Why the emphasis on “the dark side”?

Someone asked me yesterday why I keep referencing the fact that I was a liberal and now I’m not.

Why, she asked, do you need to keep repeating that?  Why continually talk about going over to “the dark side”?

I thought about it.  Why DO I keep referencing my former days as a liberal?  Why not just state what I think NOW, and why, and leave it at that?

I muddled over it and came up with a few explanations:

1) Desire to define myself in opposition. Mike habitually rejects labels like Republican, conservative etc.; he’s more likely to look at the crazier liberal/Democrat initiatives or politicians and say, “Well, I know I’m not THAT.”  Perhaps I’m doing the same.

2) Desire to assure readers that “some of my best friends are liberals.” Only instead of “some of my best friends,” it’s “I was a liberal.”  One of the more common complaints for conservatives/Republicans/anti-statists is that liberals don’t just think we’re wrong, they think we’re evil. Since I held very different views in the past than I hold now, how I can I think that folks who currently hold my prior views are evil?  I don’t, anymore than I was evil for holding those views.  Which leads into. . .

3) Desire to assure readers that I don’t take things too seriously. I have some readers who stop by just for the kitty pix, and who think that all the stuff I write about politics and guns is flat-out wrong, if not plain crazy.  I’m okay with that.  I use the tongue-in-cheek references about going over to the dark side to wryly acknowledge that some folks think I’m nuts.  And who knows?  I might be.  *grin*

4) Desire to make it easier for disagreeing folks to dismiss me. This would be an unhappy tendency, but I think it does exist.  I don’t go seeking out conflict in my real life; the opinions I state in plain black and white here I wouldn’t say out loud in most common gatherings.  When I do end up in political discussions, I usually end up saying to the effect of, ‘Well, I feel differently, I think XYZ, but that’s just me (shrug).”  I have friends who disagree entirely with an anti-statist/conservative/whatever-you-call-it viewpoint, and I don’t want politics to interrupt our friendship; I’d rather laughingly call myself an “evil conservative” and brush it off, then get into a serious discussion of why I think what I do.  (Is this the coward’s way out?  Do I not want to make them uncomfortable, or am I afraid that I couldn’t effectively argue my views?  Hmmm.)

So . . . . I think all the reasons stated above hold true to some extent.  Would my writing be more effective if I left out the “I used to think X” part and just stated “I think Z and here’s why”?

I’d give you a definitive answer, but, well, only half a mug of coffee’s gone down my gullet.  Takes more than that to get a definitive answer from an evil conservative   BWAHAHAHA!!!!!

Thoughts on “hate crimes”

“Hate crimes” –  yet another area where I’ve changed my opinion as a result of migration to The Dark Side.

Ten years ago I was in favor of hate crime legislation.  My young, dewy-eyed self earnestly wished to protect “victimized” groups such as gays, bisexuals, people of color, etc.  I thought that members of such a group were endangered simply by who they were, and therefore deserved an extra measure of protection from a society that had failed them.

As you can tell, I see things differently now.  I think that hate crimes legislation creates favored groups, the members of which are placed above the ordinary members of society.  Why is it worse to sucker-punch a black man than to sucker-punch a white man?  Why is it more evil to rape a lesbian than a heterosexual woman?

Why is more evil to beat up a fat woman than to beat up a skinny woman?

Tell me how, exactly, the victim was “discriminated against” for being fat.  Some poor excuse for a woman beat up Marsha Coupe while screaming “Fattie.”  True, I didn’t see that the perp was arrested and charged, but do you really think that has anything to do with Ms. Coupe’s size?  Or do you think there’s a rampant culture of thuggery in which bullies do not get punished?  (Or at least, they rarely get punished, and then whine about it.)

Furthermore, how does one tell if the perpetrator did so with “hate” in his/her heart, foremost?  What if she did it out of rage?  Out of depression?  Out of greed, or lust?  Out of laziness in selecting what looked like an easy victim?  Would it be less of a crime if the perp screamed “Gimme your wallet!” while beating Ms. Coupe?

