Stones Cry Out

Two provocative excerpts from Eric Chevlen, in an article at First Things.

It’s a mistake to think of health care as a right. It is not a right; it is a good. Freedom of speech, by contrast, is a right, as is freedom of religious belief. They are privileges that inure to individuals as a consequence of the primordial right, free will. That is why we see them as inalienable. The exercise of these rights does not depend on any action of government, but rather on its inaction. Government may not legitimately interfere with their exercise, but nothing mandates that the government provide us with printing press or chapel.

Health care is different. It is more akin to the other goods which sustain life: food, clothing, and shelter. A well-ordered society exists to protect its members from the unlawful taking of life, and is structured to facilitate its members’ acquisition of these goods.

And then,

To claim that Congress will devise a new federal health care plan that will not involve rationing is like claiming that it will invent a triangle that doesn’t have three sides. Currently, within the private sector of health care, we have a large number of private insurance companies vying for the business of their customers. They ration health care on the basis of evidence-based medical necessity. The Obama health plan, the details of which are still being worked out, will also ration health care. The alternative to that is an accelerated escalation of aggregate health care costs. But the single-payer system to which Obama’s plan will lead will have no competitor and no pressing financial incentive to please its customers. No competitor for the single payer means no alternative for the patient. We can reasonably expect that a single-payer system of rationing will be largely implicit rather than explicit, and governed as much by cost and political considerations as by medical evidence. Such a system would likely combine the fiscal responsibility of the Postal Service, the customer friendliness of the Bureau of Motor Vehicles, and the smooth efficiency of the Immigration and Naturalization Service.

I’ve been reading Rod Dreher, the Crunchy Conservative, for a few years now. While I’ve enjoyed most of his writing I’ve been taken aback, in the near past, with his increasing propensity to drift into some other-world region neither Right nor Left nor Libertarian nor… Crunchy. While such a position is not, in and of itself, reason to pull ranks, and while I can put up with most of his doom and gloom prognoses on issues such as the economy, a recent post of his, regarding the uproar pertaining to President Obama’s planned speech to schoolchildren nationwide is the last straw.

From Dreher,

A teacher in a Dallas suburban district just phoned the colleague of mine who works in the office next to mine. She’s a personal friend of his. He says she phoned from the break room at school, close to tears. She told him, “This is getting out of control. Parents are calling up the school and yelling at the principals. The principals are freaking out.”

All because the president of the United States is going to give an address on education to students.

Meanwhile, it took no time for a commenter on the Dallas Morning News editorial board blog to compare the president to Charles Manson. Which was followed by this:

This all sounds very familiar. Oh yea, Hitler was well liked by children. He could speak to them very well, and won them over. Hitler organized the youth as an army, complete with regiments. A boy could rise from the simple rank of just a boy to lead a squad, platoon, company, even a battalion. A girl could rise to become a leader. Even lead them into community organizers. Don’t drink any more of Obama’s Kool Aid. Wake up people.

Obama would be smart to release the text of his planned address to defuse the crazybomb on the Right. I doubt that will be enough. A Texas Republican friend this morning told me two things: a) not all conservatives agree with these people; and b) that said, this is the last straw for him, that he doesn’t want to be associated in any way with the GOP, which in his view has lost its collective mind.

No, Mr. Dreher, the furor is not because the President of the United States is going to give an address on education to students. It’s because people were sold a bill of goods when they naively thought hope and change was coming to our land (albeit, the globe) via the White House. Instead, we’ve seen a concerted effort to “spread the wealth around” with a decidedly socialist agenda. Citizens of the United States do not want government intruding into their lives and they especially do not want to let THEIR children become a captive audience to such culturally socialist mantras.

Consider this video that was shown to school children at an elementary school in Utah.

Our children should be taught about patriotism, responsibility, human rights, civic duty, and our rich history. They should not be expected to “pledge service to Barack Obama” (3:17 into the video above), or any other human, be they Democrat or Republican. Granted, the video above was not shown nationwide and is not part of the President’s planned presentation, yet one has to wonder why such a blatantly political video would be considered as acceptable to broadcast to public school children in the first place?

