Sunday, December 05, 2004

The Digital Cottage

Your Curmudgeon awoke this morning with a powerful desire to write about debt monetization and how to predict impending currency inflation, but he sat very still for a long time and the urge went away. Lucky you. So instead, he’s decided to maunder over the changing nature of capital and the ways in which it “forms.”

Time was, we attached the term “capital” almost exclusively to big, heavy machines and really fat bank accounts. Even then, the dichotomy was suggestive. The big, heavy machines were of course paid for out of some fat bank account—you can’t directly make any physical good out of money alone—but there was an undeniable association between the sort of physical plant required to make things and the concentration of money required to finance the plant. It went unquestioned for a very long time that the fat bank account had to come first.

This should have begged the chicken-and-egg question. In the absence of the machines, how would the fat bank account arise? One can only amass so much gelt by abusing the peasants. The overall failure of the European nobility to maintain its financial viability, much less to match the wealth of the capitalist newcomers of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries, speaks to that point. Of course, it didn’t help much that the landed nobility held the rising entrepreneurial class in contempt. However, the general tendency among men is to emulate conspicuous examples of success, particularly material success. Therefore, we may assume that some members of the aristocratic class did try their hands at manufacture and trade. Appallingly few prospered at it.

Today, matters are more fluid. America has emerged from its Industrial Age economic organization in a remarkable way. New businesses form, dissolve, and reform with astonishing fluidity. The tools they use are infinitely distant from those required by the previous generation of “heavy industry.” Even in the event of bankruptcy, the ability to “recapture the capital”—that is, to salvage all the recoverable value from the failing firm’s assets—is unprecedentedly good. It suggests that we’ve attained a new plateau of economic and commercial efficiency.

Beyond all question, in some ways, we have. There’s a new set of attitudes in town. Possibly the best expression thereof is the oft-heard phrase, “Brains are expensive; iron is cheap.”

Welcome to the Information Age.

No, the bastions of the Industrial Age haven’t disappeared. Most of them won’t do so any time soon, unless Eric Drexler’s “assembler breakthrough” should come to pass far sooner than your Curmudgeon expects. We still need physical goods. Some of those goods still require massive plants filled with big, heavy, shriekingly expensive machinery to make them. But there’s another factor in the equation that’s seldom addressed explicitly, except by persons arguing over the state of American education: the minds behind those machines.

In a mass production / Industrial Age economy, an innovation or breakthrough by one clever mind still requires a second tier of labor—usually quite a lot of labor—to implement the clever mind’s idea. Mass labor put to work producing physical goods requires mass capital to work with, from which follows the scale and expense of Industrial Age capital. But in an Information Age economy, the clever mind is more closely coupled to the actual production of the good than ever before. The mass labor of the Industrial Age firm is likely to be greatly diminished, if not altogether absent from his chain of production and distribution; therefore, producing the good he’s conceived will require far less physical capital. The ultimate expression of this idea is software downloaded over the Internet, which doesn’t even require a physical medium for its conveyance to the consumer.

Since the majority of new goods are “soft,” Information Age goods, your Curmudgeon surmises that our Industrial Age foundation is likely to grow no further. It might shrink somewhat; at the least, there will be a redistribution of investment among its subsectors. But it is highly unlikely ever again to experience the growth of the late nineteenth / early twentieth centuries, when factories were popping up everywhere and a 6% rate of economic expansion was the norm.

In an Information Age economy, investment capital will congeal around proven clever minds. We’ve already seen some of this: Dean Kamen, Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, and their fellows are unlikely ever to miss a meal, or lack funding for a new venture. Of course, reaching the ranks of proven clever minds will still require effort, but it will be less than in the past, because already proven clever minds are among the nation’s most active venture capitalists. Those gentlemen can sense a kindred spirit.

As for the ability to recapture capital from failed ventures, the principal physical instrument with which new products are attempted is the microcomputer. With the price of computer power dropping steadily, there’s no real need to bother saving computers three or more years old. The critical item to be salvaged from a failed venture is the intellectual capital—the breakthrough ideas and the “scaffolding” that was used to instantiate the goods premised on them. Sometimes this will be algorithms and software; other times, it will be process patents or trade secrets. Plainly, these are things the janitors won’t be throwing away. Firms in comparable lines will snap them up, or the developers will preserve them for use in other ventures.

