Saturday, August 22, 2009
A Show Of Force
Perhaps your Curmudgeon was wrong. Perhaps this wasn't a loss but a gain. Not a super-shocker, really; it's happened before. But in this case, it definitely wasn't what he expected.
Sarah Palin took on ObamaCare's gruesome "end of life counseling" provisions and knocked them flat on their ghoulish asses. Working not as a sitting governor but as a private citizen, she mobilized mass opposition to that aspect of ObamaCare that the statists in Congress were unable to face. Obama's "I won't pull the plug on Grandma" rhetoric was impotent against it.
Now she's going after an even bigger prize:
First, we cannot have health care reform without tort reform. The two are intertwined. For example, one supposed justification for socialized medicine is the high cost of health care. As Dr. Scott Gottlieb recently noted, “If Mr. Obama is serious about lowering costs, he'll need to reform the economic structures in medicine—especially programs like Medicare.” [1] Two examples of these “economic structures” are high malpractice insurance premiums foisted on physicians (and ultimately passed on to consumers as “high health care costs”) and the billions wasted on defensive medicine....So I have new questions for the president: Why no legal reform? Why continue to encourage defensive medicine that wastes billions of dollars and does nothing for the patients? Do you want health care reform to benefit trial attorneys or patients?
Many states, including my own state of Alaska, have enacted caps on lawsuit awards against health care providers. Texas enacted caps and found that one county’s medical malpractice claims dropped 41 percent, and another study found a “55 percent decline” after reform measures were passed. [4] That’s one step in health care reform. Limiting lawyer contingency fees, as is done under the Federal Tort Claims Act, is another step. The State of Alaska pioneered the “loser pays” rule in the United States, which deters frivolous civil law suits by making the loser partially pay the winner’s legal bills. Preventing quack doctors from giving “expert” testimony in court against real doctors is another reform.
Texas Gov. Rick Perry noted that, after his state enacted tort reform measures, the number of doctors applying to practice medicine in Texas “skyrocketed by 57 percent” and that the tort reforms “brought critical specialties to underserved areas.” These are real reforms that actually improve access to health care. [5]
Dr. Weinstein’s research shows that around $200 billion per year could be saved with legal reform. That’s real savings. That’s money that could be used to build roads, schools, or hospitals.
If you want to save health care, let’s listen to our doctors. There should be no health care reform without legal reform. There can be no true health care reform without legal reform.
Laser-focused, straight to the target, and as piercing as a well-honed rapier. The C.S.O. should be glad your Curmudgeon considers himself firmly married. (Well, frankly, so should Sarah Palin.)
What Mrs. Palin is demonstrating is the power of a coherent, well-supported argument from a well-respected source. Any Gentle Reader of Eternity Road can recognize Mrs. Palin's argument as coherent and well-supported, so let's spend a few words on that well-respected source.
Her detractors have heaped mountains of derision on Sarah Palin: on her intelligence, her education, her judgment, her fashion sense, even her religious convictions. Thence they proceeded to slander: her ethics as Governor of Alaska, her honesty in family matters, her sexual morals and those of her husband and children. That was necessary: nothing but derision and slander could dampen her immense popular appeal, greater than anything seen in American politics since the 1980 presidential campaign of Ronald Reagan. Some folks, initially drawn to her as the redemption of the McCain candidacy, bought into the lies...perhaps enough to account for the election of Barack Hussein Obama to the presidency.
But beneath all the rhetorical offal and deceit emitted by the Democrats and their media shills was a reality: Sarah Heath Palin, a woman of sound judgment, stainless character, substantial achievement, and immense personal force. And the reality has burned through the lies.
Your Curmudgeon greatly respects his Co-Conspirator Duyen, and as a general proposition agrees with her assessment of women as approval-seekers who make political executives of dubious quality. But in Mrs. Palin we have a standout, an exception to the pattern as conspicuous as Margaret Thatcher. Given the right supporting cast, she could become president -- and she would be a worthy one.
Andrew Sullivan and the others who've collaborated in the calumnies against Sarah Palin will soon learn this to their sorrow.
Friday, August 21, 2009
Deft.