Parents are concerned because time has shown that increased government intrusion in the lives of its citizens results in less freedoms for said citizens. This is a president that has clearly demonstrated his desire to increase the federal government’s role in the private sector. That alone should be cause for concern when this administration expresses a desire to speak to the nation’s children – correction – the parent’s children.

Unfortunately, Dreher fails in his attempt to illustrate the utter craziness of the crazybomb Right with a blatantly disengenous comparison of his friend’s tearfully compassionate teacher with that of an anonymous foul-mouthed internet troll who compares Obama to Hitler.

So, adios Crunchy.

1. On colonialism and Afghanistan.
2. So, my question. Are the comments here representative of the left?
3. Are the remarks here representative of the right?
4. Is this the next target for the climate change crowd, global economic development?
5. A picture for the ages.
6. The Shack, and a measured book review.
7. The red planet (HT: Mr Sandefur).
8. Ask Mr Super User.
9. So … it seems the left likes the 5 year plan variety of change these days? Top down is the way to go.
10. The NYTimes and global warming.
11. Puritans and sex, I thought the exclamation mark a little oddly placed.
12. Not in the news, Mr Obama’s backtracking on stem cells.
13. Three numbers.
14. Noticing Chavez.
15. An Obama czar unmasks? (Note, I haven’t had time yet myself to listen to the video myself and am relying on the description).
16. An accidental war.
17. What the heck is the Administration thinking about regarding Honduras. Are they completely nuts?

Commenter JA recently offered that “anyone who compares Social Security (SS) to Bernie Madoff shouldn’t be taken seriously.” Now Bernie Madoff is the latest in a list of various enterprises employing a Ponzi scheme for raising money. The comparison to Mr Madoff is not to suggest that the motives behind the SS program is the same as Mr Madoff’s, but that the SS program has a number of features which classify it as very similar to a classic Ponzi scheme. This BW article is instructive.

Superficially, these critics have a point, and there is a parallel between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme. But on a fundamental level, they are very wrong, and it’s worth explaining why.First, the parallel. Social Security taxes current workers to pay Social Security benefits for current retirees. In other words, the new entrants into the Social Security system, the young workers, pay off the previous entrants, the older workers. And despite the fact you have a Social Security “account”, there is no necessary link between what you paid into the system in taxes, and what you receive.

That’s very similar to the structure of a Ponzi scheme, where new investors pay off the original investors. As long as enough new ‘victims’ are brought into the scheme, it keeps growing and growing. But when the new investors runs out, the Ponzi collapses. Analogously, the slowdown in population growth puts pressure on Social Security finances.

But there is one enormous difference between Social Security and a Ponzi scheme: Technological change. Over the past century, new technologies have enabled the output of the country to grow much faster than its population. To be more precise, the U.S. population has more than tripled since the early 1900s, while the U.S. economic output has gone up by more than 20 times.

So SS is in fact a Ponzi scheme with the modification that unlike a standard Ponzi scheme which depends on infinite population size (victim pool) to continue, the SS program depends economic growth to outstrip any demographic changes.

It is curious to me why the left so aggressively defends this program. Time and time again you will find the left defending progressive taxation as opposed to a flat or other non-progressive tax scheme. Yet, here is SS a blatantly non-progressive tax, which they defend conveniently ignoring its very non-progressive nature.

The criticisms of this program from the right center on its size, a 13% tax, and its very poor rate of return (which calculation assuredly uses the wrong figure for the tax amount, i.e., 7.5%). The answer to that from the left, as far as I can see, is to try to buy into the accounting fiction that the 13% is really 7.5%. I think the reply to the second is, “meh”.

From the right’s point of view, the insistence by the left that this program aids the poor and indigent (yet provides universal coverage) seems myopic at best. Nobody on the right would insist that we fail to provide for the retired people without means, yet when one asks why this enormous tax is paying retirement benefits to those who are well off has no answer.

