Why We Need Health Care (Part II)

In the last post I attempted to define at a very fundamental level why liberals believe that the wealthy are to blame for the plight of poor people in America. I realize now that I made a basic mistake and did not define the terms I was using. When I speak of poor, I mean people who have difficulty paying for or maintaining many of the luxuries that are common place in America and when I speak of the wealthy, I mean those who make or have accumulated more than the average American family.

In this post I will look at why liberals look to the government as the solution of the problem. We identified their assumption that the reason for an excess of wealth in one area is a lack of it in another. They believe that there is a finite amount of wealth, which means those who have more than average have stolen it from those who have less.

Having determined that there is theft going on, (from one income bracket to another) the liberal then looks to see who or what has the power to remedy the situation. The most obvious candidate is government, it has the power to compel people to do its bidding, and the wealthy will not surrender the amount of income required of him willingly.

 Thus, the liberal sees government as the best force with the right to equalize the wealth of a nation, because the nation is not capable of doing it itself. When big business steals from the poor or otherwise takes advantage of them, the poor have no one to turn to except government. Thus the government become the ultimate charity, collecting from the wealthy to care for the poor. The collections take the form of taxes, and the government uses those taxes to pay for doctors, food stamps, medication, etc. In this way, the wealthy CEO of Walmart pays a portion of his earnings back into the system, allowing it to be used to help and provide for people in the lower income brackets he makes his money off of.

This is why people like Marx or Hitler look to some form of populist government and force to achieve what they see as social justice. Because people with wealth have been shaped by the capitalistic culture that surrounds them, they are motivated by greed and self interest and thus are more concerned about themselves than the community and must be forced to share and take care of the community.

Government becomes the ultimate parent, making sure the children share and get along while also providing just what every child needs.

Why We Need Health Care (Part I)

In the hopes of contributing something to the debate over the direction our country should take in regards to Health Care and welfare programs in general I will be taking a few posts to attempt to discuss the assumptions and reasoning that underlie the belief in welfare in general. 
We begin with a basic problem, there is a vast disparity in wealth among Americans. While some have golden toilets, others have difficulty paying for their plumbing from month to month. While some charter private jets to fly from city to city, others cannot afford a car to drive to work. A portion of our society cannot afford the basics of life in modern America. This raises two questions.

1. Why are people deprived or lacking in basic necessities and comforts?
2. How do we go about fixing the problem.

The first question is perhaps most important but is often overlooked so we can talk about fixing the problem. Before we can determine a solution to the problem we first need to identify the cause. This points us toward one of the bottom level beliefs of liberalism that is so fundamental that it is rarely brought to the surface.

Man is basically good and is shaped by his environment. Thus when educated he can be enlightened and improved, but if left in poverty or surrounded by corruption then he will be almost unable to avoid damaging influence they will exert. 

Thus, an individual in poverty must be rescued from that state. He is nearly  powerless to remove himself from his environment because the environment itself is what shapes and motivates him. Thus, his existence in poverty cannot be his own fault. 

If it is not his own fault, then we must look around for what is creating the environment that is keeping people in poverty. The liberal usually falls back on the great socialist thinkers, the foremost of whom was Karl Marx,   and identifies Capitalism as the culprit. Capitalism is, fundamentally built on gaining wealth for oneself. The vast amounts of money that corporations and companies make must come from somewhere, and often that money comes from the private sector. For  example, take Wal-Mart. The company has built itself around selling base level goods at base level prices, and the majority of their income comes from low income people (like me!) who are unable or unwilling to pay more at other stores. Thus, when Walmart makes a billion dollars, that is a billion dollars that came from lower income families who cannot pay for medical or dental bills, for a car, or for insurance. And, to make it worse, when the CEO receives a 100,000 dollar bonus, that is a hundred thousand dollars in his bank account that came from people who make less than that in four years.

Thus, the culprit seems obvious, there is a lack of money in one area (the low income bracket), an abundance of wealth in another area (the CEO's bank account) and a clear path as to how the money got from one place to the other. The CEO is caught red handed.

Now that we know who caused the problem, we'll look at how to fix it next. 

Health Care

I've been talking to a lot of people about the Supreme Court's Health Care ruling and thinking carefully in an effort to keep my foot out of my mouth in this post. There are a couple of things that I think might help people in thinking about this issue that have flown under the radar.