“They [women] in fact want to subordinate themselves to a worthy man’s life purpose, to help him achieve that purpose with their feminine support, and to follow the path he lays out.”I cannot believe you typed out this entire sentence without realizing what a horrible person you are. Please leave Earth.
Comment by SmartiePuff.
“Sixteen Commandments Of Poon.” By Roissy, Roissy in DC, c. 10/10/08.
Thursday, August 20, 2009
Debunking preventive care
You might be surprised to learn that I watched Obama’s radio interview with “conservative” talk radio host Michael Smerconish today. I say “conservative,” because Smerconish voted for Obama last November, and I say “watch” because I saw the television feed on CNN, which happened to be on in my office building’s fitness center at lunch. It was a typical Obama performance, all platitudes and generalities, with gross misrepresentations and falsehoods delivered by that famed Obama grin.
I won’t bother to fisk Obama’s entire interview. By this point in his presidency, you are either inclined to believe the man or you are not. I did, however, want to respond to one important point raised by Obama and many supporters of government-run health care. That argument goes something like this:
The government can cut through the bad incentives that cause doctors to miss warning signs that point to expensive diseases down the road, thereby cutting costs and improving overall health.
The first portion of the statement is a howler that can be easily dismissed. Since when has government encouraged effective and efficient dispensation of any problem, let alone a person’s health? Tell all the expecting mothers in the UK who are directed to wait until they are 6 or 7 months along to see an obstetrician for the first time that government health care can administer effective preventive treatment, and you’ll likely receive a well deserved sock to your kisser. Isn’t the notion of a waiting list inimical to the delivery of preventive care, especially if its supporters admit that an effective preventive care program involves tight collaboration between physician and patient?
Never mind that. Obama today pointed to a Safeway health care plan that promotes preventive care among its rolls and claims to have reduced Safeway’s health insurance spending on non-union employees by 11%. This article from a couple years ago sums it up:
An employee health plan offered by supermarket chain Safeway that focuses on preventive care reduced company health care costs by 11% for nonunion employees in 2006, the San Francisco Chronicle reports. The plan, which was offered in January 2006 to the company’s nonunion workers, includes a $2,000 deductible and limits out-of-pocket spending to $3,000 for family coverage. Out-of-pocket costs are partially offset by a company contribution of $1,000 to a health reimbursement account for the household, and unused funds in the HRA are rolled over to the next year.
The plan, administered by Cigna, covers all preventive care services that are appropriate for a beneficiary’s age group. It also offers a 24-hour hot line staffed by registered nurses, services to help people manage chronic conditions and incentives designed to promote healthier lifestyles, among other benefits. According to the Chronicle, “None of these ideas is new or earth-shattering,” but “while many companies have adopted a few of these approaches to cut costs and promote health, Safeway seems to be trying almost everything at once.”
Safeway CEO Steve Burd, who has spoken about the plan to more than 300 executives during the past three months, said, “What is the revelation Safeway had two years ago that completely transformed our thinking? That 50 [%] to 60% of all health care costs are driven by behavior,” adding, “If you design a health care plan that rewards good behavior, you will drive costs down.”
Everyone has already heard of the CBO study refuting the basic ability of preventive care to offset health care costs. The logic is, in fact, quite simple. Preventive care, if it results in the prevention and/or timely treatment of a severe disease in one individual, substantially reduces costs in the short-to-medium term for that individual. Administered to a large group, preventive care typically increases costs because most individuals in the group were not going to suffer from the disease one way or the other.
That, by itself, is a devastating blow to Obama’s argument. However, he seems to have a real-life example on his side with Safeway. The results do seem paradoxical - how can Safeway be saving money if preventive care acts to increase costs? For the sake of argument, let’s grant that both Safeway and Obama are accurately representing the numbers on this question. What should we make of this?
In truth, the resolution is actually easy. Most health care spending comes from three sources - catastrophic emergencies, chronic diseases, and end-of-life treatment. Of these, the numbers show that end-of-life treatment takes of the most significant slice. No health plan can prevent catastrophic emergencies caused by automobile accidents or work mishaps. Some chronic diseases, like type-II diabetes, can be prevented by lifestyle changes, while end-of-life treatment costs can only be prevented by dying early (and preferably suddenly).