It seems to me a political feasible solution would be the following:

1. No change to the coverage of currently retired people would be made. SS made promises and should therefore make good on those.
2. Currently working people, starting “now” (now = when this change is put in place) would be informed that any new benefits (figured in the fictional accrued that comprises SS) will only be means tested in order for that payment to take place. That is to say, it would be as if you stopped working right “now” and your benefit would be frozen at that point. If you need benefits in excess of that amount, means testing will be required before you will receive money.

The effect of this is that over the next generation (or two) the tax would return to the 3% level at which it began. People will plan for their retirement independently, realizing that SS would be a safety net for retirement. When the “SS” generation expecting “a rate of return” sort of benefit payment are no longer in the working force, the SS tax could be removed from its special tax/payment status and tax and receive its funding from standard mechanisms.

I should point out this is not exactly the proposal I would really prefer, although it might be a stepping stone to the same.

A major speech on health care reform from President Obama is coming.

WASHINGTON, Sept 3 (Reuters) – President Barack Obama will lay out specifics of his proposed healthcare overhaul when he addresses Congress on Wednesday, Vice President Joe Biden said, as the administration sought to regain control of the debate.

"Stay tuned for Wednesday," Biden said in a Thursday speech to a Washington think tank a day after it was announced that Obama would make a rare speech to the joint houses of Congress as he seeks to boost flagging support for healthcare reform.

"It’s going to be a major speech laying out in understandable, clear terms what our administration wants to happen with regard to health care and what we’re going to push for, specifically," Biden said at the Brookings Institution.

Back in July, Obama urged Congress to pass a reform bill before the August recess.  Isn’t it a bit late to be telling us — in September — what he wants?  "Understandable, clear terms" would have been helpful 2 months ago.  Today, it’s damage control.

1. While some on the American left thought speaking out against Bush, part of a “truth to power” legacy … this is what it really looks like.
2. Your government at wurk.
3. Some more climate conversation.
4. Amazingly this isn’t a right wing parody.
5. The WH middle east plan, err, muddled mess.
6. Mr Sullivan and his remarks on Ms Palin put in context.
7. No matter how nutty some, however, are still fans regardless.
8. Ontology and 1+1=2.
9. Two on the gospel message, here and here.
10. Rationing, a term with common and technical uses.
11. A heroic act.
12. Looking at supplemental material suggested for Mr Obama’s kiddie address. One wonders how the left reconciles their anti-establishment roots with Questions emphasized the “importance” of the students listening and doing what the President “and other elected officials say” are “important”.
13. Corruption in plain sight.
14. When Scripture doesn’t match the message you’re peddling … change the Scripture … nobody will notice, but geesh pick a less well known story if you want that to work.

1. Watching the alternative health plans.
2. A weather vane for hate speech finds hatred closer to the center left than the center right.
3. Mr Kennedy and some cold war history.
4. Word, meaning and the burqa.
5. Satire and the President’s address to the children in school. Which brings a question to the left, if this was Bush what would y’all have to say about a TV address to the kids?
6. Sexual harassment and Morocco.
7. A Lockerbie release leak. A change to a more open and honest administration … and if you believe that, you’ll believe anything.
8. How the East thinks the West looks upon the East. So … did he nail it or not?
9. Shades of V in state government.
10. You don’t have to believe God loves you.
11. A feminist philosophy reading list.
12. Racism in Atlanta.
13. So that’s the sooper-secret plan to curb malpractice costs. Nationalize medicine while putting in place laws immunizing government health care providers from suit.
14. Hayek and the law.
15. Throw the bums out. Make that a tea party platform, for the next N elections, voting for an incumbent is what not to do.

Is health care a basic human right?  Bob Lupton, writing at the Sojourners presumptively-named blog "God’s Politics", thinks so.  I created an account so I could post a comment that includes a question I’ll now formally pose here:

Is food a basic human right?