True, we do try to divine intent when a crime is committed, but that is to differentiate between accidental and non-accidental incidents.  A woman who accidentally hits her neighbor with a car is very different from a woman who has studied the neighbor’s habits, has a schedule of his entry and exit from work, and who trailed him for three blocks before making contact.

So there are my thoughts on my subject.  It boils down to this:

Why is my life and person less worthy of protection than someone with darker skin or a different sexual orientation?

(Breda had similar thoughts)

Responsibility

I’ve been struggling lately with the idea of Responsibility.

When people are not held responsible for their actions, it leads to their taking more irresponsible actions.  Whether it’s moral hazard (folks with insurance behaving more recklessly than those who have none) or simply being Too Big To Fail, allowing people to escape the inevitable rules of Action-Consequence subsidizes the feckless at the expense of the cautious.

So, great, adults should be held accountable for what they do and don’t do, and a safety net should not turn into a safety blanket.  Simple enough.

But what about their kids?

Children don’t have control over their situation nor the actions of their parents.  Is it fair to let children go hungry or without adequate medical care because their parents are too irresponsible to care for them?

On the other hand — is it fair to rob Peter to pay for Paul’s kids, especially when Peter *was* responsible enough to care for his offspring?  If it’s taking money from Peter that he intended for his kids’ college educations, his grandchild’s baptism, whatever?

One of the inescapable rules of economics is that if you subsidize something, you will get more of it.

How do you provide a lifeline for a family like Paul’s without encouraging more parents to behave like Paul?  How do you provide care for children who deserve it — having done nothing wrong themselves except be born to *ssh*les, which is hardly their fault — without having more adults assume it’s someone else’s job to provide for their kids?

I’m groping for a solution here, but all I’m coming up with is social stigma — providing that care to children of feckless parents, but emphasizing the idea that it’s shameful to be on the public dole.  Of course, for all I know, raising kids with that idea — that their parents failed their responsibility test and their children should see that — would screw up the poor kids to the point that they’d all end up on welfare or be gang-bangers.  Goodness knows I’m not a sociologist and haven’t done the studies.

But suddenly the culture wars don’t seem nearly as silly to me as they did when I was growing up.

I shall end my rambling here and ruminate further.  Tell me — do you have clear thoughts that can help untangle the jumble of my own?

UPDATE:  Jay G links.  Thanks!

Universal health care

This comment at a Miss Kitty post got me thinking . . .

She is a pediatric home care nurse, so she sees some pretty extreme cases of birth defects and the like. She also deals with families who have been bankrupted (or nearly so) by the medical bills of their children, some of which have no hopes of never liveing [sic] to see the age of 10.

Some of the things she talks about almost break my heart, but in the same thought I wonder, how can you be anti-choice and anti-public health care when you see what you see? I don’t doubt her compassion, or her skill as a nurse, but I don’t understand how she can hold the political/social views she does doing what she does. I wonder how your students plan to deal with that?

To me, it’s rather easy.  I’m anti-public health care because I think universal health care will make things worse, not better.

“Health care” is not a magical substance.  It costs money to produce and money to administer.  When the government tries to break down the “artificial” barrier of Do you have enough money to pay for the things you want, it doesn’t magically grow the pool of health care available.

Pediatric nurses need to get paid.  MRI machines cost money to produce.  Hospitals need electricity to run.

So — having determined that the system takes money to function, why is it unreasonable to require money from people who want use of the system?

Now of course I don’t like stories of families bankrupted by medical care.  But I don’t think that government health care will give better health care to more people. I think it will lead to limitation of those [life-saving] expensive medical treatment to a favored few.

There will NEVER be enough of the best medicine to go around.  Never.  To quote the great Sowell:

“The first lesson of economics is scarcity: There is never enough of anything to satisfy all those who want it.
The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.”