1. Whoever has the gold, makes the rules. We laugh about it, but it is true, the people who pay for something decide how to handle it, and since FDR's New Deal we have relied more and more on the government to take care of our social issues. When the government is responsible for all those things and we demand that the government pay for our education, our doctors, our medicine, and our house, and sometimes our food, then we should not be surprised when they tell us that we have to buy health insurance. I don't think they should make us buy health insurance, but I also don't think the government should pay for everything else either.
2. The Supreme Court is not meant to bite the bullet and clean up the mess that our representatives make. We can rail on Chief Justice Roberts all we want but it was the representatives we elected who did not stop the Health Care bill, and that is what we pay them to do. The Supreme Court is already a highly politicized institution, anyone who watched the confirmation hearings for Justices Roberts, Alito, or Kagan remember how nasty they were. A lot of that was based around their opinions on Roe v. Wade, which supercharged the court and has become a litmus test for appointments on both sides. Also, it might help to remember the court packing plan of FDR. The Supreme Court blocked much of what FDR proposed, and in response,  the president planned to rearrange much of the Judicial branch to remove the opposition to his proposals and announced it to the nation in one of his fireside chats. This was avoided when several Justices retired or switched positions on the Supreme Court and thus made it unnecessary, but the threat was very real, and it is possible that Chief Justice Roberts was afraid of beginning a war with the executive or legislative branches that could severely hurt the Court and the nation. 
3. If you don't like what congress is doing, then do your job. It is our duty as citizens to make informed decisions on election day. Election day is coming up, get informed. its that simple. 

The main point I'm trying to make here is that what happens in the hallowed halls of our government is a direct reflection of the society that puts people there. There will always be people willing to tell us what to do if we let them, and if we demand that they be our parents, they will eventually treat us like children. Personal responsibility, diligence, and loyalty to those around us will go a lot farther toward fixing our country than voting for libertarian candidates. A representative democracy places most of the power with the people on the assumption that they will hold onto it and use it responsibly, and as long as the people do then the system works less poorly than any other. Once the people give up responsibility, the government has to exercise it for them, and we start on the long road to oligarchy or anarchy.
A friend of mine, William Schwennson wrote an excellent article on the recent EU summit and the Supreme Court ruling. He has read the 193 page Supreme Court opinion and has some good insights into what it means. You can find it here.
On a final note, please keep the family of Lt. Col. Roy Lin Tisdale in your prayers. He left a wife and several children including a young son. However bad things seem to be going for us, it helps to remember "At least we aren't being shot at".
Semper Fi.

Learning

I was looking through some of my posts below, and besides the long period of time that has passed since I wrote anything, I noticed something else. I focused a lot on politics, some of which was important, some of which wasn't. Some of what I wrote I still agree with, some of it I wish I could erase, such as the Perry article.
When I went into my freshman year of College, I thought a lot of things that appear silly now. I have learned a lot from the last few years, and one of them is that the government will not fix our problems. It matters very little whether Ron Paul, Mitt Romney, or President Obama is in the White House, and it matters less who controls congress. What matters is us.
For those of us who are Christians, we are called to live out the commands of Christ, to let his light shine through us. We will produce far deeper and more lasting good on this world if we simply shine the light of God onto the people around us. If we consistently love one another as Christ loved us we will have an impact that the social conservatives have only imagined.
Look at a few of the big social issues the Church is concerned with: abortion, marriage, and welfare. If every christian young man lived responsibly, kept his word, honored the women around him as Paul commanded, and was generous to help the people he knew, those three issues would shrink overnight. The Church needs to clean its own house before it can send people out to clean up the culture.
I am far from perfect, as my buddies in the Corps can tell you, and I have failed many times to uphold the commands of Christ in everyday life. When we are faced with failure in our immediate lives, it is easier to blame the fall of society on Congress or on the courts, as I well know. As Christ said, we must remove the log from our own eye before we can remove the spec from our brother's.