One of the most endearing consequences of this train of developments will be the return of the true cottage industry: the home-based firm that makes a unique product. However, the cottage industries of tomorrow will be able to do mass production and worldwide distribution quite as handily as any of our Industrial Age mega-corporations, owing to the Internet, the profusion of inexpensive, flexible courier services, and the low cost of significant computing power. To those willing to embrace information technology, the road is wide open for the return of a characteristic American engine of economic advance: the family business. Only modest political changes, mostly the abolition of the inheritance tax, are required to help it along.

It’s a great time to be a technologist, or a consumer...or an American.

New Blogroll Entry

Via Kathy Kinsley’s On The Third Hand, your Curmudgeon has just discovered The Incessant Rant. Terrific stuff, especially this entry on responsibility and litigation in matters nutritional. Welcome to the blogroll, IR. Eternity Road readers: go thou forth and enjoy!

“There’s Formula All Over The Walls, And I Have To Clean It Up, But You’re The One Crying?”

From Captain Ed:

Well, this is rather pathetic. The Daily Kos can’t be satisfied with acquiring one of the largest readerships in the blogosphere; they now have to make sure that no one with whom they disagree can conduct a fun contest without ruining it for everyone. Charles at LGF discovered the Kos post that instructs its readers how to write a program that bypasses the reasonable controls that Wizbang’s Kevin Aylward implemented to restrict voters to one vote per day per computer, and Kos readers have reacted enthusiastically. They openly brag about their little fraud, congratulating each other for cheating and blaming Kevin Aylward for not making his site more secure.

Your Curmudgeon was tempted to say “boys will be boys,” but as his fingers landed on the keys, it occurred to him that the behavior described here is beneath the standards of even a healthy preadolescent. This is infantile—and it’s a perfect microcosm of spiteful, self-righteous leftist behavior these past few years:

• Conceive a grievance against others for not seeing things as you do;
• Pull a stunt that, while it has little chance of getting you anything you want, will surely inflict discomfort on those others;
• When the above has finally settled out, blame those others for having “made you do it.”

There could be no better illustration of what’s wrong with left-liberal politics in America. If these...persons...want to garner some influence over our national political discourse, they’re going to have to do a lot of growing up. If other liberals of greater maturity feel discommoded by this, they’re going to have to find a way to distance themselves from the whiny, spiteful babies in their ranks.

Friday, December 03, 2004

Moderation And Labels

Your Curmudgeon recently expressed himself on the subjects of moderation and agendas, and got quite a lot of flak for doing so. The general tenor of the objections was strange; it embodied a desire to save the pleasant connotations of the word "moderate" without having to grapple with trivia such as objective meaning. It gave your Curmudgeon to think about the function of political labels, their importance as attractors, and the ways in which the less-than-scrupulous use them to further their interests at the expense of others.

First, let's put calipers on those connotations:

• "Moderate" sounds non-confrontational.
• "Moderate" implies a willingness to compromise, to meet others halfway.
• "Moderate" is often associated with "reasonable" and "fair."
• "Moderate" is the antonym of "extreme."

Those do sound nice, don't they? Your Curmudgeon likes all of them. But has anyone noticed what's absent from the above?

Don't all rush forward at once, now.

The list of connotations doesn't mention any issues of substance, of course. That's in the nature of a connotation; it's an aura that surrounds a word, not a hard and fast dictionary meaning that applies to it. But it also doesn't mention means or consequences. Given that one has identified some political position described as "moderate," what means will be used to implement it? Wouldn't the "moderate" evaluation apply to the means and the consequences as well?

---

If there's any truth to cause and effect, your Curmudgeon thinks the means and consequences implied in a political position must be included in its evaluation, including its evaluation as "moderate" or "extreme." (If there's no truth to cause and effect, why talk politics at all? Whatever will happen will happen; anything we might do would have only a random effect thereupon.)