Food you need constantly in order to live.  Health care you only need occasionally.  (For some, very occasionally.)  So which is more important for life?

Clearly, food is more important for life, and thus shouldn’t we have universal food care before we have universal health care? 

(Before you point to food stamps or the WIC program, understand that they are nowhere near as invasive to the rights of all as ObamaCare would be.  Those programs for the poor do not place any restrictions on my food purchases; on what I buy or where I buy it or what sorts of foods are sold.  ObamaCare would force me to get a certain type of policy as soon as I cross a state line or change jobs.  And there are many other restrictions on people and employers all in the name of covering those not currently covered.  None of these kinds of restrictions come from food programs for the poor.)

So the questions before you are: If you support the health care reform that the Democrats are trying to pass:

1 – Is health care a basic human right?

2 – If your answer to #1 is "Yes", then is food also a basic human right?

3 – If your answer to #2 is "Yes", then why not universal food coverage?  And what, exactly, do you consider a "basic human right" in general?

4 – If your answer to #2 is "No", why isn’t food a right if it’s more important to life?

5 – And finally, if your answer to #1 was "No", then why do you support a program that restricts everyone in order to deal with a few?  Why not a program that just covers the poor, like food stamps do in the area of food?

Your comments appreciated.  And I’ll report back if Mr. Lupton answers my question.

1. Independence day (really).
2. Mr Zhovitis.
3. A trial.
4. A corruption test for Kurds in Iraq.
5. On happiness.
6. Considering Afghanistan … which brings one to be more confused as to why the COIN manual is not more widely read (and therefore discussed) … of its advice and recommendations taken.
7. Torture works, see.
8. Kindertotenlieder, in prose (that’s Gerrman for “Songs for Dead Children”, which is a Mahler song cycle).
9. Heh.
10. Organ tourism.
11. Art and an ethical question.
12. Self-deception and the Christian life.
13. A historical tome on Lenin and the Church.
14. Well, I for one hope the TSA doesn’t get the dreaded memo.

Recently I had a brief conversation with an office mate about some discussion on this blog regarding the noetic and the real. Transcendental and irrational numbers, such as Pi and ideas of continuity, are argued to have a different connection with the real than flying pink unicorns. My interlocutor (and, I should add, good friend) suggested that Wigner, in a rather well known essay, put his finger on one criteria we use sift the noetic universe for those objects there that have more or less connection to reality. That is to say, because of the unreasonable success of mathematics this gives rise to the (not unreasonable intuition) that mathematical ideas are more real or alternatively the more mathematically connected an idea is that it therefore has a larger “real” connection.

Long ago, I had some conversations on free will (see this and this here and finally this). One of the issues regarding will, creativity, and genius is that the human if it is to be regarded as only a meat machine somehow constructs a semiotic (or semantic) scaffold and develops real noetic content in its internal states and thereby in its actions. A clock or even a computer does not in its internal machinations and actions manage to do this. A clock’s and a computer’s meanings are only derived through the agency of a being which has constructed this scaffold, that is the internal states of a clock do not render time unless it is viewed by a creature (like us) who has constructed the semiotic scaffold and does and can attach meaning to physical states.

In the above linked essays, which were admittedly in the form of explorations and not complete or even coherent ideas, the notion that one view of the human creative engine might be viewed as a aesthetic expert system linked/driven to/by a symbolic noise generator for a description of how it works. This engine itself is recursively driven, that is the problems it works on are posed by itself and indeed the programming and improvement of that same expert system is driven by its past results and working.

I’m going to modify that picture slightly and add an additional ansatz and see how that works. The symbolic noise might be viewed as a glimpse into the wilder universe, the one much less reasonable than the ordered one we inhabit, namely the noetic world. This leads me to the ansatz … that the noetic universe is real, just as real as the concrete material world a separate space with its own logic, laws, and evolution. Ideas, a thoughts, a symbols all can be just viewed as individual points (or events?) existing and defining a noetic universe. It is real, but it is a separate space. What we regard as “real” vs “imaginary” or more real vs more imaginary are just metrics for measuring movement or location in the noetic universe. In this view, the wild soup of noetic noise which drives our creative process is a window looking out at the welter and waste of the roiling noetic landscape.