It’s easy to look at a family that is financially broken by caring for a child and feel pity.  No children should be fatally ill.  No family should be destroyed because a child got leukemia.  There but for the grace of God go I, and all that.

But rather than have the government try to administer a limited pool of health care goods without a) going broke, b) messing with the medical marketplace such that R&D folks no longer have good enough incentives to invent new drugs/practices etc., c) running the whole thing with the efficiency of FEMA and the compassion of the IRS (thanks TOTWTYTR!), I think there are other ways to improve the system.  The solutions laid out by the Whole Foods guy seem like a dandy place to start.

A health care system run by money is sort of like democracy — it sucks.  Morally, no one should die because they didn’t have enough money to pay for treatment.  I get that.

But it beats a system where access to care is determined by bureaucracy.

P.S. Health care is not a “human right” because it requires the labor of other people.  If your doctor doesn’t want to see you, you have no right to REQUIRE that s/he do so.  If doctors want to quit or retire — and it seems like they might — then the health care disappears unless you force them to provide care.  Last I checked, slavery went out of vogue a long time ago.  (I’ve seen that thought expressed in a number of different posts, I don’t claim to be the original thinker on this point.)

P.P.S.  I think medical privacy is important.  I don’t want the government to get NEAR my health records, let alone “may investigate the affairs of a Gateway, may examine the properties and records of a Gateway, and may require periodical reports in relation to activities undertaken by a Gateway.  A Gateway shall fully cooperate in any investigation conducted under this paragraph.“

P.P.P.S.  Wish I had time to refine this post — it’s sort of unwieldy and rambling — but y’all don’t want me to be late to work, do you?

UPDATE:  TOTWTYTR links, and says far nicer things than I deserve.  Thanks!

When my convictions waver

As I’ve consistently said . . .  okay, sorry, that was a bad way to start, wasn’t it?  Let me be clear . . . I didn’t mean to make you hurl this early in the morning. 

Starting over — I’ve said before that I have no trouble understanding the liberal mindset.  After all, I spent many years believing that more governmental assistance — read “interference” — could solve every problem.  Needless to say, I no longer feel that way.

But every once in a while, I get that emotional twinge.

I was riding the T the other day and found myself in the company of a large group of young women.  Talking in very loud voices, they discussed friends of theirs who had grills.  No, not the kind to cook hamburgers, the kind where you put frickin’ metals and rocks in your mouth.  They knew a girl named Rosa who had an actual diamond in her teeth, and spoke of her admiringly.

Now, there’s always a chance that first impressions are completely deceiving.  Perhaps these young women were on their way to an after-school study session where they would learn to properly diagram sentences and to conjugate in Latin (two things I never mastered).  Perhaps they have a smooth path ahead of them as they go off to college and then get a job that has nothing to do with anything they learned or discussed in college (as I did).

But I don’t think so.

The liberal says, “Look at these girls!  They have no hope, no future.  They have no chance of getting a white-collar job or even a pink-collar job.  All they have to look forward to is a McJob, and that’s on the rosy side of the scenario.  Something has to be done! We can’t just abandon these kids!  We’ve failed them and we need to fix them!”  It’s an emotional gut-punch that I still feel.

The conservative takes a deep breath and says, “Yes, many systems have failed these young women, first and foremost the parents.  Sadly, no amount of government intervention can make parents care about educating their kids, can make them keep books around the house and follow-up on school projects and homework.  As far as the school system goes, yeah, it’s probably terrible, but this district spends more for worse results than the rest of the county and the state.  If you really want to help these girls, making teachers accountable for their students’ performance and giving them vouchers so that they can choose their school would be a good step.  Before you take more of my money to pour into a program to help young women, you need to show me how 1) there aren’t other programs designed to do the same thing, and 2) a program like yours hasn’t been tried with disappointing results completely unable to justify the amount spent.”

In the meantime, maybe the girls can go get a ruby grill.