When most people use "moderate" to describe a political position, they mean that the position stands between two more "extreme" positions. It's a "compromise." Most people don't factor means or consequences into that assessment.

In politics, the means is always force.

The State has exactly one characteristic that distinguishes it from the Thursday night chess club: its agents are permitted to coerce. That is, they may use force and the threat of force to get their way, without fear of a penalty. Since politics is the process whereby a society determines what tasks the State will undertake and what conditions it will attempt to redress, it is inherently about legitimizing coercion in particular circumstances.

This is fundamental stuff. The reader who doesn't grasp it will have difficulty with political argument until he does. So your Curmudgeon will say it once more, with feeling: The State has no other tools that the chess club lacks. To argue that a matter be put into the State's hands is to argue that coercion is necessary to achieve some end.

Coercion -- the use of force or the threat of force -- is the most dramatic stance any man or organization can take toward any other: "Do as I say or I'll kill you." It cannot be made plainer than that.

Now, when a man articulates a political position, it will generally fall into one of the following categories:

1. The State should take responsibility for [insert task or condition here].
2. The State should not take responsibility for [insert task or condition here].

One of these positions legitimizes the use of force in a family of circumstances. The other refrains from doing so.

The end to be pursued might be very important to a large number of people. It might appear to justify the use of the strongest conceivable measures. But the means themselves should always be kept in view. The end does not justify the means; the means are inherently an end in themselves, to be justified in themselves.

Whence cometh "moderation" in all of this?

---

The great Marshall Fritz, founder of the Advocates for Self-Government and the Alliance for the Separation of School and State, once posed the following conundrum:

• Smith: I think the use of recreational drugs should be legal, but the private ownership of firearms should not.
• Jones: I think the private ownership of firearms should be legal, but the use of recreational drugs should not.
• Davis: I'm a moderate; I agree partway with each of you.

What are Davis's positions on the issues of guns and drugs?

• Does he think recreational drugs and private firearms should both be legal?
• Does he think recreational drugs and private firearms should both be illegal?
• Does he hold some third position? If so, what is it?

We're used to calling Smith a "liberal," and Jones a "conservative," although there are many who use those labels that would differ on the specific positions. For example, lawyer and prominent firearms advocate Don Kates is a self-nominated liberal, whereas former Secretary of State George Shultz, who advocates the decriminalization of recreational drugs, is considered a conservative. Still, when a man presents himself under the flag of either of the more popular political labels, we immediately assume that his positions on guns and drugs will be in keeping with the positions taken by Smith and Jones. It's the function of a label to stand as shorthand for a group of positions on specific issues.

But this "moderate" thing...what can one infer from Davis's adoption of the term?

He who can think this one through to a firm conclusion is a rare creature indeed.

---

More often than any other interpretation, people take "moderate" to mean "I'll allow you some of what you want, but not all of it." So in the above poser, Davis is likely to say to Smith, "all right, we'll decriminalize cannabis-based drugs, and maybe reduce the penalties on some of the others, but cocaine and the opiates will remain firmly illegal." He would then say to Jones, "all right, we'll let semi-automatic long arms to be legal, but handguns will require a police permit, and full-auto weapons will continue to be banned." He would implore the two sides to give up part of what they want in each case for the sake of compromise. He'd use the word "reasonable" quite a lot, though he'd never trouble to explain why his suggestions were any more reasonable than the "extreme" positions taken by Smith and Jones.

But we have not yet addressed the question of means. Smith, in his pro-drug / anti-gun stance, has implied that the State should have coercive power over private parties on the subject of guns, but not on the subject of drugs. Jones, in his pro-gun / anti-drug stance, has implied that the State should have coercive power over private parties on the subject of drugs, but not on the subject of guns. Davis, if his "moderate" position is as given above, has implied that the State should have coercive power over private parties on both subjects. He has doubled the field of legitimacy for State coercion.

How does this qualify as "moderate"? That is, if we steer by the connotations attached to "moderate," how does it avert confrontation, avoid extremes, and satisfy the dictates of reason?