Now, call to mind the insurance structure of this country. After the age of 65, all American citizens are covered by the federal government through Medicare. Therefore, Safeway saves money if it can reduce utilization among its employees year-over-year until they turn 65 and are dumped onto the government rolls. Whether it reduces utilization by being “nice” and subsidizing effective prevention measures or by being “mean” and refusing to cover certain treatments actually makes little difference to the bottom line, a fact that will not be lost on government bureaucrats faced with massive budget shortfalls in the years to come should Obamacare pass.
However, every employee that Safeway manages to keep healthy until the age of 65 actually increases government costs because that individual will die while on Medicare, forcing Medicare to pay for his or her end-of-life treatments. The federal government would be better off if Safeway encouraged its employees to smoke a pack a day and eat bacon cheeseburgers every day for lunch! Now, imagine the impact to the federal budget of insuring preventive treatment and actual care not just for seniors and the poor, but for everyone.
It’s a fiscal nightmare, yet Obama is trying to sell this nonsense as a “bending the cost curve.”
Don’t believe a word of it.
Just a thought on our current crisis
Nothing long now, sorry, but I was just thinking that Ross Perot was wrong back in 1992 when he said that the giant sucking sound we’d hear in the future was the sound of American jobs heading off to Mexico. Nope, that sound will be, in fact, the sound of Grandmas from the length and breadth of this our Great Republic toddling off to one of the scores of new hospitals in Tijuana, Nogales, and Ciudad Juarez that will cater to Americans getting around the restrictions of ObamaCare. Yes indeed, the President’s health care plan will do wonders for the Mexican economy, no two ways about it. And it’s not like you couldn’t tell this was going to happen, is it? Let’s face reality: if Grandma needs a hip replacement, she’s going to get one whether the government says she can have one or not. This is the United States of America, boys and girls, not Canada or the UK-we don’t do queue here, unless it’s to see Brad and Angelina. And what if Grandma or Grandpa needs some expensive drug that the government says they can’t have? There are some 800,000 hard-core heroin users and about as many crack addicts in this country, along with millions of casual users of those drugs, in addition to millions of marijuana users, and the DEA and your local police department’s narcotics squad cannot make a significant dent in the traffic in those drugs despite their already Herculean efforts. Given they can’t stop the flow of already illegal drugs into the country, what happens when Lipitor and Crestor are the drugs of choice for millions and millions of people? The DEA, Customs, and the Coast Guard will not be able to stop the tidal wave of unofficial pharmaceuticals popping over the border. Give extra patent protection for Big Pharma as the price of their support? Fat lot it’ll do them once the illegal labs in Colombia and Venezuela get a hold of their new drugs and start making knockoffs for a fifth of the price. Think it ain’t gonna happen, folks? Who’s kidding who now? So kudos to the President and to Congress as well, for coming up with what, if it passes, will be the most unenforceable law passed in the United States since Prohibition reared its ugly head.
Wednesday, August 19, 2009
The Left’s Political Achilles Heel
Few things enrage an American adult as greatly as being talked down to -- being addressed like an ignoramus, a moron, or a child. You'd think that would be fairly obvious to anyone who's survived adolescence and achieved a self-sufficient adulthood. Yet if the American Left, and its political arm the Democrat Party, has a characteristic weakness, that would be it.
Thomas Sowell, in his masterpiece The Vision Of The Anointed: Self-congratulation as a Basis for Social Policy, presents a devastating case for the proposition that American liberals consider themselves morally superior to conservatives and libertarians. That "vision of differential rectitude" does not flow from a traditional source such as a religious affiliation or a superior upbringing, the mainsprings of moral superciliousness in earlier times. Rather, it seems to derive from the liberal's conviction that he has superior insight into politics, economics, and society, and that that insight compels the adoption of certain moral postures.
This might not be perfectly clear at first blush. Consider: Any man of good will would want every imaginable good, service, and satisfaction to be available to everyone on Earth, if it were possible to contrive it so. Take as a current and highly contentious example the matter o f medical insurance. Beyond doubt, there are some persons who lack it involuntarily, and who are therefore exposed to risks the rest of us don't have to bear. A man of good will, could he but contrive it so, would want everyone everywhere to live entirely free from fear that any medical product or service he'll need in the future might be beyond his reach. But anyone with even a basic grasp of economics will realize that it's not possible, even with the best will in the world -- that laws beyond alteration by Congress put that out of reach, now and forever.
