Emotional Health Care

It’s disconcerting to me that in the world of Western civilization, so many of us still seem perfectly okay with acting like cavemen when it comes to important issues.

President Obama evokes the Bible and tells us that to be our brother’s (or in this case, our stranger’s) keeper, we need to pay for his health care.  Listen to Michael Moore ply universal health care: It’s all about our moral duty to help others.  I heard Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz asked to name one government program that functions well, and she named Medicare.  Medicare!  And why?  Because, she said, Medicare helps plenty of elderly people right now.

It sure does.  It also has the tiny side effect, along with Social Security and Medicaid, of leaving us with a debt obligation that we can’t meet – and it keeps getting larger. 

Her solution?  The solution every politician seems to be in favor of?  Make the debt larger!  After all, these are people we have to help.  Who cares about a little thing like whether we can afford it or not?

Let’s be clear: A rational adult uses both reason and emotion.  He or she does not, however, conflate the two.  He or she should no better than to make an emotional plea when the matter demands reason.  No matter how upset you are with the notion that women are worse at math than men, for example, it’s not going to change that notion.  Scream and pout and pass legislation and call the experiments sexist – it doesn’t matter.  Only the evidence will settle the matter, and evidence is discovered with reason, not feelings.

The evidence in the health care debate suggests that a government-run system will not solve the problem, that it will in fact make it worse.  The evidence says that we cannot afford it in any case.  The evidence says that entitlement promises made by our cowardly leaders in Washington (all of them, Democrat and Republican) have already left us with a growing deficit and debt we can’t possibly pay.

As rational adults, we have to learn to separate the emotional desire to see every American with good health care (an emotional desire I absolutely share) from the objective reality of the evidence.  Emotions aren’t going to magically produce an efficient Congress.  All the desire in the world isn’t going to make the government capable of running one-sixth of the economy.

Logical Public Education

Imagine we looked at the culture at large and found that people have a tendency to make common math errors.  Politicians can’t add two-digit numbers, news pundits don’t know their basic times tables, and even teachers and professors can’t understand negative numbers and fractions.  Let’s say that in polls, eight percent of Americans can’t perform the basic addition, subtraction, multiplication, and division.

The response to such a situation would be immediate and simple: The problem is obviously math education.  Let’s fix the math programs in public schools.  It would be imperative to fix such a problem.  After all, society probably couldn’ tfunction if the majority of adults were lacking basic math skills.

Now, what if the problem is thinking in general?  What if the problem is even deeper and more pervasive than a lack of basic math proficiency?  What if the problem is the method by which math – and every other subject learned in school – is understood?

We don’t teach logic in public schools.  We don’t teach our students how to think.  We rely on innate common sense (which is essentially the weaker and less precise little brother of logic) to see them through.  Smart kids today leave high school with a working knowledge of trigonometry and maybe a foreign language, but I would bet that hardly any of them can name a single logical fallacy.

The culture today is rife with logical fallacies.  Anyone who’s ever listened to a politician – any politician – answer questions is exposed to about for of them per answer.  Cable new is sickening, from the endless non-sequiturs of Sean Hannity to the inevitable tu quoque replies of Alan Colmes.  Logical fallacies are so prevalent that even the very notion of a logical fallacy has been undermined.  Practically every day I hear someone put “ad hominem” before the word “attack.”  The term “ad hominem” is not supposed to be interchangeable with a simple insult; the point is that one attacks the arguer instead of his or her argument.

Perhaps learning about formal logic isn’t going to save most people from using their emotions where they shouldn’t, or from the omnipresent confirmation bias, but the se types of thinking errors are dangerous, especially when they’re habitually made by policy-makers, teachers, parents, and other people of influence.  At the very least, we should be arming young people with the tools needed to recognize and answer these common situations.  Before spelling, geography, biology, and all the rest, how about we first teach kids how to use their minds properly?

(Michael) Moore’s Law

Here’s my version of Moore’s Law:  Michael Moore’s reasoning power decreases by one-half for every film he makes.

