Labels are so often used to scare or force people into silence. Average, everyday, run-of-the-mill conservative Republicans have been silenced for years by being vilified as racists and as heartless—as cold, brutal, bigoted and closed-minded, and indifferent to the sufferings of the less fortunate. The labels did nothing to address the arguments of the conservatives which, on the whole, were most often made in the service of fairness and the inherent equality of the human person, of the desire to see justice done in a fair and impartial way, and from the impulse to protect human society, from the weakest to the strongest, from at least some of the dangers and untoward influences that the popular culture, as it evolved into what it’s become, has been able and willing to threaten it with.
And although the labels did nothing to address the arguments, they did cause, to some degree, some people to stop making any arguments at all in certain company. After all, no one likes being called a racist or bigoted or closed-minded or heartless or cold or brutal. And no one very muck likes to be interrupted at every turn and corner in his argument by being forced to defend himself from baseless charges.
And of course this has tended to stifle debate, discourage discourse, and increase misunderstandings.
I’ve admittedly been the recipient of my fair share of labels over the years. I think maybe I’ve heard them all. At various times I’ve been called closed-minded, bigoted, heartless, homophobic, sexist, and even racist. All those various labels have been subsumed in the one word “conservative” or, worse, “Republican”. But I’ve also been called “liberal”, which is almost a worse word than “conservative” in its connotations, for, rather than “heartless” it is often understood to mean “brainless”. I suppose it is because, as the most common stereotype on the right is concerned, the liberal is convicted of his arguments through nothing but naked emotion. The thrust of calling someone a liberal is to imply that they haven’t taken the time to think through their arguments but have come to their conclusions just as a six-year-old might conclude that his teacher is a “bad teacher” because he didn’t like the grade she gave him (but which he nevertheless deserved).
Unfortunately, I think it a fair assumption that a number of people in both camps—both conservatives AND liberals—have come to at least some of their intellectual conclusions through emotion mixed with some very paltry amount of carefully chosen “facts”. But because of this reality (and it is a reality) it is then too often the case that when someone presents an argument with which we disagree, we dismiss their argument on the assumption that the person with whom we disagree is one of those who has reached that conclusion because they so obviously were unable to see through their emotions, their biases, and their preconceptions. This must be so (we think) because if they had really come to their conclusions after a careful examination of the facts they would necessarily have come to the same conclusions that we did. Since their conclusions not only differ from ours but may, in some cases, be diametrically opposed to them, and since we’re certain that we, of all people, have NOT been afflicted in our minds by too much input from our hearts, it necessarily stands to reason that either they haven’t examined the same facts as we have or else they haven’t examined the facts as carefully as we have, and the most probable reasons they haven’t examined the facts carefully (or disinterestedly) is because they’re either, a. not as smart as us, or, b. they’re blinded by their emotions.
Thus the gun-hugging bible thumpers of eastern Pennsylvania that Obama was so insensitive to during the 2008 campaign were only hugging their guns and thumping their bibles because they were scared. If they were smarter, or could be reasonable rather than emotional (so the theory went) they would certainly turn their guns into plow-shares and their bibles into pruning shears. It couldn’t possibly be the case that Obama found himself in intellectual disagreement with those eastern Pennsylvanians because, apparently, intellectual disagreements don’t exist—not so far as conclusions go, at any rate.
I read today that many on the left think Obama’s turning out to be a poor spokesman for his policies. But what can one honestly expect. Obama, like most people who share his world view, really, truly believes that the case for each of his policies is so nakedly self evident that their desirability, their necessity, and their utility is as clearly obvious to all people of good will as they are for him.
Instead, what differences of this sort usually amount to are a difference in the number and quality of the facts and, above all, the interpretation of those facts according to the sum total of all of the facts that person happens to have accepted up to that point in his life. That isn’t to say that either party has gone out of its way to omit certain obviously relevant facts. Just that some facts are accepted as relevant and some as irrelevant usually based on criteria other than naked, raw emotion.
In the heat of disagreement, labels are as often as meaningless as they are unhelpful. That isn’t at all to say that ALL labels are meaningless or unhelpful. Just that, used the wrong way—that is, used to avoid any serious consideration of the arguments being advanced by the other party—they are always meaningless and always unhelpful. Saying, “Well, you only say that because you’re a Democrat,” or “You only say that because you’re a Lakers fan,” isn’t meeting any argument head on. The Lakers, for example, may or may not be a good team, but dismissing the arguments of someone insisting that they are on the grounds that he happens to be a Lakers fan is never helpful and, ninety-nine point nine-nine-nine percent of the time, is wrong.