---

When the subject is the consequences of State action, the matter becomes more muddled still. Granted that, on most subjects, there's room for legitimate dispute about the degree to which a change in State policy is responsible for what follows. Societies do change for reasons other than political action. However, the arguments over the consequences of State policy often have a Looking-Glass-Land texture to them, as Thomas Sowell ably pointed out in The Vision Of The Anointed.

Dr. Sowell noted in that book that many who agitate for a given policy change claim that it will bring about a particular result. If their argument is sincere, the advocate for the policy change ought to be in the front ranks of those calling for it to be repealed should the result not materialize, or should negative unforeseen consequences countervail the gains. Instead, the advocates usually defend their position by shifting the criterion for evaluation. For example, the War on Poverty was originally proposed as a domestic Marshall Plan to minimize or eliminate poverty and dependency in the United States. When subsequent to the Great Society's anti-poverty programs, the amounts and degrees of poverty and dependency in America increased radically, the advocates of those programs discarded their original arguments and claimed that "things would have been far worse" without the programs. They were allowed to rest on such assertions even though their opponents had accurately predicted the results and had been laughed aside for doing so.

Does "moderation" countenance this sort of rhetorical shiftiness? Is it "reasonable" to defend a policy when the results were not as its advocates, but as its opponents predicted -- or is it dogmatic and "extreme"?

---

Some years ago, a Colorado political activist named David Miller approached moderation in a unique and thought-provoking fashion. Miller first subdivided social and interpersonal action into two categories:

1. Action to encourage private parties to do some particular thing;
2. Action to discourage private parties from doing some particular thing.

He then noted that there are only five methods, schematically, by which Smith might cause Jones to do what Smith wants, or to refrain from doing what Smith does not want. In increasing order of intensity, those are:

1. Smith can talk to Jones, presenting an argument of some kind.
2. Smith can help Jones, or offer him tangible incentives.
3. Smith can take (or threaten to take) some of Jones's property.
4. Smith can jail (or threaten to jail) Jones.
5. Smith can kill (or threaten to kill) Jones.

Of course, if Smith is indifferent to what Jones will do, he needn't do any of the above, but we speak here of deliberate attempts by Smith to modify Jones's behavior. Still, that axis of indifference ought not to be neglected, as it's the position occupied whenever one decides, with regard to the proclivities of one's fellow man, to "live and let live."

When Miller mated to the two categories of interpersonal action, the result formed a spectrum of no small significance:

Attempts to Discourage or Prohibit

Attempts to Encourage or Compel

Kill

Jail

Take

Help

Talk

Talk

Help

Take

Jail

Kill

Between the two "Talk" cells on this spectrum lies the aforementioned axis of indifference, at which Smith does nothing purposeful to affect Jones's behavior. From that axis, Smith can only move two steps in either direction -- out to the "Help" cells -- and no further, unless he is willing to contemplate the use of violence.

Where, then, is moderation? Does it have any connection whatsoever with the specific thing Smith is trying to get Jones to do, or not to do?

Regular readers of Eternity Road will already know where your Curmudgeon stands.

---

This topic arises today for many reasons, not the least of which is a post from Kim Du Toit on his difficulty "explaining" himself to European acquaintances. At one point, Kim makes an interesting self-evaluative statement:

I don't know what Brits and other Euros must think when they come to this site. But the fact of the matter is that while I am very conservative myself, I believe that I am more "moderate" than most. (Okay, stop laughing, willya?)

But it's true. I'm not a Drug Warrior, nor am I an ardent anti-abortionist, and I'm an atheist, fer gosh sakes.

Other than on guns and some cultural issues, I'm pretty laissez-faire in my views -- and sometimes this leads people to think (incorrectly) that I'm a libertarian.

How very strange. Libertarianism is the laissez-faire attitude toward others: "Each man shall be free to do all that he wills with that which is properly his, so long as he infringe not the equal freedom of any other man." So in one breath, Kim has defined himself as a libertarian and then has disclaimed the label. But he's not alone; Connie Du Toit has done more or less the same thing.