To persons who appreciate Man's finitude, the supreme verb is is. It cannot be finessed or bypassed. Natural laws are a fact of life, not to be dismissed because they clash with one's preferences.
The American liberal starts from a different set of postulates. To him, the supreme verb is should. If he feels that some imaginable outcome should prevail, then nothing in the world can persuade him that it's impossible.
Note that carefully: According to liberal postulates, should trumps is. Because it's a matter of postulate, he refuses to argue about it. Anyone who disagrees is intellectually and morally flawed, or, in Sowell's phrase, benighted.
This is the Right's most potent weapon against the Left. There's no way to become a left-liberal by a chain of reasoning; it arrives via postulate or it doesn't arrive at all. But that implies that the liberal cannot convert the non-liberal except by a course of browbeating -- and ordinary persons are indisposed toward discarding their postulates on command, especially if the command issues from someone who openly regards them as intellectual and moral inferiors.
Concerning the current kerfuffle over the Democrats' proposed nationalization of medical insurance and services, we have a number of manifestations of this influence. The worthy Ace of Spades has assembled a number of citations, all of which point toward the prevailing left-liberal attitude that they know best what's good for us, and it's our duty, both toward them and for ourselves, to sit down and shut up.
And the popular reaction is beating their heads in.
There remains one possible avenue by which the Obama Administration and the Democrats in Congress can impose nationalized medical care on the United States: stealth. They -- the ones who aren't simply evil, of course -- really believe they know better than we do. Therefore, if they think they can slip it past us without us noticing and extracting an unacceptable price from them, they will do so.
The challenge for the American Right is to keep the opposition energized as various pseudo-compromises -- all of which will be aimed at the eventual imposition of government-controlled medical care -- are proposed and rationalized. It will not be enough to defeat the "public option" as it currently stands; if Washington is permitted to get even one fingertip into medical care and insurance, we will eventually have to accept total federal control, from who's allowed to buy what sort of insurance to who will be granted access to what sorts of drugs and therapies.
The road to defeating the Democrats' attempt to socialize medical care is provoking them into becoming ever more dismissive of popular objections to their scheme. The more obviously they promote their own intellects and moral positions over the objections of their constituents, the less popular they'll become. Inevitably, some simply won't care, but the majority will weigh their prospects for re-election against their desire for a nationalized health care outcome, and will decide in favor of the former.
Keep the pressure on them.
Tuesday, August 18, 2009
The 30-Second Manifesto
RIGHT: An abstract idea of that which is due to a person or governmental body by law or tradition or nature.
I found this definition on the Internet, and, as such, it is already suspect. Then I tried to parse it. Whoops! Oh, well, the flawed version can serve as an armature to hang corrections on. The stricken-out portions are incorrect, in my estimation, and that Google would point to this in return of a request for a definition is symptomatic of the difficulty the body politic faces with regard to the notion of rights.
Rights cannot inhere to a governmental body. Period. End of discussion.
Rights cannot be granted by law or tradition. They can only be protected or infringed by either. Rights descend from God and exist free-standing in a state of nature. This is the self-evident part. The just and proper purpose -- the primary fiduciary responsibility -- of government is the defense of these rights from infringement.
Rights cannot require another person to provide to you the good or service to which you are asserting a right.
You do not have a right to a job. You have a right to seek employment, or to offer yourself up as a prospective employee, but you do not have a right to a job.
You do not have a right to any good or service that would require that some thing be provided to you at no cost -- not even by the state. That would infringe upon the reciprocal rights of property, or life, or liberty of the owners or providers of goods or services. That would be slavery.
I have yet to see a coherent exposition of a conflict between rights of individuals where there was not at bottom a fundamental misunderstanding of the nature of rights. When someone asks you, "What about when rights conflict?" be very suspicious of motives.
With the acceptance of true rights also comes the moral responsibility to reciprocate -- to accept that others have rights and that they should be respected.
