What do you get when you mix deceptive analysis, bad economics, and emotional demagoguery? A New York Times opinion article by Paul Krugman.

In his latest article (see link above), Krugman tries to tear down the idea of extending the Bush tax cuts. To be fair, like most liberals he really only wants to discontinue the Bush tax cuts for some people, not everyone. You see, the Bush “tax cuts for the rich” line was always just a half-truth: the EGTRRA tax cuts (Bush tax cut I) were evenly distributed among all income groups, and in fact a greater share of the income tax burden was (is) paid by higher-income earners (top 1%) after the tax cuts than before.

Here’s the deceptive analysis:

Why the cutoff date? In part, it was used to disguise the fiscal irresponsibility of the tax cuts: lopping off that last year reduced the headline cost of the cuts, because such costs are normally calculated over a 10-year period. It also allowed the Bush administration to pass the tax cuts using reconciliation — yes, the same procedure that Republicans denounced when it was used to enact health reform — while sidestepping rules designed to prevent the use of that procedure to increase long-run budget deficits.

Krugman is only partially right here, and then makes an unfair comparison. He is right, the tax cuts were passed under reconciliation (whereby only a simple majority is needed and thus no filibuster is allowed). But it was because it was passed under reconciliation that it had a 10-year limit (all such bills have a 10-year limit). There was no last year lopped off: it applied to all ten years, tax years 2001 through 2010. No amendment in the bill was added to make them expire. It is built in to the bill as part of how it was passed.

And the comparison to the health care bill is unfair. Budgetary bills can be passed under reconciliation. Changes in policy can not. Were the Bush tax cuts budgetary? Doesn’t get any more budgetary than raising revenue, and it’s not like they were introducing a new tax (so reconciliation should not be allowed to bring in a VAT, for example). It’s purpose was not budgetary neutral. Was health care “reform” budgetary? No, it created a vast new entitlement with a specific social welfare goal. It’s budgetary effects were secondary; in fact, the stated intent of its crafters all along was budget neutrality.

Here’s some more misleading analysis:

So, for example, we’re told that it’s all about helping small business; but only a tiny fraction of small-business owners would receive any tax break at all. And how many small-business owners do you know making several million a year?

I’ve seen Krugman do this before. He uses the word “tiny” when the figure is less than half. Obama also plays a similar trick, saying that “the average small business owner doesn’t make $250,000 a year". Yes, but almost half of them do. In fact, the average income for a small business owner was estimated by salary.com in 2006 to be $233,600. There are no statistics on the median income, so it is unclear how close to half the number of affected businesses would be. But given that Obama will increase taxes on income over $200,000 for individuals and $250,000 for couples, it’s probably close to half if not over.

Here’s the bad economics:

Or we’re told that it’s about helping the economy recover. But it’s hard to think of a less cost-effective way to help the economy than giving money to people who already have plenty, and aren’t likely to spend a windfall.

Actually, there is no better way. Because instead of the money being taxed, it will be invested. And instead of it being “invested” in specious “infrastructure” (and signs telling you why you’re sitting in traffic), it will be invested in businesses that are expanding and hiring. Keynesians like Krugman are super old-fashioned. They think that if someone has money they are not spending on consumer goods, they stuff it in a mattress. Well, that might have been what Keynes did in his day, but today’s business owners who have untaxed profits either invest back in their own businesses or put the money in the bank where it is lent to other businesses that are expanding.

Now, the demagoguery:

But these same politicians are eager to cut checks averaging $3 million each to the richest 120,000 people in the country.

I guess we’re pretty much inured to this these days, but this is a typical liberal/progressive trick: if the government isn’t taxing someone, it’s the same as the government giving them money, your money. As if any money anyone ever earns, or anything anyone ever produces, belongs to the government first, and if the producer or earner is allowed to keep it, that means the government gave it to them. To me, this is probably the most offensive attitude in liberal thinking. But since people sometimes see through this sleight of hand, Krugman takes it one step further. He lies. He uses the words “cut checks". Does this happen? When we do not raise taxes on the rich, does the government send them money? Of course not. They earned the money, they created the wealth. The government doesn’t get their grubby hands on it until it’s taxed. It is not like government spending, where the government already has your precious money (which it taxed) and is giving it away on this or that welfare program. This is tantamount to a lazy, disaffected worker who says, “You didn’t give me a raise? I can’t afford to keep giving you money like this.” Preposterous.