See what sort of trouble labels can get you into?

There's much more to be said on the subject, of course, but this is plenty for a Friday in December, and at any rate there's Christmas shopping to be done. So your Curmudgeon will close here with the phrase to which he hopes he's accustomed you:

More anon.

Thursday, December 02, 2004

The Two-State Solution

Ariel Sharon understands the realities of Israel’s deadlock with the Palestinian irredentists. He has to; it’s a requirement if Israel is to survive.

Prime Minister Sharon announced earlier today that Israel will not strike into the Palestinian zone unless provoked. Granted that “provocation,” in DiploSpeak, can cover quite a bit of ground; the clear meaning here is that Israeli action against the Palestinians will be strictly in response to Palestinian violence against Israel, or to the uncovering of convincing evidence that such violence has been planned and scheduled.

The linked article notes that the pace of violence has dropped markedly since the death of Yasser Arafat. This stands to reason; the Palestinians are giving an increased fraction of their attention to their internal power struggles. At least one faction, headed by Mahmoud Abbas, is pressing for accommodations with Israel and a return to the peace talks.

The two-state solution, fortuitously amplified by the death of Arafat, is working.

Granted that no one has yet issued a formal recognition of a nation-state called Palestine. In truth, that would be premature and counterproductive, no matter who did it. But the security fence, which now seems all but certain to be completed, and the coordinated pullout plan, which would leave the West Bank and Gaza Strip regions entirely to the Palestinians, will create, de facto, a Palestinian state. That state will soon take shape politically; the elections on January 9 can mean nothing else.

The activists / terrorists / hard-liners among the Palestinians have demanded all of Israel for their domain. Among themselves, they’re unabashed about the demand. When they speak to the wider world, they speak only of “the right of return.” The Israelis know better.

Ease of Palestinian access to Israel has correlated precisely with the frequency of terrorist acts. As the fence has been extended and manned, those acts have diminished in proportion. The Muslim-dominated United Nations General Assembly voted 150-6 to condemn the fence precisely because it was making it harder for the Palestinians to spill Israeli blood.

Many approaches have been tried. Israel has frequently shown incredible generosity and willingness to be flexible. Only partition has worked. Therefore, partition it will be.

Regardless of anyone’s stance on the morality of the original, UN-approved partition of the British Mandate into Israel and Jordan, it’s an accomplished fact. Absent the meddlings of its Muslim neighbors, Israel might have forged an accommodation with the Palestinians long ago. But here we stand, unable to undo the past and equally unable to pacify the inherently belligerent and bloodthirsty. The alternatives are partition or genocidal war. Israel has made her choice, and the Palestinians can only accept it. Once the fence is complete and fully manned from end to end, they’ll either learn to live in peace, or they’ll drown in their own blood.

The border between what will be Palestine and what’s already Jordan is as yet unfortified. The Jordanians are resolved not to allow Palestinian immigration into their lands. What are the odds that Palestine’s eastern border will soon be fenced as well?

Unpleasant Thoughts

There aren’t many things short of outright murder that are quite as horrifying as female genital mutilation. Historian and geopolitical analyst Jamie Glazov reminds us that this is an ongoing nightmare, inescapable by many thousands of young girls born into Muslim households. The supposed authorities of Europe, in service to the official leftist / cultural relativist / moral relativist ideology, have willfully failed to act against it.

There are an estimated six million Muslims in these United States, the majority of whom come from the Middle East. How many babies born to Muslim families in America will have their genitals mutilated, their adult lives shorn of all sexual pleasure and in many cases filled with unending pain, for the execrable crime of having been born female?

---

HAMAS, the world’s second most notorious terrorist organization, has announced that it will boycott the upcoming Palestinian elections.

GAZA (Reuters) - The Palestinian Islamic militant faction Hamas will boycott a Jan. 9 presidential election for a successor to Yasser Arafat (news - web sites), a senior Hamas leader said on Wednesday.

“We in the Islamic resistance announce our boycott and our non-participation in the presidential elections for the Palestinian Authority (news - web sites),” Ismail Haniyeh, a senior Hamas leader, told reporters in Gaza City.