Cross-posted at BabyTrollBlog
Sunday, August 16, 2009
Commentaries on End Times for Freedom
Our Curmudgeon has compiled a series of vitally important essays on the subject of freedom and the American polity. They should all be read posthaste by anyone who has concern for the future of the country. As he wrote, if you have not become seriously afraid watching the rising confrontations between ordinary citizens and left-wing thugs, then you either dead or so inured to reality by the television or other escapes that you are beyond communication.
But if you are paying attention, and if you have read the End Times for Freedom series, you may be left with one question: Why? What has brought about this decay in our laws, our morals, and our civilization? If you are a Christian, you may be tempted to doubt God. After all, wasn’t it God that promised us a salvation history, a progression from heathenism to enlightenment? How, then, can the barbarians be breaking through the gates of our City on a Hill?
A tentative answer to this fundamental historical quandary will require following a twisting path through theology, history, and political science, and even then will always be necessarily incomplete. We must, however, look without fear and without prejudice on our history, our current condition, and our future if we are to find the road forward.
We must begin with the question of time itself.
Christians hold that man, unique amongst all creatures, exists in the temporal and eternal planes simultaneously. This dual existence is granted to us by dint of two gifts from God: the human body and the human soul. The body is a magnificent creation, but it is dumb and self-absorbed. It has little value without the imprints of the eternal brought to it by the soul because it will inexorably decay and die, taking all of the physical pleasures with it. The soul’s presence is what makes the body, in Christ’s formulation, a temple.
Of all creatures on Earth, we experience time uniquely. The dual nature of the human existence means that all human events must be examined through two lenses - the temporal and eternal. If we accept the thrust of Christ’s moral argument, then we must believe that eternal things are greater than temporal things; human moral development is the choice to turn from the temporal – lust, greed, and so forth – and face squarely the eternal.
Salvation history is the intrusion of the eternal into the temporal; it promises that the soul will become progressively educated about God’s plan and then allowed the choice to participate, much as in baptism the soul is shorn of Original Sin, which opens up the mere possibility of rejecting Satan.
Thomas Cahill and others have argued persuasively that the introduction of the concept of salvation history by the Jews radically changed the way the world perceived time. Specifically, Cahill compares the Jewish notion of a progressive history with the traditional pagan notion of cyclical time. Cahill, however misses an important point – salvation history is not so much an overturning of the cyclical notion of history as it is a gradual merging of those cycles with the eternal, until the temporal order is finally overthrown with the return of the Messiah.
In fact, history quite obviously moves in cycles, whether one examines it from a social, economic, or cultural perspective. Indeed, it is hard to square Cahill’s view of an unambiguous Jewish transcendence over cyclical history with the inclusion of the Book of Ecclesiastes in the Bible. Its famous opening lines remain a strong counterpoint to much of the theologizing about time that goes on in contemporary Christian and Jewish circles:
1 The words of the Teacher, [a] son of David, king in Jerusalem:
2 “Meaningless! Meaningless!”
says the Teacher.
“Utterly meaningless!
Everything is meaningless.”
3 What does man gain from all his labor
at which he toils under the sun?
4 Generations come and generations go,
but the earth remains forever.
5 The sun rises and the sun sets,
and hurries back to where it rises.
6 The wind blows to the south
and turns to the north;
round and round it goes,
ever returning on its course.
In truth, the Bible is fully accepting of cycles to human history, and none of its prophets make any suggestions that humans can escape this condition through earthly means. Until the Second Coming, death remains the only way out. Even societies and institutions built on the strongest of foundations will decay, leaving only lessons for the next generation.
All civilizations experience punctuated periods of growth and decline both in their ascendant and descendent phases. The United States has, and will continue to be, no exception. No one man can typically drive the forces governing a single household, much less an entire country. We have ruminated a great deal on this website on whether the Age of Obama represents the final unwinding of the great American experiment or is merely a speed bump on the path to greater things. We are not alone in wondering about that.
Still, the only answer at this point is, “We don’t know.” Obama may well turn out to be a one-term president of little consequence beyond his race. On the other hand, he may represent the pivot point that sends us down the path to permanent European-style malaise, or fates even more terrible. The results of the health care reform debate will go a long way toward answering that question, but even then they will not be dispositive.