Iranian Mess

This week Wiley Lecture Series, a student organization in the Texas A&M Memorial Student Center, hosted its symposium entitled 'Iranian Hazard' with Dr. Paul Barretto, a consultant on international nuclear projects (his corner on NSSPI can be found here), and Richard Stoll, Professor of Political Science at Rice University. The problem with Iran, as they pointed out, is that America and Iran have had bad relations for many years, since we helped over throw a democratically elected government and instituted a more friendly dictator in his place. Now, their nuclear program is continuing to ramp up as they continue to acquire nuclear technology that is military specific and has no use outside of nuclear weapons and they increase the number of nuclear facilities they admit to be building.

A lot of people suggest a simple preemptive strike composed of numerous precision air strikes to take out Iran's nuclear facilities, but Iran has so far not crossed the red line of actually beginning to assemble a nuke, though they continue to work close to the line. A plethora of air strikes is not the simple easy solution that it might appear. First, it would require numerous, simultaneous strikes throughout Iran which could stretch our operational capabilities in the region. Second, We do not have the Intel we need to make the kind of precision strikes necessary. Iran's facilities are spread all over the nation and we do not even know exactly where many of them are. Third, our bunker buster bombs are beginning to be obsoleted by the bunker building capabilities of established nations and there is a considerable chance that even a direct hit on an Iranian nuclear bunker could fail to completely destroy it. Fourth, and most importantly, it is a temporary solution.We and the Israelis have knocked out nuclear facilities before, and though they delay development of the nuclear program, they do not take it off the table.

If we want to keep Iran from developing nukes, we need to remove their motivation to do so, which would make an interesting discussion in defining.

Something that surprised me Wednesday evening was the lack of power that the president of Iran holds. Iran is ruled by a smorgasbord of high elder councils, religious boards, clerics, etc., with the president being somewhere south of tenth on the political power rankings of Iran. Iran's military is also made up of two different pieces, the regular army, and the Revolutionary Guard Corps, the fanatics of the military. The military threat is not necessarily that Ahmadinejad will send Iranian forces in, but rather that one of the radical elements in one of the councils or a cleric will provide the little push the Revolutionary Guard needs to start some kind of conflict. Then, whatever the Iranian people think of their government, they will be very anti U.S., worse even than Iraq was.
As is usually the case, the situation is a lot more complicated than it would appear at first glance and will take time and energy to solve, and more than a little sacrifice on everyone's part.

Politics: Ready, Set...Lie

So the Presidential Campaigns are revving up and getting in full swing and I saw this article on Perry on Fox's website. In the article Perry is accused and criticized for: Violent remarks toward Bernanke, working for Al Gore and not being honest about it, and wanting to lead a Texas secession.

1. The Bernanke Comments

In the Article:" Exhibit A. On the same day he filed his candidacy papers, Perry was captured on camera suggesting Texans might want to rough up Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke if he tries to tackle the economic slump by printing more money.

"If this guy prints more money between now and the election, I don't know what y'all would do to him in Iowa, but we would treat him pretty ugly down in Texas," Perry said in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. "I mean, printing more money to play politics at this particular time in American history is almost ... treasonous in my opinion." "

In Reality: Fair enough, Perry probably shouldn't have said it, but keep in mind that democrats have been vilifying tea-party republicans (who proposed Cut-Cap-and-Balance, the ONLY plan proposed by congress that S&P admitted would have prevented the downgrade, and also the ONLY plan the president and democratic leaders refused to discuss) as 'terrorists' and 'hostage takers'. So fair enough, Perry should refrain from suggesting physical violence, but nothing out of the ordinary.

2. Working for Al Gore's Campaign

In the Article:"Already, he was questioned Monday about his post as Al Gore's Texas campaign chairman during Gore's unsuccessful 1988 bid for president. Perry claimed these were the days before Gore was "Mr. Global Warming," but Politico.com noted that Gore was talking about global warming before his 1988 bid. "

In Reality: Read the above. 'Perry claimed these were the days before Gore was "Mr. Global Warming"'. So what if Gore mentioned Global Warming a few times. He didn't go off the deep end until after Bush beat him in the 2000 elections. Perry is right, Politico.com is being stupid.

3. Secession

In the Article: "Gibbs questioned how the governor who famously suggested a Texas secession from the U.S. is now seeking to lead the entire nation.