“All Hamas members will abide by the decision to boycott the elections. The Palestinian people understand the need and are well aware of the Hamas position but there is no call for ordinary Palestinians not to vote,” he said.

Please note: “the Islamic resistance.” Make a point of showing this piece to anyone who maintains that the Palestinian terror war against Israel has nothing to do with religion.

Your Curmudgeon finds himself wondering whether HAMAS will be staging any gentle little “demonstrations” against polling places on January 9. You know, the sort that employs automatic rifles and high explosives.

---

In a world that often seems filled to the brim with loathesomeness, Princeton University “ethics professor” Peter Singer stands apart. No, not as a counterweight; as an indicator of how much further into vileness we could yet descend.

Singer first came to prominence with the rise of the animal rights movement. His book Animal Liberation is widely regarded as the seminal tract in that line. In it, he takes a utilitarian approach to the entire question of rights, and concludes unabashedly that there is no way to differentiate Man from the lower species in a moral or ethical sense. Not long thereafter, he proclaimed himself an “ethicist,” and was elevated to his current stature at Princeton. From that chair, he’s issued a number of opinions on moral controversies, some of the choicest of which are:

• That bestiality and necrophilia are morally acceptable;
• That mothers should have an unrestricted right to kill their newborn babies for at least a month after birth;
• That there’s nothing morally objectionable about conceiving and giving birth to a child specifically to carve him up for transplant organs;
• That executing one-year-olds with physical or mental disabilities would be acceptable, though this would be “preferable” if done at birth.

Marvin Olasky has posted an incisive column on Singer at TownHall. In it, he notes that both the New York Times and the New Yorker consider Singer the most influential philosopher of our time. Please read it.

Wednesday, December 01, 2004

Routine Indignities

One of the most reliable and frequently practiced methods for reducing a people to subjugation is the infliction of pointless, humiliating rituals on the grounds of “policy”:

Personally, I have sworn off flying for the indefinite future because quite frankly, I don’t like being treated like a criminal. The last time I flew was a return flight from Okinawa Japan after having lived there for 3 years while my husband was stationed there as an active duty Marine. We were in Okinawa when 9-11 happened. We were not in the U.S. when all of the changes in airport security took place. We knew things would be different, but nothing prepared us for the eery feeling of what we encountered when re-entering this country.

We had travelled through 3 airports in Japan, our first stop in the U.S. was at the airport in San Francisco, I don’t remember what the name of it was, I was too tired and mentally exhausted from travelling. In S.F. we were to get another flight to San Diego, which we did. After a short layover there, we had to go through the security check point to board our next flight. Standing in line to go through security we observed security people yelling and acting overwhelmingly annoyed with people in general. I saw them yell at an old man for having a pocket knife, this guy was probably a WWII vet for all I knew.

We were asked to step aside for the treatment, that’s the additional checking where they have you stand like a criminal being frisked, and run that wand thing across your body. We cleared that (duh) and got our flight to San Diego.

[...snip...]

Next stop S.D. airport, same rude nasty treatment from “security” this time the line was much longer, and again we were selected for the treatment because of course, We Look Like ****ing Terrorists. This time the search was more “in depth” we were coralled off into this area with these cold looking metal chairs sitting at this cold looking table, and I swear there were special lights aimed at the chairs like police would use when interrogating a suspect. Well my husband and I were selected for this special treatment but our daughter was not, so she was wandering aimlessly around because these ASSHOLES would not let her be in the same area with us. Just ****ing peachy.

I saw my husband glance my direction nervously, he later told me he was afraid I was going to flip out on these people, the thought had crossed my mind. They insisted on running the wand over my bare feet, I suppose to insure that Freddy claws would not mysteriously shoot out from under my painted toes. Idiots. If I did not want to get home so bad after 3 long years away from our family and friends, I swear I would have told them to FOAD. [From Heather at Lil Cup Of Love. Bowdlerizations by FWP.]