One thing people notice about liberals right off the bat, but rarely talk about, is that liberals are hyper. They feed the mass hysteria of the media and pollute the public conversation with it. They see problems they think no one else sees, overreact to them, and impose their solutions not only on their own lives but on others. In short, to invert one of their favorite sayings, they think locally and act globally.

The loss of domestic manufacturing jobs in recent years is one topic where this is obvious. The linked article by Robert Borosage (Institute for America’s Future) asserts that the problem is a political winner for those who craft government solutions to it, and that those solutions are furthermore good policy.

Loss of manufacturing jobs (and industries) is lamented by old-left liberals and blue-collar America-first type conservatives as a grave trend. Then they prescribe government action, subsidies and incentives and regulations and the like, to try to arrest this trend. Something presents itself, looks like a problem. Problem-solving types get hysterical, try to fix the problem. This is what people want. Sounds logical, no?

Well, I contest this logic on three grounds: (1) I dispute that the loss of manufacturing jobs is a problem of national concern; (2) If it is a problem, the problem does not demand a government response; and (3) The lack of a response may not be unpopular.

First, loss of jobs is certainly a grave economic problem of national concern. But given that jobs are lost, whether these jobs are in manufacturing, services, agriculture, or other private professions is a rather irrelevant sideshow. It is not irrelevant if you are in the sector that is losing the jobs, to be sure, but if jobs are lost, it hurts someone regardless of where it is.

Take, for example, auto manufacturing. We have auto workers in Kentucky, South Carolina, Alabama, and many other states who manufacture cars for foreign auto companies (e.g., BMW, Nissan, etc.). Is this a triumph that we retain these manufacturing jobs? Perhaps it is. But who is at the better end of this business relationship, the managers and organizers and designers in Bavaria or the assemblers in South Carolina?

The United States has the highest personal income rates of any large nation in the world. This results directly from America dominating the commanding heights of economic development, whether transitioning from an agricultural to an industrial economy, or from an industrial to an informational economy. Auto manufacturing is a very technical and innovative industry. But to cling to the programmed (i.e., construction and assembly) aspects of this industry rather than the programming (i.e., operational and engineering design) is as foolhardy (long-term) as Luddites clinging to manual labor over automation.

To continue to dominate the high-paying jobs, American society must not bemoan the outsourcing of lower-end jobs to foreign countries and the developing world. It probably is not a sign that the new jobs that will replace them will be lower-paying or lower-skilled. According to the Department of Labor, manufacturing jobs now pay less than non-agricultural jobs as a whole on an hourly basis, and only slightly more on a weekly basis. If the management and development of the industries that outsource the jobs remain in the USA, it is rather more likely a sign that the new jobs that will replace them will be higher-paying and higher-skilled. It is certainly true for the companies in question and for their industries. Ultimately, do we want to run companies like BMW that design and engineer the world’s cars, or do we want to be the worker bees who do the grunt work? Who do you think would and should earn more money?

Even if we wanted to keep manufacturing in the United States, is it appropriate to use the government to do that? Subsidies take taxpayer money (or add to the debt) to produce goods that consumers could buy cheaper elsewhere. Labor regulations drive up the cost of business. Manufacturing tax credits are corporate welfare that promote nothing more than belt-loosening. Tariffs are a tax on the consumer and are proven economic losers. In each case, government policy to prop up manufacturing hurts everyone else and does little to save the industry. In many cases, it simply delays the inevitable at a steep price to workers in other industries.