In the material universe, life is a funny anti-entropic cluster of stuff. What would the analogue to life be in the noetic universe? Dawkins meme might be a microorganism in this realm. But microorganisms are not the only living things in our material world. More complex and more evolved, some (like us) are even intelligent. If a Dawkin’s meme is a micro-organism in the noetic universe, what then would one call a thinking self-aware creature in that space? A demon or angel perhaps? And why would we expect that the windows to the other universe is one way?

I should add as a final note, a hat tip to Larry at Rust Belt Philosophy for helping trigger me to try to crystallize into essay form some half-formed ideas that have been batting around my noggin recently … which gave rise to the above essay.

Carrie Prejean, who was essentially fired as Miss California after a politically incorrect answer to a Miss USA pageant question, insists she did not break the conditions of her contract, and is going to court to prove it.

Miss Prejean was fired from her role as Miss California USA in June of this year, following several months of controversy over her answer at the Miss USA pageant regarding same-sex marriage. Lewis claimed Miss Prejean’s termination was due to a violation of contract.  Miss Prejean’s complaint will refute that allegation, and demonstrate that both the chronology and factual evidence clearly show she lived up to all her contractual obligations, but was fired, harassed and publicly attacked solely due to her religious beliefs.

1. Sugar and Ramadan, two things, which I wouldn’t have thought had anything to do with each other.\
2. Poverty and the Arab world.
3. Should one be wary of (faint?) praise of religion from the atheist crowd?
4. Climate humor, heh.
5. Cash for Clunkers … another whack at Detroit. So … did the Dems sell it that way?
6. Some of the political healthcare problems for the left.
7. Healthcare rationing.
8. A Georgian shine (that’s be the other Georgia for the US readers).
9. A Randian quote … and a not unrelated news item.
10. Terror, torture, and George Smiley.
11. If this comes to pass, who will ever vote for the left?
12. Look at their clever choice for financial services, based of course not on any sordid political deals.
13. Can we blame Kennedy?
14. Evil. Here at home.
15. Unfortunate side note for the hypothesis I tentatively rejected in my last night’s essay.
16. As the President and “his minions” decry deceitful arguments from the right … they practice the same.
17. Evangelicals dating.

In the discussion which followed last night’s post on the New Monastics, I offered relay the advice St. John Climacus had in the first step of the Ladder for the laity:

Some people living carelessly in the world put a question to me: “How can we who are married and living amid public cares aspire to the monastic life?”

I answered, “Do whatever good you may. Speak evil of no one. Rob no one. Despise no one and carry not hate. Do not separate yourself from church assemblies. Show compassion to the needy. Do not be a scandal to anyone. Stay away from the bed of another, and be satisfied with what your own wives can provide you. If you do all of this, you will not be far from the kingdom of heaven.”

In class, Fr. Elijah offered that general Orthodox belief that for everyone, not just the unmarried, celibacy is ultimately where we end up. For the married couple, celibacy and the celibate calling arises as one gets older.

A quick question. Pseudonymous commenter Boonton offers that the reason that the state should control retirement in a infelicitous manner, i.e., at high cost low return and with standardized returns, is because we only get “one shot” at retirement. The state doesn’t have to provide clothing, lodging, or jobs because if we get a bad job, some bad duds, or make a poor purchase of a car or house, well, it’s not final. We get a natural “retry” for these sorts of things. The choices we make here are non-final and non-fatal.