Wednesday, July 14, 2010
Tuesday, March 30, 2010
A BETTER TOOL FOR THE JOB?
The value of any tool must be measured against the results that can be achieved by using it; that is, whether and to what degree it successfully achieves the ends for which it was designed.
Whatever anyone might believe about it, our Constitution is not an instrument of divine institution. Those who participated in its construction would be the first to say that they were not men working under the inspiration of the Holy Spirit.
Rather, the task about which they set themselves was nothing more nor less than the invention of a tool—imperfect and of human origin—with which they could strive for and hopefully achieve certain purely natural and material ends.
The questions, then, must be “What did the founders intend for this tool to achieve?” “For what purpose was it designed?” And, “has this tool made possible the realization of their goals?”
So what did the founders intend? Did they intend to safeguard, absolutely, the sovereignty of the several states over a strong Federal government? If they didn’t intend the sovereignty of the several states to be absolute but instead intended it to be held within certain clearly defined limits, what did they intend those limits to be?
I think it crystal clear that, whatever else were the specific intentions of the particular individuals who drafted, approved, signed their names to, and ultimately voted on the Constitution of the United States of America, they certainly intended to create a strong federal government whose power would be held within certain strictly defined limits. Our Constitution sets up a Federal Government of enumerated powers: those powers not enumerated were famously reserved to the States or to the people.
However, it is also clear that among those enumerated powers was the power to raise armies and navies and to levy taxes for their support as well as the right and privilege, reserved to the Federal Government, to coin currency, and to regulate commerce among the several states, etc.
These powers are so broad—and have been made broader by subsequent Amendments and interpretations by the Supreme Court—that the intent made manifest through the enumeration of these powers effectively cancels out the intent of maintaining a more or less high degree of state sovereignty.
The wording of the 2nd Amendment tells volumes about the intention of strong state rights: A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free state…etc.
Much has been argued in recent years but the focus has been on almost everything except those words, “the security of a free state”. To what do those words refer? What is the “free state” in question? I propose that, given the fact that the Second Amendment specifically bars the Federal Government from making any law that would infringe upon the right of the people to keep and bear arms, the intention must be to safeguard the “freedom” of the “states” from the Federal Government.
However, the Federal Government’s power to regulate commerce among the states had the unintended effect of subverting the freedom of the states more drastically than gun laws ever could have. And, in fact, the reality is that the founders, in securing to the people the right to bear arms in anticipation of Federal overreach (if that was their intention), while effectively stripping from the states the power to regulate their own commerce (all commerce having since been defined by the Federal Government as “interstate”) means that they in fact succeeded in removing sovereignty from the states—states filled with gun-wielding patriots jealous of their sovereignty. And the only remedies to this sorry state of affairs are to either change the Constitution (an eventuality the founders had the wisdom to foresee) or to use those guns to defend state sovereignty from a supposedly “overreaching” Federal Government. As to the second possibility, that’s already been tried and failed. And rebellion, in order to be legitimate, must of necessity be far graver reasons of unjustice than --that is, Just War--besides, the Federal Government would have to go much, much further than merely overstepping its Consitutional bounds in matters ofcontinues to act within the bounds of its enumerated powers, there could be no cause to take so awful a step.
Anyway, as it stands, the Government has not yet overreached. That the Federal Government, in the conduct and performance of its enumerated powers, actually encroaches upon and nullifies state sovereignty is not the fault of the Federal Government or even those elected officials who serve within its ranks. It’s clearly the fault of our Constitution.
The problem was that our founders wanted to have it both ways and this, I hope, is a lesson for Europe. One cannot have a single economic zone while at the same time maintaining state sovereignty as we’re used to understanding it. One or the other must give way. Either we have government vested with the power to regulate commerce among the states or we have a Federal Government hobbled before the assertion of state’s rights. We cannot have both.
Our Constitution—perhaps any Constitution—is a tool inadequate to so lofty a design.
Recognizing the incompatibility of State’s Rights with a single economic zone, what we must do in order to safeguard our remaining freedoms is to focus on those freedoms which have little or nothing to do with economic activity. Chief among these must be the right to freely practice our religion and educate our children according to our beliefs. This may put some children on an unequal footing but that, I’m afraid, is a necessary sacrifice to freedom.