So, what can we say about what Obama represents about our society and where we are headed? That answer requires some thought about the political history of the United States, and that is what we will turn to consider next time.
The Naming Of Names: A Sunday Rumination
Good morning. Before we get to the serious part of things, congratulations to Liz Pavek, proprietress of Half-Baked Sourdough, for posting the 10,000th comment here at Eternity Road. No, there's no prize, but the inventors of base-10 polynomial arithmetic deserve a little recognition now and then, don't they?
(In my preferred numbering system, Liz's comment was number 2710. Curious as to what the base is? If you can solve cubic equations, figuring it out will be a snap. Or you could infer it from my chosen trade.)
My return to Christian faith was contemporaneous with the completion of On Broken Wings, my first novel, back in 1997. You might say I wrote my way back into Christianity, through the deeds of my characters and with a little help from the Holy Spirit. But one seemingly peripheral aspect of that first novel, upon which several readers have remarked, is how I handled names:
- One protagonist came into the story with only a first name, and no other memory of her past.
- A second protagonist bore a name that translates to "Warrior-King of the World" in medieval French.
- One antagonist was known only by an oxymoronic moniker, his two chief henchmen were known only by their first names, and all three were first called by their full names only in the climactic chapter.
A couple of my "test readers" were puzzled by this, and wanted to know why. One reader, more perceptive than the others, asked me if I did it on purpose.
I didn't answer that reader at the time. I will now: No, I didn't realize what I had done until well after I had done it. When I did realize, it completed my reconversion.
It's well known that power inheres in words -- that one's choice of words can make or break whatever proposition one is arguing for. But among words, the greatest power is reserved to names. He who assigns names exerts power over the things named: the power to assign significance to characteristics, to categorize, and to judge worth.
In this connection, it's customary to note that in the traditional Creation story as narrated in Genesis, when God had created Adam, the first man, He gave Adam the privilege of naming all the lesser creatures of the world. Yes, Genesis is allegorical, but the significance of that aspect of the story is enormous, nor does it require additional explication from me.
The writer of fiction must take care when he assigns names. To him is granted a power that's unique among men: the power to create an alternate reality, in which a reader can immerse himself at will. Within that reality, the author is all-powerful, capable of anything. He can twist the reader's perceptions and assumptions however he pleases. He can make good look evil and evil look good. He can give complete victory to his most dastardly characters and inflict both utter defeat and unbelievable suffering on those who uphold the right.
If you've ever wondered whence fiction derives its power to persuade, perhaps you grasp it now. And most of it stems from the writer's power to name.
I'm using "the power to name" a bit more loosely than one usually does. I'm not speaking of the privilege of naming a newborn baby, or any comparable event, but of the description of a man, an institution, or an event according to certain of its characteristics. Consider the following two alternate descriptions of Senator Edward Kennedy of Massachusetts:
- The liberal lion of the United States Senate, who's fought tirelessly for compassion for the weak and the rights of women and minorities throughout his career.
- A drunken multiple adulterer and the murderer of a helpless young woman, raised to high office solely by his family's glamor and immense wealth.
Let's not linger over whether either (or both) of these descriptions is factually accurate. Both have been employed; both have immense power over those who accept them. Which of them prevails in the mind of the listener will largely determine his other beliefs about the worthiness of Senator Edward Kennedy.
One of the great jests of literary history is embedded in the ongoing controversy over the true identity of the man who wrote the plays attributed to "William Shakespeare." That name is associated with a face, one of a few that have been consistently depicted through the centuries since the Elizabethan Era, but neither the name nor the face have anything to do with the authorship of the plays and poems connected to them. Joseph Sobran has accumulated a huge mass of evidence that points to Edward deVere, Earl of Oxford during Elizabeth's reign, as the true creator of those works. Yet neither Sobran nor anyone else has pointed at the strongest evidence that "Shakespeare" was not the creator's true name: It's a play on words.
In the jargon of the stage, a "spear shaker" is an extremely minor character, a figure that's in a particular place at a particular time simply because there must be a human present there. The phrase dates back to the playwrights of classical times; when a king or commanding general enters a scene, he usually walks past some number of guardsmen, each of whom shows respect for the great man by shaking or brandishing his spear. Such characters are not given names; they are "spear shakers," with no significance other than filling a place on the stage that someone had to fill.