Statists think anti-statists don’t care about the poor and the disadvantaged, but I don’t think that’s it.  Anti-statists don’t think that a government solution will WORK.  Certainly it won’t work as efficiently as any private charity would.

Which makes me wish I could start my own private charity.

I’d call it In loco parentis — All the things your parents never taught you. I’d make my sister quit her job and run the place; I’ve long said that everyone needs a Jenny!  ILP would be a center where you could learn about the value of a retirement account, why you should buy basic health insurance, why you shouldn’t buy a house you can’t afford, how to haggle with used-car salesmen, how to evaluate academic programs such that you get the most bang for your buck, and other life-tools needed for self-sufficiency.  I’d fund it completely with private donations and I’d get it staffed completely by volunteers willing to teach a class once a week or every other week.  My volunteers wouldn’t need to be Ph.D’s, they’d just need to be adults who can teach the lessons about becoming an adult, rather than a perpetual adolescent.

What do you think?

The Church of Government

I mulled these thoughts over with Mike last night . . .

I read a snarky post yesterday asking that, if Obama is “sort of god,” does that mean we can just tithe our income?

It got me to thinking about a long-ago brush with the Mormon church.

Some fifteen years ago I met one of the only Mormons that have crossed my path.  She was a single mother and received financial assistance from the church to help make her way.  It was explained to me that all members of the Mormon Church had to give ten percent of their income to belong, as well as the tidbit that the guy in charge of Marriott hotels was a member.  Even my young ignorant tween-self knew that that one tithe would amount to a goodly chunk of funding.

My thirteen-year-old self thought, “How utterly stupid!  Why would you join a church that demanded to take 10% of your income?  That, AND it tells you how to live and preaches at you all moralistically?  Ridiculous!”*

And yet . . . how much MORE ridiculous is it to worship at the Church of Government?

Think about it.  Like the Mormon church, the government has decided that one of its functions is to cater to the poor and the needy.  Like the church, the government concerns itself with your behaviors and your well-being.  Like the church, the government seeks to shape your thoughts and beliefs. 

But unlike the Mormon church, you don’t join of your own free will.  There’s no such thing as a happy atheist when it comes to the church of the government.

While the Mormon church would rebuke you if you broke its rules – if you refused to tithe, for example – the government can throw you in jail. 

Oh, and the government?  Unlike the Mormon church, they take a lot more than ten percent.

I wonder if that’s an analogy that would make sense to pro-statists. 

I feel that I am being forced to join a church.  They dictate what I should think is good (welfare, affirmative action, the death of capitalism, restrictions on firearm ownership, political correctness, cronyism, the active role of government in marriage, pork projects) and use my quadru-tithe to accomplish these aims.  They want to regulate everything from my consumption of trans-fats to the source of illumination in my house.  I did not choose this church and yet I must live by its rules and pay my tithe regardless.

As always, do note – I’m not an anarchist.  I argue for smaller government, not a complete lack of government.  But I find it interesting that folks who would never accept this level of meddling if it wore the name religion have no problem doing so if it’s called government.

 

*Let me be clear that I am not knocking the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints.  I don’t know anything about it.  I leave it alone and it leaves me alone and that suits us both just fine.  Even if I *do* end up going to hell for it.

A crude analogy

(Or “Why, if you look at government from a worker’s point of view, it just sucks.”)

Ever worked for a business of any sort?  (If not . . . if you are an heir/heiress, a trust fund baby, or a life-long welfare recipient – how the hell did you find my blog?)

Ever supervised a team? 

How many of the people around you work just hard enough not to get fired?

If none of the people around you could be fired – if they had near-zero fear of losing their jobs – do you think they would work HARDER or LESS HARD?*

If your business group did not have to worry about being profitable/efficient, would your group work HARDER or LESS HARD?

If your company was given a certain budget every year, there was no serious penalty for overshooting it, and your real concern was to make sure you used up every dime lest you get a smaller budget for next year – would your company become MORE EFFICIENT or LESS EFFICIENT?