Freedom says nothing about equality and, in fact, may often be opposed to it. If I am free to believe what I like I’m free to esteem some things above others. I may be free to have prejudices. I may be free to recognize differences that tend towards unequal treatment.
A government may have a perfectly legitimate obligation to right injustices against equality but that obligation can only be, by the very broadest stretch of the imagination, construed to be within the sphere of economic activity or national defense.
And at the same time, a government which sees righting the wrongs of social injustice as its object must at some point begin to trample on the legitimate freedoms of its citizens.
A country that sacrifices freedom at the altar of equality will find it has neither freedom nor equality.
Thursday, March 25, 2010
Question for Debate
(originally sent to SDA and RMF 9/12/08)
I found myself wondering, if a man is convicted of a triple homicide (for example) that he didn’t commit, is life without the possibility of parole a lesser or a greater punishment than death? Or, put more generally, is the permanent detainment of an innocent individual more lawful or less lawful than the execution of that same individual? Of course I’m assuming the man in question had a fair trial and was just unfortunate, a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and not that he was deliberately railroaded.
I know the argument will be made that, in the case of a life sentence imposed upon an innocent individual, the possibility exists that his innocence will be found out and that he will go free making the punishment possibly less severe—certainly less intractable.
However, all punishment is intractable—at least the part already inflicted—and there’s no way to give a man back the years he lost in prison any more than we can give a man back his life. And so, to make the point I’m getting at clearer, let’s say we have two men, both convicted of a murder that neither one committed, one was sentenced to life and the other to death, and that the one man has died in prison and the other has died in the chair. We have just learned of each man’s innocence but both men are dead. Their punishments are utterly intractable. In such a case, to which man has the government committed the greater injustice? Is it more wrong to deprive an innocent person of his liberty or his life?
Now, whether a government has the legitimate right or authority to deprive a man of his life or liberty may be the fuel for another debate. I would suggest, based on our Constitution, that OUR government unequivocally does claim for itself that right provided it does not do so “without due process of law”.
However, extraordinary circumstances excepted, the right and authority of a government to deprive a man of his life or liberty does not translate to the private individual acting on his or her own authority.
The slavery that existed in the United States of America prior to the Civil War is almost universally recognized today as a great moral evil. It was not so universally recognized at the time when our laws recognized its legality. (Neither did its legality prove its morality.)
Proponents of slavery rationalized their right to deprive other people of their liberty by concluding that the enslaved weren’t really people or were a lower sort of people.
Likewise, proponents of abortion rationalize their right to deprive other people of their life in just the same way. Either the fetus has not attained to personhood or the fetus is a person whose life is less valuable than those making the decision to terminate its life.
The vast majority of us who are alive today would agree with the essential abolitionist position which is that slavery was not something to be tolerated or compromised with. It was a great moral evil. Moral evils must not be contained but confronted. They must be recognized and not ignored.
Lincoln recognized this when he confronted American Slavery and Reagan recognized this when he confronted Soviet Communism.
And so I get back to my original question, is it more wrong to deprive an innocent person of his liberty or his life. Opponents of capital punishment will say the latter without hesitation. How then can they be in favor of abortion unless by diminishing the personhood of the one aborted?
As for those who recognize true personhood in the one aborted, how can the compromise pragmatic approach be warranted unless it would also have been warranted with regards to slavery?
I found myself wondering, if a man is convicted of a triple homicide (for example) that he didn’t commit, is life without the possibility of parole a lesser or a greater punishment than death? Or, put more generally, is the permanent detainment of an innocent individual more lawful or less lawful than the execution of that same individual? Of course I’m assuming the man in question had a fair trial and was just unfortunate, a case of being at the wrong place at the wrong time, and not that he was deliberately railroaded.
I know the argument will be made that, in the case of a life sentence imposed upon an innocent individual, the possibility exists that his innocence will be found out and that he will go free making the punishment possibly less severe—certainly less intractable.
However, all punishment is intractable—at least the part already inflicted—and there’s no way to give a man back the years he lost in prison any more than we can give a man back his life. And so, to make the point I’m getting at clearer, let’s say we have two men, both convicted of a murder that neither one committed, one was sentenced to life and the other to death, and that the one man has died in prison and the other has died in the chair. We have just learned of each man’s innocence but both men are dead. Their punishments are utterly intractable. In such a case, to which man has the government committed the greater injustice? Is it more wrong to deprive an innocent person of his liberty or his life?
