need to fix it.

I think giving the American people some choices about how to fix it makes sense.

--

Imagine. A doctor with actual experience of private-sector bureaucrats rationing care. Who'd'a thunk?

* From an interview in Der Spiegel, called "Evil Can Also Be Beautiful":
SPIEGEL: Some people say that if architects had to live in their own buildings, cities would be more attractive today.
Koolhaas: Oh, come on now, that's really trivial.
SPIEGEL: Where do you live?
Koolhaas: That's unimportant. It's less a question of architecture than of finances.
SPIEGEL: You're avoiding the question. Where do you live?
Koolhaas: OK, I live in a Victorian apartment building in London.

{hat tip to John Massengale}

From Clay Shirky (tweeting as @cshriky), I learn Newt Gingrich tweeted the following:

"Rendering Miranda rights to terrorists on foreign soil is amazing We are in a war The terrorists are enemies not criminals"

At which point, I have to employ Cameron's Skepticism:

"You can tell me all day that you believe that there's a giant, pink, flying dragon chained up in your back yard, but if you never go in your back yard and put food and water out, I'm going to assume that you don't actually believe that."

That is, Newt can tell me all day he thinks terrorists are enemies not criminals, but if he never calls for Roeder and Von Brunn to be shipped to Guantánamo as terrorists, I'm going to assume that he doesn't actually believe that.

Here's a joke from a book on cross-examination I've read (that's somewhere in a box, so I don't have a better cite than that):

Seems there was a Rookie Cop. He ticketed someone for drunk driving. The Defense Lawyer lays into him:

DL: Is it true, officer, that this is your first year of service in the police?

RC: Yes, it is.

DL: Is it true this is among the first citations you've ever issued?

RC: Yes, it is.

{that's where the book suggests the DL should have left it. instead, he went on:}

DL: On what basis, then, did you assess my client's sobriety behind the wheel?

RC: Fifteen years' experience as a professional bartender.

Oops.

In a similar way, Glenn Greenwald has a few things to say about Ms. Sotomayor.

Unlike me, most likely you, and the overwhelming majority of Americans, though, he bases it on a case he argued before Judge Sotomayor.

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jaylake pointed to this piece at National Review by one Mark Krikorian where the poor writer complains about peer pressure to pronounce Ms. Sotomayor's name correctly, instead of mangling it the way he'd like. This is what I wrote to him:

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"This may seem like carping, but it's not."

Wanna bet? If it comforts you to think so, fine. That's probably not true to your readers, though.

First off, you keep making a "natural"/"unnatural" distinction. There is no such thing in language. There is only trading off one set of unnatural rules against another.

Secondly, you appear to be saying that notwithstanding the implicitly assumed conservative commitment to freedom, citizens should only exercise that freedom in a way, "the rest of us can just ignore." If that's really your view, you should stop publishing your thoughts, so those of us who are genuinely conservative can just ignore you. I'm willing to give you the benefit of the doubt and think that's not what you meant.

Then there's the mildly faith-related argument. "(A)ll things whatsoever ye would that men should do to you, do ye even so to them..." I wish others to pronounce my own name correctly. How then can I begrudge the desire of others for the same? (Don't get me started on lazy programmers and having an apostrophe in one's name.)

As for other, previous waves of immigrants not being willing to stick up for the things they believed in, so all subsequent waves should make the same craven concessions... "If Johnny were to jump off the Empire State Building, would you jump off the Empire State Building?"

Yours in freedom,

-- Hal O'Brien

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He was kind enough to write back. Unfortunately, it didn't reflect well on Mr. Krikorian's judgment. I quote him here in italics:

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"In a system of ordered liberty, you don't just get to do whatever you want -- you also have obligations to the community."

Indeed. And yet you continue to shirk yours. Your attitude as written continues to be, you personally are made uncomfortable by something, so the community can go hang.

"My point all along has been that there's been a reduction in the degree of social pressure from the community overall to conform to our ways."

Which means what you believe the obligations to the community are, and what the community itself believes those obligations to be, are two different things.

"Such pressure may well have been excessive in the past, but it's inadequate now."

According to yourself. Yet, by your own concession, the community disagrees with you.

This sounds very much like there's no actual sincerity in your writing, but mere posturing to gain attention. Mind you, I have no way to judge your actual sincerity -- I can only relay how your writing comes across.

-- Hal

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{sigh} Yet another Dead Jackal.

From a post on Krugman's blog:

"Opponents of (climate change as a factor in policy) generally believe that market economies are wonderful things, able to adapt to just about anything — anything, that is, except a government policy that puts a price on greenhouse gas emissions. Limits on the world supply of oil, land, water — no problem. Limits on the amount of CO2 we can emit — total disaster.

The similar thing is to what I'll call the odder beliefs of the Ron Paulistas: Going back to the gold standard would be good, as would dumping the Federal Reserve.

See, there's this thing called comparative advantage. Not all countries left the gold standard at the same time; not all countries developed central banks at the same time. If gold helped a country, and "fiat currency" hurt it, then one should have been able to see that, and no other countries would be foolish enough to follow suit. Same with central banking.