It’s amusing to watch the movie trailers for Capitalism: A Love Affair and see Moore standing in front of AIG asking for the money back, to the background of MIA’s Paper Planes (why she agreed to have her very cool song muddied up by the likes of a Michael Moore movie is beyond me).  The message is that Wall Street fat cats (or better yet, rich people in general) get all kids of breaks from the federal government while the common man gets nothing but more bills.  Worse, these breaks from Uncle Sam are paid for with taxpayer dollars.  Moore will explain how Republicans look after their corporate interests while turning a blind eye to the plight of the working class, and viola, critics will hail it as a “damning indictment of unbridled capitalism” and ask provocative questions like, “Is capitalism dead?”

Sounds great, right?   Here’s the only problem: That’s NOT capitalism.

It’s certainly not “unbridled” capitalism, or “unregulated” capitalism or whatever the hell else the moron-stream media is calling it.  I’m sorry to inform Moore, but in a true capitalistic society, the state he so reviles, NO ONE would receive bailouts.  Guess what – there also wouldn’t be any problems with Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac, because there wouldn’t be any Fannie Mae or Freddie Mac.

There also wouldn’t be ridiculous pieces of legislation like the Community Reinvestment Act, because in a capitalistic society, the government doesn’t get involved in the economy, and it certainly doesn’t force or facilitate giving bank loans to people who can’t afford them.  Let’s see, without this little wrinkle, what would be missing?  That’s right, the housing bubble that led to the financial crisis in the first place!

I agree with Michael Moore a hundred percent in this case: AIG shouldn’t have received a bailout.  No company should have received a bailout.  Taxpayer money shouldn’t be spend on anything other than national defense, basic infrastructure, and a justice system.

I don’t know what Moore is arguing against.  I haven’t seen the movie (only because I’m unable to).  The only point I’m making is that whatever is happening in America today, whatever we call the economic system that has pissed so many people off, it’s NOT capitalism.  I might even go so far to say, if we did live in a true capitalistic society, people like Michael Moore would have nothing to complain about.

Single-Payer Nation, Part Two

When arguing against universal health care, I would say that the purpose of the government is to protect its citizens’ individual rights, defend their freedom, and establish objective laws that ensure equal opportunity for everyone.  That’s all.  Every citizen must provide for himself.  If you can’t provide for yourself, you must rely on the help of friends or charity.  You cannot (or should not be able to) demand the money of others through force (robbery) or legitimized force (government-sanctioned robbery, or taxation to fund entitlement programs).

People who disagree with me have responded with, “Health care ensures opportunity.  After all, people can’t work or provide for themselves if they’re sick.”

Of course, people also can’t work or provide for themselves if they don’t have food or water.  By this rationale, we should have universal food care and water care.  The utilities and water bills of everyone would have to be subsidized by the taxpayers.

The question is not: “What should the government provide to make sure every citizen has opportunity?”  If you as a question like that , if you tackle the issue from that premise, you’re bogged down with the inevitable conclusions that since everyone has a right to life, they have a right to food, water, housing, electricity, medication, dietary education, a personal trainer, ad infinitum.

No, the question to ask is: “What is the citizen capable of providing for himself?”  When you start with that premise, the discussion is about personal responsibility rather than entitlement.

Once you’ve answered that question (and the answer is invariably: everything), you can see to it that the citizen has no impediments to providing for himself other than personal choices.  If there are no impediments other than personal choices, then it logically follows that there are no excuses other than personal choices.  At this point, the decision of whether to spend taxpayer money becomes absurdly simple: If you made the wrong choices, you cannot (or should not be able to) expect or accept the money of those who made the right ones.

Moore vs. Hannity

I think it’s very instructive for everyone to watch two guys who have no idea how to make a rational point argue for a half-hour.  It’s a great lesson on what not to do if you want your positions to be based upon logic.

Granted, I don’t think Michael Moore and Sean Hannity are anything much more than entertainers, which translates to style (or an attempt at style) without substance.  Fine.  The two of them were intent on one-upping one another about who went to church, who is really their brother’s keeper, and who gives more money to charity.  All entertaining issues, to be sure, but they’re hardly going to solve an economic issue such as the state of capitalism in this country.