Now, whether a government has the legitimate right or authority to deprive a man of his life or liberty may be the fuel for another debate. I would suggest, based on our Constitution, that OUR government unequivocally does claim for itself that right provided it does not do so “without due process of law”.
However, extraordinary circumstances excepted, the right and authority of a government to deprive a man of his life or liberty does not translate to the private individual acting on his or her own authority.
The slavery that existed in the United States of America prior to the Civil War is almost universally recognized today as a great moral evil. It was not so universally recognized at the time when our laws recognized its legality. (Neither did its legality prove its morality.)
Proponents of slavery rationalized their right to deprive other people of their liberty by concluding that the enslaved weren’t really people or were a lower sort of people.
Likewise, proponents of abortion rationalize their right to deprive other people of their life in just the same way. Either the fetus has not attained to personhood or the fetus is a person whose life is less valuable than those making the decision to terminate its life.
The vast majority of us who are alive today would agree with the essential abolitionist position which is that slavery was not something to be tolerated or compromised with. It was a great moral evil. Moral evils must not be contained but confronted. They must be recognized and not ignored.
Lincoln recognized this when he confronted American Slavery and Reagan recognized this when he confronted Soviet Communism.
And so I get back to my original question, is it more wrong to deprive an innocent person of his liberty or his life. Opponents of capital punishment will say the latter without hesitation. How then can they be in favor of abortion unless by diminishing the personhood of the one aborted?
As for those who recognize true personhood in the one aborted, how can the compromise pragmatic approach be warranted unless it would also have been warranted with regards to slavery?
Monday, August 10, 2009
Dad in Chief
Robert Gibbs: "We can have a discussion in our democracy about where we want to go and why or why not we want to take certain steps. The president strongly believes we can do so without yelling at each other, without pushing each other, without degrading each other, and do so in a way that respects the difference in all our opinions."
As Gibbs said that, I couldn't help but feel like a fly on the wall while Obama officiates a dispute between his daughters.
It's like Obama's our dad and we, the citizens of the United States of America, are all his children. Dad knows what's best for us even if we don't. And if we'll just let him take care of us, everything will be alright.
I just wonder if that's how Obama, his staff, and the Democrats in congress really see things.
As Gibbs said that, I couldn't help but feel like a fly on the wall while Obama officiates a dispute between his daughters.
It's like Obama's our dad and we, the citizens of the United States of America, are all his children. Dad knows what's best for us even if we don't. And if we'll just let him take care of us, everything will be alright.
I just wonder if that's how Obama, his staff, and the Democrats in congress really see things.
Wednesday, August 5, 2009
A Holistic Solution
They say that 46 million people are uninsured in America. I wonder if that means there are 46 million people who wouldn’t have any access to healthcare if they needed it. Or does that simply mean that there are 46 million people who don’t have any visible means of paying for healthcare should they need it.
I had a long talk with Ania yesterday about the rise of anti-depressant use in this country. There was an article out and we had both read it. 75 million people, I think, was the number.
I wonder if the current “cost per capita” of the US health care system takes the cost of prescription medication into account and if among prescriptions medications anti-depressants are included. I’ve suspected for years that we over-medicate here in America. I wonder if we’re over-medicating—and over-diagnosing.
Maybe a healthcare overhaul means something completely different than how it’s paid for. Maybe the focus should be on defining healthcare and reforming some of our basic assumptions. Maybe holistic medicine shouldn’t be synonymous with new age quackery and should be a legitimate medical approach whereby the whole person is considered in his or her totality—mind, body, and spirit. And lifestyle would be inseparable from that.
The other day I was driving with my dad and I stepped hard on the gas in an effort to get ahead of somebody. My engine whined as my little Corolla sped up by about 20 miles per hour in a few seconds. My dad commented how bad that was for my engine. Same with slamming on the brakes or driving a stick-shift in the wrong gear. My point is, I think we as a nation actually have the right attitude towards preventative care and thinking about the harmful long-term harmful effects of bad behavior, but all too often, that attitude is directed towards our cars. Maybe if auto insurance covered maintenance and repairs and if our auto insurance premiums came out of our salary at work before we ever saw the money, we’d be a lot less concerned about oil changes and tune ups. We’d drive however we felt like, ignore regular maintenance, and then bring the car in for invasive surgery while we got to drive a snazzy loaner car—all paid for by insurance.
As it is, most of us set money aside for our regular auto maintenance so we can avoid the hefty repair costs that neglect would bring down upon us. But be that as it may, when our transmission finally DOES go out, if we have the money and if a new car isn’t cheaper, we reluctantly but willingly pony up the cash.