Economic history went exactly the other way, though. Hell, even the Swiss finally gave up on the gold standard.

Combine this with Krugman's example, and you get the following principle: Republicans are all in favor of the free market -- right up until the market disagrees with them.

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Originally posted at my business affairs blog, Not That Kind of Operation.

There is a meme that's re-emerged from the Republicans lately:

"The New Deal didn't get us out of the Great Depression -- WWII did."

Here's the problem, from a Republican point-of-view: This is still a Keynesian statement. It says the New Deal wasn't big enough, and it was only with the spending generated by WWII that government investment in the economy finally did get big enough.

Here's what you don't hear:

"The New Deal didn't get us out of the Great Depression -- GM, GE, and the rest of the private sector did."

Oops.

T.E. Lawrence: So long as the Arabs fight tribe against tribe, so long will they be a little people, a silly people - greedy, barbarous, and cruel, as you are. -- Robert Bolt, Lawrence of Arabia

I've spoken before about what I see as one of the Republican's biggest problems in this election. When a Democrat objects to something, it’s because they think something is actually objectionable. When a Republican objects to something, it’s because it’s “not Republican,” and they’re seeking the most momentary of gotchas.

But this comment thread got me to thinking (scroll down to comments 35 and on). Notice how in the space of 6 messages one poster takes “one-sided partisan hacks” from something to complain about to something to praise.

I think the whole "not Republican" aspect is the key here. Republicans have started acting tribally -- an action taken by a member of the tribe is OK under all circumstances. Actions taken by people who aren't in the tribe -- even when they're the same actions -- are beyond the pale.

It's why minor little things like facts, morals, ethics, consistency, laws, the constitution, behaving in a way one would call "American"... They just don't matter to Republicans any more. Because from their point of view, they always are being consistent -- either you're in the tribe or you aren't.

"It's OK If You're A Republican" (abbreviated IOKIYAR) -- it's gone from being a wry comment on the standard Republican hypocrisy to actually being the ethos of the tribe, as far as one can tell.

I've been calling this the "Republican Sincerity Gap." Mostly because I'm old enough to remember some of the "gaps" of the sixties and seventies.

But I suspect it's littler than that, and sillier than that. Greedy, barbarous, and cruel.

So there's an incipient meme running around the right-wing blogosphere.

To anyone with a memory that goes back before 2001, the implications are a bit jaw-dropping for sheer irony.

Here's an example post of this foolishness, and here's a call and response from a thread I recently contributed to (expanded a bit for this post):

“Obama has recruited “truth squads” in the form of local prosecutors to silence anyone in Missouri who they think is saying something wrong about Obama.”

Well, some half-truths here.

This appears based on this report from KMOV-TV in St. Louis.

Here’s a partial transcript:

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John Mills, reporter: Russell, good evening. Prosecutors and sheriffs from across Missouri are joining something called the “Barack Obama Truth Squad.” Two high-profile prosecutors are part of the team. We met them this afternoon in the Central West. They are Jennifer Joyce of the city (and) Bob McCulloch, the St. Louis County prosecuting attorney. They will be reminding voters that Barack Obama is a Christian, who wants to cut taxes for anyone making less than $250,000 a year. They also say they plan to respond immediately to any ads and statements that might violate Missouri ethics laws.

Jennifer Joyce: We want to keep this campaign focused on issues. We don’t want people to get distracted, and Missourians don’t want to be distracted, by these divisive character attacks. So we’re here to respond to any character attacks, to set the record straight.

Bob McCulloch: Whether it is directly attributable to the campaign, or to one of the soft-money operations, if they’re not going to tell the truth, then somebody’s got to step up and say “Wait a minute, that’s not true. This is the truth.”

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So, apparently, one should only expect a response from these guys if one a) lies, b) violates Missouri ethics laws, or c) both.

It’s obvious why this would have some Republicans worried. After all, if you actually had to run a campaign where you told the truth all the time, and obeyed the law all the time, and behaved ethically all the time… Well, where’s the fun in that?

Yup. Enforcing the law and insisting on truthful and ethical behavior sure is the thin edge of the wedge. It’s a good thing the Republican party is around to put a stop to that naive nonsense. And they have so much experience at being illegal, untruthful, and unethical, too!

Experience really is the key, don’t you think? How could a president possibly serve his country if he didn’t have the experience of being investigated for illegal and unethical behavior himself? Thank god McCain has that experience.

Imagine Obama's jack-booted thugs, running through the land chanting, "Law and Order! Truth! Ethics!" It seems like only yesterday that it was Republicans being accused of that sort of thing. Thankfully, today's more-nuanced GOP has left such divisive, arbitrary foolhardiness behind, and has instead embraced the moral relativism of the 1960s hippies.

Only the moral example and steadfastness of George W. Bush could make this great day possible.

I must admit I'm a bit confused by the "it's just his oratory" meme that circulates about Obama.

Thoughts occur in words. If you can't speak well, that frequently (though not always) implies you can't think well.

By this argument, one could say Cato, Cicero, Lincoln, Churchill, and Reagan -- conservative icons all -- gained their status through "just their oratory."

For a criticism about the lack of substance, it's remarkably insubstantial.