Why is this necessary? Why haven’t Americans and select non-Americans been offered the option of applying for a Trusted Traveler Card—a card that would exempt the applicant from security screening if, upon the completion of a thorough investigation, the TSA finds no threat indicators in the applicant’s background or behavior?

John Magaw, the odious former TSA chief fired in 2003, told Congress it was because the TSA could never reliably determine who could be trusted. This same man was complicit in writing the policy that fines an airline for putting more than two Middle Easterners scheduled for a given flight into secondary questioning. Magaw was also dead set against arming pilots, on the grounds that possession of a gun might somehow distract a pilot from proper attention to the aircraft.

Quite a lot of people are taking Heather’s tack and refusing to fly. Obviously, this imposes limits on one’s travels. But the alternative is enduring humiliations comparable to those described above, at the hands of government herders who are effectively immune from criticism or correction. Your Curmudgeon, not a sheep, thinks this too distasteful to contemplate. For the foreseeable future, if he needs to get somewhere, he’ll drive.

Yet there are people out there who think the government should be given total control of health care. It is to laugh.

Hard Cases

What on Earth can a pro-life Curmudgeon say to this:

AMSTERDAM, Netherlands — A hospital in the Netherlands (search) — the first nation to permit euthanasia — recently proposed guidelines for mercy killings of terminally ill newborns, and then made a startling revelation: It has already begun carrying out such procedures, which include administering a lethal dose of sedatives.

The announcement by the Groningen Academic Hospital (search) came amid a growing discussion in Holland on whether to legalize euthanasia on people incapable of deciding for themselves whether they want to end their lives — a prospect viewed with horror by euthanasia opponents and as a natural evolution by advocates.

In August, the main Dutch doctors’ association KNMG urged the Health Ministry to create an independent board to review euthanasia (search) cases for terminally ill people “with no free will,” including children, the severely mentally retarded and people left in an irreversible coma after an accident.

When euthanasia is “merely” a physician-assisted suicide by a man of sound mind, it’s horrifying enough. For your Curmudgeon, who cherishes life and is incapable of comprehending any other mindset, it was supremely difficult to force himself, gritting his teeth the whole way, to admit that there is no conceivable warrant by which any third party could justify intruding forcibly into so intimate and difficult a decision. (The hazards of the thing, of course, must not be discounted, as it’s altogether too easy for a white-coated authority figure to bully a sick man into a decision against his interests. For reasons beyond the scope of this rant, your Curmudgeon knows that all too well.)

But to euthanize “people with no free will”...!

Who will speak for them, other than those white-coated authority figures, whose interest in extending their own authority to the walls of the Universe can hardly be doubted? They are the keepers of all the relevant records, the oracles from whose emissions the medically un-knowledgeable must make their decisions. With those advantages, they can maneuver a layman into any decision they deem appropriate—and please, no carping about how a doctor would never do such a thing. Persons gravitate toward their trades in part on the basis of their psychic compensations, and one of the most significant of the ones that pertain to medicine is precisely that mantle of authority, against which non-physicians are so reluctant to argue.

The idea of legalizing the medical execution—there’s no point in mincing words—of “people with no free will,” at the discretion of their attending physicians and a supposedly independent panel of other physicians, should be shot down at once. If the Dutch fail to do it, expect the idea to be proposed here in the immediate future, just as the idea of physician-assisted suicide was imported here from Holland.

And yet there are surely some very hard cases. Michael Williams cites one:

Imagine…
...a child with painful wounds similar to burns covering most of his or her body.
...having to wrap each tiny little infant finger with Vaseline gauze and then cover it with gauze to prevent the hand from webbing and contracting.
...never being able to hold your child tight because if you did, their skin would blister or shear off.
...a child who will never know what it’s like to run, skip or jump, or to play games with other children because even the slightest physical contact will injure his or her skin.
...a child who screams out each time it is bathed because the water touching its open wounds creates incredible pain.
...a diet of only liquids or soft foods because blistering and scarring occur in the esophagus.
...an active baby with his knees soaked in blood from the normal act of crawling.
...a teenager with stumps for hands, the affected fingers long gone.
This is the nightmare of life with Epidermolysis Bullosa (EB)

As Michael puts it:

In other cases, babies simply can’t survive without life support, and even with it they won’t live very long. So do we have a moral duty to spend thousands of dollars to extend the life of a doomed baby from one month to three months? Thousands of dollars that could be spent treating other patients with curable maladies? I don’t know. Is it worth the health risk for a mother to carry and deliver such a baby even when his or her condition is known far in advance?