How different that seems to be from our attitude towards our own bodies. It reminds me of the Simpsons where Homer has his bypass operation. He pulls into a filling station because he hears a loud thumping noise. The attendant tells Homer it’s his heart. Relieved, Homer said he was afraid it was his transmission and drives away.
It’s comedy but I think it illustrates a point very well. He was worried when he was afraid his car was on its last leg but relieved when it was only his heart.
My point is, we as Americans KNOW how to take care of things but many of us don’t take very good care of our bodies. We eat the wrong things and we eat too much of it. We eat too often. We drive when we could walk. We don’t take enough time to relax in healthy ways. And even when we take time to focus on our physical and mental health, all too often our spiritual health is neglected entirely.
I’d say that the majority of the people in this country consider spiritual reality a reality. I’ll bet that nine out of ten people would agree with the assertion that man is a composite creature consisting of mind, body, and spirit. Medical science (and medical techniques and training) seem to recognize the first two (otherwise there wouldn’t be a distinction between mental health and physical health—all thing being physical) but not the third.
If spiritual reality is a reality in an objective sense, than it remains so whether medical science recognizes its importance or not. I suspect that much that is mistaken for and treated as mental and physical illness is, in reality, spiritual illness. Perhaps as many as half the cases of depression start out as a spiritual illness that spread out and infect the mind and then even the body. The body and mind are treated with medication while the root cause is left along to just get worse and worse.
I recognize that I’m starting to sound like a Christian Scientist or (gulp) a Scientologist here. But just because those two groups go too far doesn’t mean that they’re completely wrong. Jesus and his disciples DID drive out demons (or so the stories go). I don’t think they were JUST curing mental illness in each and every case.
And we can disbelieve in the possibility of demonic possession but if we still believe that man has a spirit—that man has a soul—than we have also to account for the ways in which the spirit or soul may interact with the body and the mind. And when we treat the whole person, we have to consider his spirit as well.
But this is getting to long. I only meant to propose that REAL healthcare reform may have a good deal less to with the costs and great deal more to do with how patients are treated.
I had a long talk with Ania yesterday about the rise of anti-depressant use in this country. There was an article out and we had both read it. 75 million people, I think, was the number.
I wonder if the current “cost per capita” of the US health care system takes the cost of prescription medication into account and if among prescriptions medications anti-depressants are included. I’ve suspected for years that we over-medicate here in America. I wonder if we’re over-medicating—and over-diagnosing.
Maybe a healthcare overhaul means something completely different than how it’s paid for. Maybe the focus should be on defining healthcare and reforming some of our basic assumptions. Maybe holistic medicine shouldn’t be synonymous with new age quackery and should be a legitimate medical approach whereby the whole person is considered in his or her totality—mind, body, and spirit. And lifestyle would be inseparable from that.
The other day I was driving with my dad and I stepped hard on the gas in an effort to get ahead of somebody. My engine whined as my little Corolla sped up by about 20 miles per hour in a few seconds. My dad commented how bad that was for my engine. Same with slamming on the brakes or driving a stick-shift in the wrong gear. My point is, I think we as a nation actually have the right attitude towards preventative care and thinking about the harmful long-term harmful effects of bad behavior, but all too often, that attitude is directed towards our cars. Maybe if auto insurance covered maintenance and repairs and if our auto insurance premiums came out of our salary at work before we ever saw the money, we’d be a lot less concerned about oil changes and tune ups. We’d drive however we felt like, ignore regular maintenance, and then bring the car in for invasive surgery while we got to drive a snazzy loaner car—all paid for by insurance.
As it is, most of us set money aside for our regular auto maintenance so we can avoid the hefty repair costs that neglect would bring down upon us. But be that as it may, when our transmission finally DOES go out, if we have the money and if a new car isn’t cheaper, we reluctantly but willingly pony up the cash.
How different that seems to be from our attitude towards our own bodies. It reminds me of the Simpsons where Homer has his bypass operation. He pulls into a filling station because he hears a loud thumping noise. The attendant tells Homer it’s his heart. Relieved, Homer said he was afraid it was his transmission and drives away.
It’s comedy but I think it illustrates a point very well. He was worried when he was afraid his car was on its last leg but relieved when it was only his heart.
My point is, we as Americans KNOW how to take care of things but many of us don’t take very good care of our bodies. We eat the wrong things and we eat too much of it. We eat too often. We drive when we could walk. We don’t take enough time to relax in healthy ways. And even when we take time to focus on our physical and mental health, all too often our spiritual health is neglected entirely.