The creator of "Shakespeare's" works plainly wanted to conceal his true identity. Yet he knew that there had to be an author's name attached to the plays and poems, so he contrived one, and so gave rise to one of cultural history's most intriguing and funniest mysteries -- and a sermonette on the power of names.
Forgive me, Gentle Reader, for introducing horrifying subjects in a Sunday Rumination, but I must; they're at the heart of this discourse. The subjects are abortion, euthanasia, and embryonic stem-cell research. I've written on several occasions about these horrors, but what has them on my mind today is the linguistic agility of their proponents.
That you might be in absolutely no doubt about my position on such things, here are a few links:
- A Little Death
- "Women's Health And Safety"
- There's No Getting Away From It
- The Embryo Of The Death Cults
- A Reason They Do Not Wish To Tell
- Hard Cases
- The Convergence Is Complete
Perhaps if you read the above-linked essays, you won't need to finish this one. I'll continue on even so.
I consider that point as having been made.
I am told that Confucius, the great sage of classical China, was once asked what law he would promulgate were he given the privilege of doing so. He replied that he would decree that all things shall henceforward be called by their right names.
The power of names is nowhere so clear, or so important, as in our struggles against the death cults of our time. Death cultists must numb us to the moral implications of their proposals; therefore, they use euphemisms, linguistic diversions, and when attacked, slander and vilification of their opponents. They know the power of names, and seek to have it employed solely in service to their cause. Dare not call it a "partial-birth abortion;" that's far too accurate! No, it must be a "safe medical procedure" to ensure "women's health and safety." Dare not call it "mercy killing;" no, no, what we do here is "the ending of intolerable suffering" of one who has no remaining "quality of life." And "embryonic stem-cell research" must be referred to exclusively as "the pursuit of scientific knowledge," inarguably in the interests of all Mankind. After all, who doesn't want to live forever, regardless of the price...or of who must pay it?
If human life is sacred -- if each of us, however puissant or helpless, has a natural, God-given right to his life -- then the above is a vileness beyond quantification. It must be opposed at every turn. The principal battlefield, victory over which is critical to victory in any other forum, is the power of names.
I could go on, but it's a subject that easily wearies both reader and writer. I'll close by saying only this: Watch for the use of euphemisms and linguistic deflections to avert your scrutiny of moral issues. Words have power; names have the ultimate power. To those who doubt it, remember this: In the beginning was the Word.
May God bless and keep you all.
The 30-Second Manifesto
LIFE: the condition of living or the state of being alive. The principal characteristic of the individual (q.v.). Self-evidently the first inalienable right of all individuals.
The definition of life as a biological proposition is very slippery. But as a metaphysical proposition, relating to mankind, it is quite simple: the condition of living or the state of being alive. No, that is not a tautology.
Defense of life—particularly the life of The People—is the primary fiduciary responsibility of the state. It is also the right and responsibility of the individual. When the state acts counter to this principle, for any reason whatsoever, it is in default.
There may be times and situations in which the state may be required to remove particular individuals from society, and that the termination of those individuals’ lives may be the preferred method. Such must be carefully circumscribed and straitly limited only to those cases in which it is absolutely and affirmatively known that the termination of life is the best choice in the interests of justice.
The instant an indvidual departs from these principles is the instant he forfeits all claims on the protection of either the state or society, although this fact may not be known absolutely and affirmatively. Whether the act of departure is punished by society or not, it stains the soul of the individual who encompasses it.
Accordingly, the state must not force individuals to fail in the defense of life without overwhelming cause. Existential cause. A cause which can be distilled down to a matter of defense of life.
The instant the state departs from these principles is the instant it forfeits all legitimacy.
All other rights of an individual as a member of a society under the governance of a state spring from this right.
Cross-posted at BabyTrollBlog.
Saturday, August 15, 2009
Yet Another New Co-Conspirator
Please extend a hearty welcome to Kate Dembinski, proprietress of Miss Behavin', who has graciously agreed to contribute her insights as a Co-Conspirator of Eternity Road.
The Table of Schemers, Dreamers, and Benevolent Rabble-Rousers is once again properly full!