Moore was content to try to use religious guilt to make his point, as if we should look in the gospels to find instructions on how to run the economy.  How charitable the American people are has absolutely nothing to do with how or why the economy works.  What is Moore suggesting – that we turn a phrase Jesus uttered into a law of the land?  And what does wealth redistribution have to do with charity anyway?  Charity is voluntary.  Coerced compassion is not compassion.  I think Jesus would have been able to tell the difference.

When the two of them were talking about the economic crisis and the foreclosure of homes, Hannity pointed out that people bought houses they can’t afford.  Moore responded with a non sequitur; he chided Hannity for thinking that “poor people caused the credit and housing crisis.”  No, but that’s not what Hannity was saying.  He was saying that there have been so many foreclosures because people bought houses they couldn’t afford.  This is manifest.  If someone buys a big screen TV or a car they can’t afford, and later has to return it, no one bats an eye.  But because it’s a home, the emotional responses come out and people like Moore make millions off a movie exploiting heartfelt feelings.

Moore went so far to absolve people of responsibility even if they didn’t read their contract!  “Come on,” he said, “what poor person is going to read a big complicated contract?”  Give me a freaking break.  If you took out a loan and didn’t read the contract, you made an idiotic mistake.  You don’t get the blame the bank, and you definitely don’t get to demand other people’s tax dollars to bail you out.  This is called life.  Adults live with the bad decisions they make.

And as for Moore’s blanket claims that “most” of these people were swindled or lied to – where are they?  Can he provide any evidence for this other than a few anecdotal cases?  Don’t get me wrong: If a bank cheated or lied or reneged on a contract, then they’re criminals and should be prosecuted.  But where are they?

Not that Hannity was in any way competent in the debate.  Though I agree with his position, he still got his ass handed to him by Michael Moore – and it’s pretty bad if you can’t argue intelligently against Michael Moore.  There was one thing I agreed with Moore about: He said that he doesn’t hate capitalism, he only hates what it has become.

Close enough, I suppose – although I think the point is that it’s no longer capitalism when government-run firms control the housing and credit markets, go bankrupt, and receive taxpayer money so they stay afloat.  Moore is arguing against the antithesis of capitalism, the sworn enemy of the free market.  Hannity certainly didn’t seem to notice.

Child Zombies, Part Two

In the first part of this post I was complaining about schoolkids being led in a song praising our President Obama, and I made the comparison that people whine about the Pledge of Allegiance in schools, especially the phrase “under God.”  Yet in today’s culture, only a few conservative voices were protesting the mindless adulation of the new, charismatic president who hasn’t – as far as I can tell – done anything praiseworthy at all.

Nubispertusus pointed out that since Congress inserted “under God” in the Pledge as a clear allusion to the monotheistic god of the Christian-Judeo-Islamic tradition, they discluded alternatives such as a female deity or many deities, and thus established a national religion.

As an atheist, I’m still waiting for this “established religion” to take place.  As far as I can tell, we still live in a very secular society.  The closest I’ve seen to religious moral laws becoming the law of the land are the morons who want the Ten Commandments listed in courtrooms.  And while I consider this wrong and would fight it, I think it’s a far cry from a Christian theocracy governing America.

But nubispertusus made an interesting point that I hadn’t thought of: If the inclusion of “God” in the Pledge is supposed to be “ceremonial deism” as the Supreme Court has ruled, then Christians who defend it are taking God’s name in vain as well as bearing false witness to what they truly think about the phrase.  I like this, particularly as a thought experiment.  If I were still a Christian, I would agree with nubispertusus that I wouldn’t want God under those false pretenses.

In fact, this is similar to the point I’ve tried to make several times concerning “under God” in the Pledge, “In God We Trust” on currency, crosses on public ground, and so on.  To me, these are trivial battles to fight.  They seem to carry the stench of an atheistic belief system, of an atheistic goal to get Constitutional protections like a religion.  I wouldn’t want atheism under what I consider false pretenses.  As a friend of mine once said, atheism should be like Switzerland.  And it should absolutely stand on its own merits and not define itself as an opponent or even as an alternative to religion.