I’d say that the majority of the people in this country consider spiritual reality a reality. I’ll bet that nine out of ten people would agree with the assertion that man is a composite creature consisting of mind, body, and spirit. Medical science (and medical techniques and training) seem to recognize the first two (otherwise there wouldn’t be a distinction between mental health and physical health—all thing being physical) but not the third.
If spiritual reality is a reality in an objective sense, than it remains so whether medical science recognizes its importance or not. I suspect that much that is mistaken for and treated as mental and physical illness is, in reality, spiritual illness. Perhaps as many as half the cases of depression start out as a spiritual illness that spread out and infect the mind and then even the body. The body and mind are treated with medication while the root cause is left along to just get worse and worse.
I recognize that I’m starting to sound like a Christian Scientist or (gulp) a Scientologist here. But just because those two groups go too far doesn’t mean that they’re completely wrong. Jesus and his disciples DID drive out demons (or so the stories go). I don’t think they were JUST curing mental illness in each and every case.
And we can disbelieve in the possibility of demonic possession but if we still believe that man has a spirit—that man has a soul—than we have also to account for the ways in which the spirit or soul may interact with the body and the mind. And when we treat the whole person, we have to consider his spirit as well.
But this is getting to long. I only meant to propose that REAL healthcare reform may have a good deal less to with the costs and great deal more to do with how patients are treated.
Tuesday, August 4, 2009
What ABOUT Single Payer
Without demonizing anyone or any party, I’d like to look at Single Payer rationally. Can Single Payer possibly provide me and my family with the same care we’re used to and at a lower cost? Will potentially reduced administrative costs (that’s the theory) translate into lower out of pocket expenses? In short, can we achieve better care at less cost and, in the process, provide healthcare to people who couldn’t otherwise afford it through a federally run “Single Payer” healthcare finance system?
There are questions I must, for the moment, ignore. They are:
Is providing the financial means by which our citizens can obtain health care our governments responsibility?
and
By what reasonable interpretation of what existing clause or article of our constitution can we possibly infer that responsibility?
If we ignore those questions and assume, as an intellectual exercise, that it IS our federal government’s responsibility, than we are left trying to decide what is the best way, the most efficient way, the most humane way, the most moral way, the most ethical way, and the most complete way to fulfill the obligations that responsibility entails.
First of all and most primary, the POINT of healthcare needs to be decided upon. I submit that the first, the primary, and the ONLY point of healthcare is to maintain and restore health and to prolong life. It is NOT the point of healthcare to hasten death. No medical professional or facility, paid for in whole or in part out of the public fund, should ever be engaged in any process or technique by which any life is forcibly and willfully terminated.
Abortion and euthanasia, in particular, should not be paid for by any public plan or under any public option. So long as both remain legal, they could be provided by the supporters of the same to those who need and they can provide them to those who can’t afford them as a “charitable” service. And they can define charity however they please behind closed doors and out of the public square.
But charity in the context of healthcare is most readily defined as that which aims to promote good health and long life, indifferent to subjective concerns. And age, race, size, class, etc. are, as far as health care should be concerned, subjective. The objective reality that should be recognized is that all human beings, from the first to the last beat of their heart, are absolutely equal in value and in measure. No positive steps should ever be taken in a medical context to permanently stop a beating human heart.
Now, as an aside, I personally believe—and I believe it objectively true—that human life begins at conception. A humans heart beats for the first time, on average, three weeks from conception. As a matter of public policy, I believe that humanity should be recognized and protected in its totality but I also recognize that we, as a nation, are a long way from that ideal. And I don’t think we’ll be able to end THAT debate before we are pressured to end the health care debate. A public option will be on the table and will have to be decided upon with certain decisions as to what gets covered needing to be made immediately. So rather than accept a solution that, by default, may provide pregnancy termination services at ANY stage in a woman’s pregnancy, I’d like to get some parameters defined.
I think that a heart beat is a good, solid, empirically verifiable indicator of a human life that is worthy of and deserving of our protection. Promoting this distinction, rather than a more scientific or philosophical one, will put the onus on those who contend that having a heart that beats on its own is not a sufficient indicator that human life is present. They’ll have to defend their own distinction. And I content—unequivocally—that birth is not a proper distinction. It is, rather, a nonsensical distinction in the age of c-sections on demand. And neither is fetal viability a reasonable distinction since viability has become a sliding scale. How will such a distinction be maintained once the scale has slid all the way down to conception?