Even thinking about the problem makes me ill, and I pray that I’m never faced with such a decision. However, as with battlefield mercy killings and adult euthansia, I don’t think the solution is as simple as “never under any circumstances”.

To pray is about all one can do. Nor would a good man, even the best of men, utterly reject the idea of a mercy killing under such terrible conditions. To which your Curmudgeon must say: if Man can recognize a hard case, insusceptible to incorporation in any sweeping legal rationale, then surely God can as well. But remember that “hard cases make bad law.” It would be lunacy—malevolent lunacy—to premise a law allowing doctors to make such decisions on a handful of hard cases. Far better that the practice remain formally illegal under all circumstances, and trust juries to recognize and allow the exceptions as they arise.

The Juggernaut Is Moving

They said it couldn’t be done. They said it would never be considered seriously. They were wrong:

WASHINGTON — While Republican leaders of the House and Senate are huddling for the next two days in Norfolk, Va., to chart the agenda for the upcoming Congress, White House officials meeting with them on tax reform are likely to debate the idea of a national sales tax (search).

President Bush and House Speaker Dennis Hastert (search) have both said the idea of a national sales tax deserves a serious look. For many, the idea of a world without the Internal Revenue Service is very seductive.

“We spend about $400 billion a year complying with the tax code. We spend $200 billion a year just filling out IRS paperwork,” said Rep. John Linder (search) , R-Ga., who has proposed a bill that would create a national sales tax.

It will take a massive exertion of effort, buttressed by the greatest marshaling of political will since the New Deal, to end the income tax and abolish the IRS, against the concerted defenses of its beneficiary communities and its backers on the redistributionist Left. But there are few issues in our political discourse that deserve that effort more. The replacement of the income tax with a retail sales tax would put the finances of the federal government in the hands of the citizenry. It would end a huge source of corruption. It would delegitimize the Number One violator of the Constitutionally guaranteed rights not to bear witness against oneself, and to be secure in one’s papers, possessions, and effects. It would end the sole exemption from the innocent-until-proven-guilty rule. It would encourage a great part of the underground economy to come up and enjoy the sunshine.

Let’s get behind it and push!

Tuesday, November 30, 2004

A Gem From Jonah

National Review Online’s Jonah Goldberg has his little ways, but he also has a rare gift of penetration into the psychological currents that underlie politics in these United States. His column of today is a fine example of his insight. It deserves to be read widely and pondered hard. Have a quick nibble:

In 1996 Clinton ran on such issues as the V-Chip, seatbelts on school buses, school uniforms, “saving” Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, and the environment (who can forget that mantra?), food safety, and his boasts to have expanded the death penalty (he did but in ludicrously tiny ways). He was, critics charged, running for mayor of America. Other factors aided his victory — Dole’s candidacy, Clinton’s gift for making a victim out of himself, his signing of the welfare-reform law — but at the end of the day Clinton won because he was able to tap into small symbols of disorder and translate them into promises of a restored order.

Indeed, one of the reasons Gingrich was such a useful foil for Clinton is the inherent contradiction within the conservative movement. Conservatives are the chief defenders of a capitalist, free-market system, and the capitalist, free-market system is perhaps the most profoundly unconservative social force in human history. Markets topple established customs, they raze settled communities and erase whole ways of life. Conservatives defend this system not out of greed, but out of principle. Freedom without economic freedom is a farce. And economic security provided by government planners has, historically, been the security of guaranteed impoverishment. But that doesn’t negate the fact that as much as I like libertarian economic policies, they can be a real handicap at the polls. Nearly 80 years of bribing the public with entitlements has made the idea of yanking entitlements a politically risky proposition.

Please read the whole thing.