In my opinion, the best battles for atheists to fight are stopping creationism from being taught in public schools, combating organizations like the Discovery Institute that are trying to destroy all science, and promoting reason in the culture at large (especially in place of faith).  Pretending to be offended by the sight of a cross in a public cemetery isn’t going to accomplish any of that.

Limits on Executive Pay

Yesterday I saw both Neil Cavuto and Stephen Moore on the news talking about the new salary caps for Wall Street executives being proposed by Washington.  Ostensibly, these caps are only going to apply to firms that took (or were forced to take) government handouts.  The scary thing is the idea that any government-regulated company could be subject to these caps.  I don’t know if this is true; I hope not.

There’s a lot of talk about these companies taking taxpayer dollars and still giving out millions to CEOs, executives traveling in jets, expensive junkets to exotic locales, and so forth.  These companies took a handout from the government, so perhaps they should be accountable for how they spend the money – and perhaps the government should even dictate their policy for them.

I think this misses the point.  The point is that the government had no business and definitely no right giving them taxpayer dollars in the first place.  That’s the issue that needs to be addressed.  Ideally, this wouldn’t be a problem if these were private corporations doing what they want with their own money.  There would be no need for the government to regulate what private citizens do with their private property.

But unfortunately, this isn’t the case.  If anyone is asking the question about our president’s intentions concerning CEO pay, they should check out his book, The Audacity of Hope.  Not only did he bemoan the supposed injustice of the wage gap between CEOs and their workers, he gave a list of luxury items he didn’t think the wealthy needed to spend their money on.  He may as well have come out and said: “As president, I’m going to decide how much is too much when it comes to salaries in this country.”

This is clearly not about saving American taxpayer dollars for President Obama.  His cute little speech about how it’s the “height of irresponsibility” to spend taxpayer money on bonuses for Wall Street fat cats is patently bogus.  He resents the wage of any wealthy corporate executive, not just those who accepted a bailout, and it seems obvious that this resentment is what’s driving his policies.

True Racism in America, Part Two

In the first part of this post I made the argument that the two men who called Juan Williams a “happy negro” and told him to “get back to the porch” are racists.  Further, it’s my position that those comments are completely analogous to a white supremacist calling a white man a “nigger lover.”

Then prehistoric rocket science left a comment saying that “Williams is a sell-out, plain and simple.  What’s wrong with pointing that out?”

Indeed, what’s wrong with that?  Again I’ll use an analogy from prison.  A few weeks ago, a white guy a couple cells down from me moved into the cell with a black guy.  This is rare enough in my world to demand attention.  Inevitably, certain white guys began making comments.  “He’s a race-traitor, a nigger lover, a wigger, a bone, a sell-out.  He’s selling out his own race, living with a black guy.  After all, us whites have to stick together, we have to have racial solidarity.”

To use the logic of the person who left that comment, these white guys are just pointing out that he’s a sell-out.  What’s wrong with that?  Or is prehistoric rocket science saying that racist gangs and attitudes are okay – as long as they’re black?  And what exactly has Juan Williams “sold out,” by the way?  Name one example in which he has “sold out” anyone or anything.

Even if I accepted the notion that Juan Williams is a sell-out (which I do not), I would likely still applaud him.  Selling out a race, even your own, is a good thing if the value to which you’re selling out is worthwhile.  Race is meaningless.  Your ethnicity doesn’t give you any worth or automatically infer any accomplishments.  Racial solidarity is about surrendering your self-worth to a group.  It’s about spreading worth around so those who did nothing to earn it can have some of those who did.  I would hope that when the chips are down, we’d all dismiss the ethnicity of ourselves and others as meaningless and hold to a higher value (such as each individual’s character).

This morning on the news, the ticker read: “Congressional Hispanics Meet With Pres Obama on Health Care.”

Why?  Do Hispanics have some special medical need that every other American does not?  Do Hispanics require more attention than any other ethnicity?  What exactly does providing health care for people have to do with their ethnicity? 