Since all those conditions apply to government and government workers, doesn’t it make absolute, perfect, rational sense that government doesn’t do ANYTHING efficiently?  (Except waste money.  That doesn’t count.)

Now try this.  If you work for a big corporation . . . imagine that the big-boss, the CEO, is trying to control the processes and efficiencies for the entry-level folks, the people on the ground actually taking phone calls and talking to clients.  Imagine that instead of setting up goals and instructing his chain of management to get it done, the CEO was actually trying to write and enforce procedures for the low-level workers.  Do you think s/he would have any idea how to get it done?  Doesn’t it make sense that folks closer to the ground have a better idea of the nuts-and-bolts of what works and what doesn’t, than the bigwigs off in their corporate headquarters?  Do you think the CEO has a real good idea what any of the ground-level people do on a daily basis?  Let alone what ALL of them do on a daily basis?

Doesn’t it make the same sort of sense that the bigwig lawmakers off in Washington have even LESS ability to comprehend the nuts-and-bolts details of our lives and needs, than our own state legislature?

If the government cannot do anything efficiently, and the larger the government the less efficient it becomes . . . isn’t it simply common sense to have the goal of making government as small as possible?  Not nonexistent – I’m not an anarchist – and we can argue over the proper level of minimum government, but doesn’t that seem like a no-brainer?  Especially when there are independent agencies that distribute food, aid for children, job training, and shelter for animals?  Even acupuncture, for cryin’ out loud!

Why, then, do people think it makes sense for the government to keep growing and expanding?  Why would it make sense to put more and more minutiae under people removed from the front lines with very little fear of being fired and no impetus towards increased efficiency?

And that doesn’t even begin to address corruption, nepotism, the evils that too-powerful states have wrought upon their people, golden parachutes, abrogation of civil and constitutional rights, etc. etc. etc.

If I thought that our current level of government was the perfect level of government – which I certainly do not – I would still fight for a smaller government, in order to keep it the same size, because the nature of government is to grow.  I want as few of my life choices and activities – and tax dollars – to fall under government purview as is humanly and civilly possible.

Or do you really like the way they run the DMV?

*For fear of being fired — there’s a big to-do about 1,250 state workers being laid off.  For each individual worker, I sympathize — getting laid off SUCKS.  But according to this site there were about 93,900 MA state workers in 2008.  State Street, on the other hand, employed 13,900 in MA and announced plans to cut between 1,600 and 1,800 of them.  You do the math. 

NOTE: This post was done with my standard level of Google-fu — that is, to the level of an eight-year-old.  Well, maybe a ten-year-old.  If I’ve got all my data wrong, as always, feel free to educate me in the comments.

UPDATE: Hsoi linked.  Thanks!

UPDATE: Firearms & Freedom linked.  Thanks!

UPDATE: Jay G linked.  Thanks!

Because the Intrawebz are FOREVER

And because I’m too damn lazy right now to write out a real In-the-event-of-my-death document.  And because I stumbled across Matt’s recitation and figured, why not?

(And because Jay G. made me laugh in the comments.  Taxidermy indeed, sir!)

So, when I go . . .

- If I’m a vegetable, keep me alive for six months or a year if you can afford it.  (I’ve seen miraculous recoveries and doctor mistakes and such, so I ask for a little just-in-case time.)  After that, kindly pull the plug.

- Any of my organs that can be used — take ‘em.  Skin, eyes, kidneys — if they’re usable, I want ‘em used.  You won’t be able to transfer my sparkling personality or rapier wit or incandescent beauty, but I — hey, stop laughing!  Stop it, I say!

- Burn anything leftover.  I’d like my ashes sprinkled in the bay I cross over every morning — I’ve watched the tidal patterns five days a week for almost a year now and I love them.  I like to picture some incarnation of myself merrily swimming below stalled T cars, thumbing my metaphysical nose and warning the passengers nyah nyah, you’re gonna be late to work!