So, getting past that messy part of the business, we can focus on that which actually promotes health.
Is Single Payer the best option? Is it a POOR option? Will heath care be rationed? Will people have to wait in long lines for routine care? For emergency care?
Is Single Payer really something we need to be afraid of or is it merely the unknown that is causing us fear.
I admit I don’t know.
There are questions I must, for the moment, ignore. They are:
Is providing the financial means by which our citizens can obtain health care our governments responsibility?
and
By what reasonable interpretation of what existing clause or article of our constitution can we possibly infer that responsibility?
If we ignore those questions and assume, as an intellectual exercise, that it IS our federal government’s responsibility, than we are left trying to decide what is the best way, the most efficient way, the most humane way, the most moral way, the most ethical way, and the most complete way to fulfill the obligations that responsibility entails.
First of all and most primary, the POINT of healthcare needs to be decided upon. I submit that the first, the primary, and the ONLY point of healthcare is to maintain and restore health and to prolong life. It is NOT the point of healthcare to hasten death. No medical professional or facility, paid for in whole or in part out of the public fund, should ever be engaged in any process or technique by which any life is forcibly and willfully terminated.
Abortion and euthanasia, in particular, should not be paid for by any public plan or under any public option. So long as both remain legal, they could be provided by the supporters of the same to those who need and they can provide them to those who can’t afford them as a “charitable” service. And they can define charity however they please behind closed doors and out of the public square.
But charity in the context of healthcare is most readily defined as that which aims to promote good health and long life, indifferent to subjective concerns. And age, race, size, class, etc. are, as far as health care should be concerned, subjective. The objective reality that should be recognized is that all human beings, from the first to the last beat of their heart, are absolutely equal in value and in measure. No positive steps should ever be taken in a medical context to permanently stop a beating human heart.
Now, as an aside, I personally believe—and I believe it objectively true—that human life begins at conception. A humans heart beats for the first time, on average, three weeks from conception. As a matter of public policy, I believe that humanity should be recognized and protected in its totality but I also recognize that we, as a nation, are a long way from that ideal. And I don’t think we’ll be able to end THAT debate before we are pressured to end the health care debate. A public option will be on the table and will have to be decided upon with certain decisions as to what gets covered needing to be made immediately. So rather than accept a solution that, by default, may provide pregnancy termination services at ANY stage in a woman’s pregnancy, I’d like to get some parameters defined.
I think that a heart beat is a good, solid, empirically verifiable indicator of a human life that is worthy of and deserving of our protection. Promoting this distinction, rather than a more scientific or philosophical one, will put the onus on those who contend that having a heart that beats on its own is not a sufficient indicator that human life is present. They’ll have to defend their own distinction. And I content—unequivocally—that birth is not a proper distinction. It is, rather, a nonsensical distinction in the age of c-sections on demand. And neither is fetal viability a reasonable distinction since viability has become a sliding scale. How will such a distinction be maintained once the scale has slid all the way down to conception?
So, getting past that messy part of the business, we can focus on that which actually promotes health.
Is Single Payer the best option? Is it a POOR option? Will heath care be rationed? Will people have to wait in long lines for routine care? For emergency care?
Is Single Payer really something we need to be afraid of or is it merely the unknown that is causing us fear.
I admit I don’t know.
Wednesday, July 22, 2009
The Slave Trade Is Alive and Well
And when will a nation on the face of the earth have the moral courage to do something radical about it?
http://www.itemp.org/humantraffickingfacts.html
One of the most powerful scenes, I think, in the movie Amistad (and there were several vying for the top notch) was when the British Admiral is decimating the African Slave Fortress and he orders to send word that the Slave Fortress, whose existence was questioned during the court proceedings, no longer exists.
I realize it was a movie which may have played light and loose with historical facts, but if human trafficking (“slavery”) is really the problem that was alluded to on several occasions by Bush and which the Vatican is renewing efforts to stamp out, where’s the moral outrage? Where's the outcry?
And why do I associate celebrity activism in Africa with hunger and AIDS and NOT human trafficking? Why is that? Is it just me? I’m trying to be fair, here, but do a few Google searches for “human trafficking and Bono” and see what you get. Use the advance search qualifier –pro so you don’t get a lot of “pro bono” in your results. On the other hand, just Google “Bono Africa” and a wealth of stories comes up leading with a Time Magazine article, “Can Bono Save the World?”