"Just two years ago, the governor of Texas openly talked about leading Texas out of the United States of America -- and now this campaign has caused him to profess his love for the United States. I think it's a remarkable turnaround," Gibbs said."

In Reality: To be fair to Fox, most of this comes from Gibbs, though they failed to contradict the blatant lie Gibbs told. Perry never said he would lead Texas in Secession. What he said was that if England continued ignoring what the colonies want then there might be problems...sorry, got mixed up there. He said that if Washington 'continues to thumb their noses at the american people, who knows what may come of it.' Thumbing noses may refer to pushing the healthcare bill through in secret sessions, confiscating copies of the proposed bill from voters wanting to speak with their congress men, denying voters access to their congressmen, lying about what was in the bill, etc, all of which was being done by the political establishment in Washington when Perry made the above remarks. If Perry was in any way wrong, then we might as well throw out the Declaration of Independence. Mr. Gibbs is wrong in that Perry didn't talk about leading any kind of Secession (he indicated that if anything happened it would be ordinary people fed up with Washington, not politicians), and that it wasn't Texas Seceding, it was American citizens from every state.

My point basically is not that Perry is perfect, he's not. He is, in my opinion, the best man for the job right now, and the next year is going to see a lot of people making volcanic mountains out of collapsing mole hills. The collapse of any kind of journalistic code of honor means that Americans need to develop discernment in their reading and the diligence necessary to actually do research on who they are voting for. The only thing that kills Democracies faster than a nonvoter is an uneducated and selfish voter.

A Republic, A Tyranny

As I have mentioned before, the root problem with the debates going on in Congress focus around how much the federal government will control the nation. The question that is being ignored is who will run the federal government.

In the Republic, Plato sets out what he thinks would be a perfect state and in so doing sets forth two propositions which are wonderful on the surface, but flawed underneath. The first is the foundation of the Republic's boundaries upon the people's need for beef, which pays no heed to the people's need for bacon; and the second is the running of the nation by a council of all powerful wise men, which pays no heed to the propensity of wise men to have particular area of foolishness.

The need for bacon being beyond argument, I will here deal with propensity of wise men to have particular areas of foolishness and further more the inability for a council of such men to run a country. Wise men, or rather those called wise men by the world, have the same difficulty in managing the details of a nation that general has in managing the details of a battle, both are esconsed so high above the fray over seeing the big picture that they have lost touch with what is really happening in each of the individual conflicts that put together make up the battle. The general has his plans and the wise man his theories, but neither has anything to do with particulars.

It is also important to note that a government such as Plato imagined it, an all powerful one filled with wise men, has another devastating draw back. Such governments tend to slowly be less filled with wise men without becoming less powerful, so that in the end they are all powerful governments filled with fools or madmen. Power does not corrupt so much as it produces stress, though the difference between the two for men with the moral framework of our current politicians is slight indeed. Plato makes an attempt at creating a system to perpetuate the rule of the wise, but he has nothing to perpetuate their wisdom. His solution, education, has just as much power to blind as it does to illuminate. Look at the rulers of Nazi Germany, most of the men who formed Hitler's government were geniuses with college degrees. And I don't think there are many who can claim to have the power to manipulate or shape not just a crowd but an entire nation as Dr. Joseph Goebbels.

Our current government no longer exists to 'promote the General Welfare'. Instead it exists to support itself, the first step in the direction of tyranny. I do not suspect the current members of our government to be working toward a dictatorship, I do not think that even most of them want a dictatorship. They are however moving in that direction by diverting portions of the government away from the public and toward itself. Vast amounts of money are spent each year from the national budget on keeping the present people in power. Whether this is creating programs that people want (but shouldn't have), jobs that could be done better in the private sector (or shouldn't be done at all), or government funds going to criminal organizations (like Planned Parenthood) it is in line with Plato's theoretical Republic, which is in itself a tyranny. The current politicians, having written exceptions for themselves into almost every law they pass and massive benefits for themselves into special laws for themselves, are content to play Plato's wise men on our nation, directing everything as they see fit, and making a rather colossal mess of the whole thing.

Our government was not set up to opporate like Plato's Republic, but instead was supposed to be a limited government run by good people. Now most of the good people are gone, replaced by greedy theorists, and the 'limited' part of our government is being reduced in every way possible.