Finally, while the author cites some polls that show a majority of Americans backing manufacturing, as in many surveys about industrial policy the survey asks soft questions that do not spell out the costs to taxpayers or consumers. Many people no doubt think that keeping manufacturing jobs in the USA is an important goal (notwithstanding my sentiments), and may even support government intervention to advance that goal. But if asked if they would support increasing the deficit or hiking taxes to pay for the subsidies, the numbers would dry up. Look at how much support the public gave the corporate auto bailouts. The sentiment for protecting domestic workers from job losses runs right up against the sentiment against coddling, bailouts, and welfare, which last time I checked was still pretty strong amongst the voting public.

The correct stand for defenders of freedom on the question of losing manufacturing jobs and industries is therefore this: job losses in the short run are never beneficial and have great economic and human costs; however, in the long run it gains us nothing as a society to prefer one sector of the economy over another. Picking favorites, whether individuals, corporations, industries, or entire sectors is unfair and against our notions of fairness and equality before the law. If you like manufacturing, that’s fine, but don’t subsidize it to the detriment of others. Act locally, Mr. Borosage, and start a factory yourself. Society would be better served with you doing that than with your work at the Institute for America’s Future.

In the linked article, Harold Meyerson (a left-wing writer for the Washington Post and Los Angeles Times) argues that we as a nation need to bail out California, which is beset by budgetary woes, because Europe has decided to give aid to Greece.

What draws progressives to be bailout suckers? Battered-wife syndrome?

How many bailouts must we all suffer before the bailout suckers learn one very simple lesson: if money is obtainable for certain behavior, that behavior will certainly obtain. That is not to say that California wants to default. A bailout does not provide an incentive to default. It removes a disincentive to default.

There are certain economic consequences to a bankrupt California, and California should suffer all of them. Contrary to what Meyerson says, there are very few consequences to those outside of California; no budget cuts, no layoffs, no crowded classrooms. The only serious consequence to the rest of the country is the bailout he proposes.

The rest of the country has no input in the California budgetary or legislative process, nor should it. To invite this by giving them a feather bed invites federal control over California priorities and programs. If we go down that road, Californians (and Texans and Alaskans and Hawaiians) will soon enough have input and control over the budget priorities (and taxes) in my state. After all, Meyerson says we should not give Californians special treatment.

Congress should do the exact opposite of what Meyerson proposes. They should vote on and pass a bipartisan declaration that states that no federal funds will be appropriated to California in the event or anticipation of credit downgrade or default. That will prevent California legislators from kicking the can down the road (to Washington, DC) and force them to make the hard choices they must make … for themselves.

Last night I watched a movie titled “The International". It was a typical Hollywood corporations-are-evil protagonist-is-disillusioned-idealist type of thing about a bank that funnels arms to third world conflicts and hires assassins to kill squeeky-wheel executives who try to get the word out to Interpol about what is happening. I knew this going in (you can’t avoid knowing it after watching the trailer) but figured I could sift some merit from the film through either its good acting (Clive Owen, Namoi Watts) or exciting scenes or foreign scenery or whatever. Discounting the silly Hollywood message is pretty common practice for the conservative or libertarian trying to get colorful entertainment on planet earth.

Anyhow, the movie drips with much left-wing moralizing of how the innocent subjects of the world are manipulated and exploited by the elite financiers. One of these preachy bits was particularly noteworthy. The character Umberto Calvini, an Italian politician and arms dealer, starts talking about why he intended to sell arms to the big bad bank:

The IBBC is a bank. Their objective isn’t to control the conflict, it’s to control the debt that the conflict produces. You see, the real value of a conflict, the true value, is in the debt that it creates. You control the debt, you control everything. You find this upsetting, yes? But this is the very essence of the banking industry, to make us all, whether we be nations or individuals, slaves to debt.