Now, I don’t want to be unfair so if someone out there can find out what Bono’s been doing to fight human trafficking in Africa using different search terms please let me know. Or maybe Bono himself can contact me and tell me what he’s been doing draw attention to social causes that actually need attention drawn to them.
I think a lot of the problem is that the average citizen may not really believe there's a problem. The media hardly talks about it and, besides, it just seems so “otherworldly”. School taught us that slavery was abolished in this country because of the Civil War. We all learn to recite the creed that “Lincoln freed the slaves”. That knowledge and that mantra is internalized into “slavery doesn’t exist anymore”. But there IS still slavery--even in this country. Illegalization has just driven it underground.
So what’s the solution? Legalize it? Empower our police to raid houses and places of business door-to-door to uncover illegal activity that wouldn’t otherwise be brought to light? Make penalities a real deterrent? Or just live with it pick away at it the same way we’ve done with drug trafficking for the last 90 or so years?
Last I heard we’re not winning that war either.
But here's a question I'd like to have debate on? What SHOULD the penalty be for forcibly enslaving someone? Life? Death? Or just the temporary loss of one's OWN freedom? What if the forcible enslavement that someone was responsible for leads to the death of the slave? Are we talking "eye for eye" here? C'mon! What's fair? What's just? What's reasonable?
http://www.abolishhumantrafficking.com/2008/12/bush-signs-anti-trafficking-bill.html
At least the government’s doing something—though I understand that Joe Biden was one of two senators making it difficult to get this legislation passed. (The other was Sam Brownback.)
http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=4441
(I got on this tangent listing to Morning Air on Relevant Radio this morning. I urge Catholics, Christians, and Curious to check it out: http://www.relevantradio.com/Page.aspx?pid=469
http://www.itemp.org/humantraffickingfacts.html
One of the most powerful scenes, I think, in the movie Amistad (and there were several vying for the top notch) was when the British Admiral is decimating the African Slave Fortress and he orders to send word that the Slave Fortress, whose existence was questioned during the court proceedings, no longer exists.
I realize it was a movie which may have played light and loose with historical facts, but if human trafficking (“slavery”) is really the problem that was alluded to on several occasions by Bush and which the Vatican is renewing efforts to stamp out, where’s the moral outrage? Where's the outcry?
And why do I associate celebrity activism in Africa with hunger and AIDS and NOT human trafficking? Why is that? Is it just me? I’m trying to be fair, here, but do a few Google searches for “human trafficking and Bono” and see what you get. Use the advance search qualifier –pro so you don’t get a lot of “pro bono” in your results. On the other hand, just Google “Bono Africa” and a wealth of stories comes up leading with a Time Magazine article, “Can Bono Save the World?”
Now, I don’t want to be unfair so if someone out there can find out what Bono’s been doing to fight human trafficking in Africa using different search terms please let me know. Or maybe Bono himself can contact me and tell me what he’s been doing draw attention to social causes that actually need attention drawn to them.
I think a lot of the problem is that the average citizen may not really believe there's a problem. The media hardly talks about it and, besides, it just seems so “otherworldly”. School taught us that slavery was abolished in this country because of the Civil War. We all learn to recite the creed that “Lincoln freed the slaves”. That knowledge and that mantra is internalized into “slavery doesn’t exist anymore”. But there IS still slavery--even in this country. Illegalization has just driven it underground.
So what’s the solution? Legalize it? Empower our police to raid houses and places of business door-to-door to uncover illegal activity that wouldn’t otherwise be brought to light? Make penalities a real deterrent? Or just live with it pick away at it the same way we’ve done with drug trafficking for the last 90 or so years?
Last I heard we’re not winning that war either.
But here's a question I'd like to have debate on? What SHOULD the penalty be for forcibly enslaving someone? Life? Death? Or just the temporary loss of one's OWN freedom? What if the forcible enslavement that someone was responsible for leads to the death of the slave? Are we talking "eye for eye" here? C'mon! What's fair? What's just? What's reasonable?
http://www.abolishhumantrafficking.com/2008/12/bush-signs-anti-trafficking-bill.html
At least the government’s doing something—though I understand that Joe Biden was one of two senators making it difficult to get this legislation passed. (The other was Sam Brownback.)
http://feministlawprofs.law.sc.edu/?p=4441
(I got on this tangent listing to Morning Air on Relevant Radio this morning. I urge Catholics, Christians, and Curious to check it out: http://www.relevantradio.com/Page.aspx?pid=469
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