Yet we don’t get a retry on childhood. Why doesn’t the left push and is not outraged that kids are not being raised by professionals? Why doesn’t left believe the government should take an extremely invasive role in raising children? It’s not like such institutions are impossible. Ethnic Spartan males were removed from the home at 7 … to be raised by the State as soldiers, and not released until they reached the age of 50 or 60 for retirement from their military service. Now, it is certain that the progressive elite of the left don’t idealize Spartan education … but they also almost certainly have a dismal view of the child-raising practices of many parents. So why are we not seeing an institutional push to minimize parental influence? Where are the papers and essays pushing for institutions to remove parenthood from parents and having state supported organs raising them instead? After all kids only get one shot at childhood, “It’s for the children” is a slogan which has been used more than once.

One reason why state controlled/standarized retirement is not a good idea is that people’s family situations widely differ. Close knit large families often will not need nursing home and extended hospice care while others find themselves without family or community on which they can depend. Peoples expectations of a standard of living and how much extraordinary medical care they desire widely differs. Yet, does our SSI take that into account. No. Are the funds extracted in the form of SSI taxation available to bequest to one’s relations if not used? No.

Here is my take on why the left defends SSI so fiercely and why the resist any reasonable suggestions for reform and change of that institution. The progressive left in this country denies the necessity and the good of family and community. They don’t want to depend on their close loved ones and relations in their declining years. Alasdair MacIntyre wrote Dependent Rational Animals, and this title serves as an excellent description of the human condition. The left wishes to institutionalize dependence in a bid for independence. Why do they push for this independence? It is my view that they wish to destroy community and our interdependence and push to move what remains of dependence and need on larger non-local non-family institutional structures because they see that as a road to equality.

What is happening to the Left, the One, and their cherished socialist agenda? In Townhall meeting after Townhall meeting, we see the people voicing their opinions – and their opinions are decidedly against the moves the Obama administration are attempting to make (ref. here).

How has this come about?

From Richard Fernandez,

Somebody believes the left is losing the public policy debate because they’ve got all the flagship institutions. And that’s a liability. Umair Haque, writing in a Harvard Business Publishing article, argues that the right, like al-Qaeda has mastered the art of “5th generation warfare” and is swarming all over the left. He notices that liberals have been losing the debate lately and tries to analyze why. The problem with the left, he seems to think, is that they are responding from a center, sending talking points out to a periphery, whereas the right has discovered how to attack swiftly, from a plethora of directions and in depth. The right is inside their OODA loop and Haque realizes that if this goes on long enough, the left will lose…

Is the swarm simply a swastika-laden Astroturf tactic of the Right, per Nancy Pelosi? Fernandez doesn’t buy such conspiracy theories,

The Republican leadership was in fact the first victim of the revolt from below. Only after the “5th generation” war had ripped through the comfortable assumptions of business as usual did it break out to face the left. To think that the current unrest is the creation of Sarah Palin, Rush Limbaugh or Glenn Beck would be to make a fundamental mistake. Those figures are simply its beneficiaries — and its beneficiaries by accident. If Haque really wants to fight 5G, I would like to propose a different set of rules.

1. Listen to the people;
2. Believe that truth is something to be discovered in dialogue with the public; that the debate is never “over” simply because the great and good say so;
3. Consider it possible that all men, including small businessmen, plumbers, rubes from Alaska, cleaning women who say their prayers at mealtimes — are in some fundamental way the equal of graduates of Harvard Law School and know as much about life and death as Dr. Zeke Emmanuel;
4. Accept that facts do matter because reality is authored by something larger than government, greater than the Congress and more lasting than any administration;
5. That all efforts to “attack the base” will ultimately fail because a government by the people, of the people and for the people will never perish from the earth; and
6. Realize that these precepts are obvious on the face of it though there are none so blind as they who will not see.

I would add that the Republican leadership had also better realize the following:

1. The revolt from below does not necessarily indicate that the people support Republicans vs. Democrats;
2. If they attempt to travel down the same spend-easy path, as liberals tend to rush into, they too will find themselves under harsh criticism (aka peaceful revolt);
3. The people, by and large, are repulsed by any political party’s attempts to increase government intrusion into their lives.