And the big oil companies make us slaves to cheap gas and the big agricultural conglomerates make us slaves to food and big Pharma have us all hooked on pills and the big movie studios have me by their puppet strings watching their stupid blockbuster flick. You see, the aim of the filmmaker (or screenwriter) is to convince each member of the audience that they are exempted from the condescention if they buy into it, i.e. even when people act on their own free will they are so prone to manipulation that this free will means nothing, except if you act by free will to condemn it, as this film is manipulating you to do. Of course, I think people make their choices and should be responsible for them, and not even the cynical man-behind-the-curtain tendencies of clever filmmakers are an excuse for doing the wrong thing.

Okay, okay. I know this is just a movie. But this same kind of reverse victimization inhabits the minds of some very influential people who actually believe this drivel. Specifically, it reminded me of an article that Paul Krugman wrote last week about the role banks played in the financial crisis. In this article, he says the following:

But there was nothing accidental about the crisis. From the late 1970s on, the American financial system, freed by deregulation and a political climate in which greed was presumed to be good, spun ever further out of control. There were ever-greater rewards — bonuses beyond the dreams of avarice — for bankers who could generate big short-term profits. And the way to raise those profits was to pile up ever more debt, both by pushing loans on the public and by taking on ever-higher leverage within the financial industry.

Though this kind of mischaracterization ("pushing loans on the public", “taking on ever-higher leverage") has become common in today’s blame-Wall-Street journalism, it is still a mischaracterization.

Banks did not and can not force people to borrow from them. People contact mortgage brokers when they need to finance the purchase of a home; banks do not find unwary citizens on the street and convince them to buy a mortgage, then go and look for a house to back it with. And the big market-failure bugaboo for economists of Krugman’s ilk, asymmetrical information, works against the lender in this situation: if one party was caught unsuspecting with his pants down because someone was dishonest, it was the banker not the homebuyer.

People who borrow money choose to do so. They are not slaves to the financial system any more than employers are slaves to the huge wage bills they pay week in and week out. The revolutionary extension of microcredit in the Third World is not making slaves of these people; it is liberating them.

The other charge Krugman makes, that banks were making short-term profits by “taking on ever-higher leverage” is the source of an even greater misconception peddled about the crisis: banks can create financial exposure for everyone, even those who are responsible and aware. Banks can not “take on leverage” at will; to take on leverage is to finance your operations with debt, and someone must be convinced enough of your solvency and good business practices to buy it from you. That is, unless you are a government agency (such as FNMA or FHLMC) which has an implicit backing of the federal government, in which case they will buy your mortgage-backed securities no matter how shaky they are.

The point is that it is a myth that we are all involuntarily connected with all of these banks, thus making them “too big to fail” because by our connections with them they will make us fail too. Mortgage banks have to be careful who they lend to, investment banks have to be careful what mortgage banks they buy from, and investors have to be careful what investment banks they invest in. All of the connections are voluntary, and the exposure of any citizen to the failure of someone to pay their mortgage or of some bank to lend to solvent borrowers or of some mutual fund to buy shares in solvent banks is all earned. Once we start absolving people of the need to verify the trust they put in the people and companies they have financial connections with, the whole financial system will collapse.

Salon columnist Michael Lind thinks he’s put together something special with the attached article. To punctuate his hubris, he even begins his words with “Three score and six years ago, the greatest president of the 20th century … ” as if to excite the reader that what they are about to absorb is something on par with a great speech that many had to memorize in grade school.

Lind cites Roosevelt’s fourth inaugural address in which the 32nd president calls for a “Second Bill of Rights", prescribing a society where many economic wants and needs are provided by the state. Lind indicates that many of the rights mentioned are now delivered by the government and many more deserve to be so. This vision is (supposedly) one of “economic citizenship":

… there would be a single, universal, integrated, lifelong system of economic security including single-payer healthcare, Social Security, unemployment payments and family leave paid for by a single contributory payroll tax (which could be made progressive in various ways or reduced by combination with other revenue streams).

