Zeal For Truth

I apologise for the slow time during the holiday. I had family visiting for the holidays and was pretty busy. Hopefully you had enough going on this holiday season that you weren’t needing to peruse blogs too much - and spent time with your loved ones.

Nevertheless, I have been trying to figure out how to say a couple of things about health insurance - and then this article came out last week. It really nails a problem with the healthcare debate on the head:

While a public option would certainly hasten the death of the private-insurance market in America, it is not a necessary means to that end. By destroying the economic structure of insurance, House Resolution 3962 would convert an already-overregulated industry into a pseudo-private welfare program. Even without a public option, insurance companies would be kept from controlling costs or adjusting their prices. The inevitable result will be the complete dissolution of the private health-insurance market.

The thing is this:

1. the United States does not have a free market or capitalist healthcare system
2. the last vestiges of a price system in the US are about to be destroyed (irrespective of a public option)
3. republicans may not be proposing a public option (and right-leaning democrats might not endorse one), but their proposal is still fundamentally a socialistic one.

Self-Righteous Conservatives
The 2008 presidential election will forever leave a mark on me as to how ignorant, deluded, hypocritical and unprincipled the conservative elites are, as well as some who mindlessly follow/parrot them. Now we have conservatives claiming to stand on principles against government takeover of healthcare - they are appealing to capitalism and the free market. Meanwhile, they are putting forward a bill which, despite not creating explicit government “running” of healthcare, will make it inevitable.

The US features two prominent political parties: the one which generally ends up supporting legislation increasing government control of the economy by substantial degrees and government violations of civil rights by increments, and the party which ends up supporting legislation which increases government violation of civil rights by substantial degree and control over the economy by increments. Aside from a few rouge politicians and occasional pragmatic dissenters - this seems to be the pattern in Washington.

With healthcare, we have a spectrum of politicians arguing from “government run” healthcare to some form of “mild” intervention. Then there are a few lone voices in the wilderness actually supporting movement away from government control.

But many conservatives will claim to be opposing “socialism” and “government run” healthcare - but these would be supportive of GOP efforts which are effectively the same thing - only by a lesser degree or a different route. So many conservatives are locked into a two dimensional box - politics is either democrat or republican - we can either kill ourselves quickly with anthrax or slowly with rat poison.

But big surprise - many of these same people supported healthcare socialism under George Bush or, at the very least, did not express any concern. They definitely didn’t criticise Bush based on principle.

Pre-Existing Conditions
One of the major problems with the bill that will end up passing, is that it is a foregone conclusion that it will force insurance companies to cover pre-existing conditions. If there is one thing that is going to drive up the cost of health insurance it is this. Insurance is a product that covers risk - not things which have already happened. It is a market articulation of the subjunctive - what “might” happen - not what “will” or “has” happened. Forcing insurance to cover conditions which already exist is not insurance - it is welfare. It redistributes wealth from the healthy to the sick.

Imagine if car insurance was such that people could make claims on accidents, injuries and wrecks which had happened before being insured! Is anyone deluded enough to think that premiums would be low in order to sustain such payouts?

Entitlements
The fact is, that despite the trappings of capitalism, America is an entitlement society. Many Americans believe that they simply have a foregone right to cheap gas, healthcare, jobs, cars, houses and leisure time. Even if they do not believe they think this way - doing without some or all of these things for some time would quickly reveal the state of things. Conservatives are protesting over healthcare, not necessarily because of the principles at stake, but because they are tied into the same entitlement mentality as many others - they want healthcare, they expect it cheap and they expect it loaded with features. Many are just too self-righteous to admit this. If this weren’t the case, they would be protesting TSA, the police and even the post office. But this isn’t about principles - it’s about blind adherence to party group-think.

People who actually believe in freedom because of principles - not because it happens to be a buzzword of party elites - would do well to remember when the GOP was actively ridiculing, ignoring and excluding them in 2007 and 2008. Right now, there is an opportunity to use the Right to help defend against more government encroachment in healthcare. But let’s not get too comfortable in this bed - they will soon show their true statist colours.

A lot of people in the United States are up in arms over the fact that someone said this of someone else:

“This lobbyist, this K Street whore, is trying to teach me about economics.”

You would think in a country where people swear, cuss, deride others, gossip, slander, lie, cheat and steal on a daily basis - that someone referring to another person in a “derogatory” way would not make national news. You especially wouldn’t think it would lead to requests to the President of the United States to condemn the statement, would you?

By the way, it was a US congressman that said it.

Oh, now I’m MAD!

And he was a Democrat!

Not surprising - Democrats are GODLESS, IMMORAL SOCIALISTS.

Nevermind that “K Street” is well known as the street where numerous think tanks, lobbyists and the rest of Washington DC’s political whoring takes place. Nevermind that “whore” is an accepted term that describes, not merely a seller of sex, but a person who is known to be of sketchy moral character, relaxed ethics and a propensity to deal in a manner of illicit activities. “To whore” is a verb describing , not merely the act of selling one’s body for sex, but to “to compromise one’s principles for personal gain.”

This is an entirely accurate and acceptable term for the Federal Reserve’s new lobbyist based on her job description. To my knowledge she is not a generic whore - but she is most definitely a “K street whore.” (Please don’t call the president on me for saying that!)

But the outcry against Grayson not only exposes the ignorance of so many people with a laptop or a media outlet. It also exposes the self-righteous, hypocritical nature of mankind. I can’t count the number of times I have driven down the street with my wife, and one of us has commented on a woman’s revealing clothing - never using the word “whore,” but meaning that with the way we judged her, if only in our thoughts. How many of us haven’t whored ourselves in our thoughts, committing adultery (by the biblical definition) on our spouses by gazing lustfully at the opposite sex?

But Grayson didn’t even go that far - he never referred to this woman in a sexually degrading way - rather, he articulated in one word, the foul, unethical nature of her profession - and he made it clear that he was doing so by his context of “K Street.”

The hypocritical morality police need to quit trying to pull out non-existent specs from the eyes of others. For Christians especially, the scriptures show us what sin is and help us to identify it so that we can recognise our individual need of a saviour, not so that we can use it as a means to attack US Congressman (many who don’t even believe in Christ) and make ourselves feel righteous by comparison.

That is the essence of hypocricy.