- I want a wake!  I want people to sit around sipping tasty beverages and telling Lissa-stories.  I want them to reminisce over the zillion ways I screwed up, futzed up, messed up, cheered up, lit up, and made up.  Celebrate my life!

Did that cover it?  I think that covered it.  I love you all, and don’t forget to taunt the cat, he likes it.  Um, really.

UPDATE: Swiped from The Good the Bad and the Ugly!

(I don’t really.  FYI.)

Cool, in a weird and disturbing way

Let us all celebrate medical advances in the 21st century!

BALTIMORE – Surgeons removed a woman’s kidney through her vagina so she could give it to her ailing niece, an unusual operation they hope will encourage others to donate because it reduces pain, scarring and recovery time.

Doctors at Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine said donor Kimberly Johnson, 48, and her niece, Jennifer Gilbert, 23, were both doing well following operations Thursday.

“It was easier than childbirth,” said Johnson, who has three children.

According to the article, doctors hope that a less intrusive, less scarring, less painful operation will lead more people to become organ donors.  It notes,

More than 78,000 people are on the national waiting list to receive kidneys from deceased donors. The need is increasing as diabetes and obesity rise, threatening to further lengthen a wait that can last years. In 2007, more than a third of the 16,629 kidneys transplanted in the U.S. came from living donors, according to the United Network for Organ Sharing.

Montgomery said the number of living donor transplants has tripled since laparoscopic removal debuted in 1995, providing an alternative to so-called “shark bite” abdominal incisions. He hopes advances such as the vaginal removal will continue the increase.

Would you give away a kidney if your niece, or nephew, or child needed one?  I’d guess it’s likely that you would.

Would you give away a kidney if someone who worked at your company needed a kidney?  That’s harder.

Would you give away a kidney if a total stranger needed one? 

What if that total stranger offered to pay you for it?

FWIW, I’m in favor of allowing people to sell their organs.  Your body belongs to you and it’s not the government’s business to dictate how or whether you can dispose of it.  Personally, I’d donate a kidney for a million bucks, no question.  I’d probably donate a kidney for $500 grand; that’s student loans paid off, college funds for my future kids AND a house. 

Logistically, I’m not sure that a market for human organs is feasible.  I also have a healthy fear of the Law of Unintended Consequences.  But as far as principles go, there’s my two cents.  What do you think?

 

(h/t Hot Air headlines)

Shoothouse Barbie made a friend!!!

Awwww, how sweet!  Shoothouse Barbie has her first blog-hater!  (That I’m aware of, of course; it’s possible there are whole reams of hate out there that have passed me by.)  There’s some interesting back-and-forth in the comments of that blog-post (you can find the link at SLOS), but here’s the best one I think:

You think sharing my cake with someone who lacks cake is such a great idea that you send the police to my house to cut my cake and take a slice to the needy. And then you claim that makes you a better person and makes the world seem like a better place. In my eyes, it makes you seem like a tyrant and makes the government more oppressive, and the world a worse place. You are so amoral that you think stealing is OK as long as it is for cause [sic] you personally approve of and if you can get government to take money by force to fund it, from people who may not agree with the cause. You don’t even realize it’s stealing to take money against someone’s will even when it’s done by vote! And then you think yourself a better person because of it. I find it appalling, and I bet this is what makes James’ head explode.

What s/he said

I’m curious, sometimes — what would it be like if you could pick the causes you fund with your taxes?  I know a lot of liberals would be pleased and feel better if they could know their taxes did not contribute towards aggressive foreign policy and the defense budget.  On the other hand, how many libertarians would refuse to pay for anything BUT that in taxes?  What if you could choose whether your Social Security taxes went towards private charities instead?  Would we see a resurgence of the Elks’ Clubs and other organizations that used to do the job of SS? 

Liberals — would you trade the ability to de-fund the military for conservatives’ ability to cut Great Society type programs?

Conservatives — would you let liberals opt out of paying for national defense in return for de-funding the United Nations?

It’s a fun mental exercise