We have to break out of this tribal mindset of racial solidarity and collectivism.  Being proud of your heritage is as meaningless as being proud of having curly hair, or being proud of the shape of your nose.

O’Reilly and Drug Addicts

When John Stossel was O’Reilly’s guest the other night, the conversation centered on medical marijuana and then the legalization of drugs in general.  Stossel told O’Reilly that all drugs should be legalized, pointing out that adults should be allowed to put whatever they want in their bodies.

O’Reilly’s objection was as follows.  There are deadbeat, drug-addicted parents out there, and their kids are suffering because of it.  If you legalize drugs, the parents will be able to obtain them more easily, and the kids will suffer more.  So, legalized drugs = bad for the kids.

First, I think O’Reilly and those like him (this argument has a very common theme) should define what it means to make drugs “easier” to obtain.  I could be wrong, but I think this is based on false premise.  Even illegal, drugs are extremely easy to obtain.  I’m incarcerated, and you can get them in here if you really want.  I doubt O’Reilly could cite one instance in which a free person out there could desire drugs and be unable to obtain them.

No, the only roadblock to obtaining drugs is the cost.  And legalizing them would certainly bring the cost down.  Perhaps this could indeed make it “easier” for drug-addict parents to get stoned all the time.  They’ll be able to afford more dope, so they’ll be stoned more often, and their kids will suffer more.

Then again, perhaps if the cost of their drug habit plunges from two hundred dollars a day to a cost comparable to a nicotine or alcohol habit, it won’t make things worse at all; it could make them better.  After all, plenty of parents drink and smoke and still provide adequate care for their kids.  Note that this is not an argument that because alcohol has negative effects and is nonetheless legal, harder drugs should be legal as well.  I don’t accept that argument and in fact find it absurd on its face.  The only thing I’m saying is that drinking and smoking don’t necessarily make a deadbeat parent, and perhaps the situation would be analogous if with legalized drugs.

That aside, what I contend is that the benefits of legalizing drugs outweigh any possible negative effects.  Practically no one asserts that these benefits wouldn’t occur – in fact most opponents of drug legalization (like O’Reilly) never even address the benefits (drastically reduced violence, fewer overdose deaths, the virtual end of drug gangs, billions of dollars freed up for other issues, etc.).  That’s the issue that needs to be discussed: The interplay between both the positive and negative effects of legalizing drugs.

Creationist Nonsense, Part Four

I’ve been accused of spending a great deal of time criticizing Christians and creationists, without actually disproving their position.

First, let me say that I don’t generally criticize Christians and creationists; I criticize their arguments.  I’ve never called a Christian stupid for believing in Jesus, but I have called certain reasons for believing in Jesus stupid.  Maybe that makes me a jerk, but if I ever justify my acceptance of evolution (for example) by saying, “It’s true because I have faith that it’s true,” please feel free to call that a stupid reason.

Second, I can’t prove that God doesn’t exist.  I’ve never tried to do so, and I never will.  You can’t prove a negative.  You can never know something like that for certain.  But this does not mean that there’s any evidence for God.  We also can’t prove that the tooth fairy doesn’t exist – does anyone out there think this makes a case that she’s real?

Finally I don’t really feel the need to try to disprove the creationist position.  Why should I?  What evidence has it presented to be addressed?  Anyone can make a supernatural claim and say, “Bet you can’t prove this wrong, and until you can, it’s real.”

The burden of evidence lies on those of you out there asserting something supernatural.  You have to make your case; you can’t rest on the incomplete knowledge of someone else and hope to win by default.

I think creationists and/or Christians should go back to the beginning.  Make the case that your argument has some merit.  Show some evidence other than your personal opinion about how you believe the universe must work.  Stop thinking you hold some vaunted, hallowed position.  How does your creation story have any more validity than the Chinese egg story, or the infinite turtle story?  What makes those merely opinions, and yours a substantive theory?  Until you can argue that, you’re simply another mystic pushing a wispy – albeit popular – opinion about ghosts and magic.