But this is not all! In another part of the article, Lind refers to “the right to a good education", “the right of every family to a decent home", “the right to a useful and remunerative job", and “the right to earn enough to provide adequate food and clothing and recreation” (ha ha, yes you read that right). Once it is accepted that one economic provision is an inviolable right of citizenship, the generosity of the progressive knows no bounds. If a “good education” and a “decent home” and a “useful job” and “adequate recreation” are to be provided to me by the state, why not a “wonderful retirement", a “comfortable car", a “meaningful leisure life", and “satisfying sexual encounters"? If an individual must not earn everything for himself, why must he earn anything? Lind’s limited list is a beginning, not an end.

He contrasts this with what he calls “welfare corporatism", where private industry sells regulated, subsidized versions of these “necessities” as “commodities” to an unwary public. This especially is where Lind detaches from reality. The following paragraph is indicative:

In the utopia of welfare corporatism, today’s public benefits – Social Security, Medicare, unemployment insurance and, in a few states, public family leave programs – would be abolished and replaced by harebrained schemes dreamed up by libertarian ideologues at corporate-funded think tanks like the Cato Institute and the Heritage Foundation. Tax subsidies would be funneled to insurance companies, brokers and banks. Social Security would be replaced by a bewildering miscellany of tax-favored personal savings accounts. Medicare would be replaced by a dog’s breakfast of tax subsidies for purchasing health insurance and personal medical savings accounts. Unemployment insurance would give way to yet another Rube Goldberg scheme of tax-favored unemployment insurance accounts. As for family leave – well, if you’re not wealthy enough to pay out of pocket for a nanny for your child or a nurse for your parent, you’re out of luck.

First of all, Lind himself is a Policy Director at a think tank (The New America Foundation), also coporate-funded in part. How is anything that CATO or Heritage produces any more ideological or harebrained than what he has produced in this article? He could just as easily have said, “in the utopia of economic citizenship, your rights—life, liberty, and property—would be abolished and replaced by harebrained schemes dreamed up by socialist ideologues like myself at corporate-funded think tanks like the New America Foundation.” Progressives are so often blind to their own hypocrisy.

Second, libertarians don’t believe in “tax subsidies” or “tax-favored” treatment. Insurance companies, brokers, and banks all benefit from tax deductions that liberals and progressives protect. Income tax exemption of savings, for retirement, health, or anything else, is consistent with taxing consumption instead of work. And “bewildering miscellany” and “Rube Goldberg scheme” more correctly identify the hundreds of government programs and byzantine tax structures that attempt to provide the economic citizenship Lind proposes.

He then makes the ridiculous claim that “[e]conomic citizenship is more efficient and cheaper in the long run, because the government need only meet costs, while subsidized private providers must make a profit.” This bit of nonsense keeps popping up on the left among those who try to sway the economically illiterate or those who are economically illiterate. The main overriding reason why government is far less efficient than private industry is this: government takes financial responsibility and incentives away from the consumer, thereby destroying all reason for producers to be efficient and price competitive. In fact, that’s the whole reason why none of these so-called economic citizenship programs work. They all cover an area of individual responsibility, where decisions are made on a personal level, and then make 300 million people responsible for them. When a decision is made about cost, the individual does not care; when a decision is made about quality, the individual has no say.

Also, for the record, profits are not a cost and are returned to society, incentivizing investors to find and support those providers who are more efficient.

It seems that Lind is really arguing over the means (state vs. private) to a supposedly undisputed end (economic equality and welfare). At one bizarre point, he even speaks of the “libertarian myth of market competition in the provision of social insurance", as if libertarians agree with social insurance. Yet I believe that he and his kind have largely lost the battle of means (government now attempts to use free market methods where possible). And the real battle is whether these economic “necessities” and insurance should be socially provided by government at all.

There is a reason why FDR’s fourth inaugural is not ‘ranked with Lincoln’s “Gettysburg Address” and King’s “I Have a Dream” speech’, why American’s have not heard of a “Second Bill of Rights", and why a man who did much to work against Roosevelt’s legacy consistently polls higher than he as “the greatest president": what FDR proposed is economically inefficient, anathema to liberty, and morally repugnant. And while I see that Mr. Lind waited until the anniversary of FDR’s speech to unveil this well-written but sickening essay, there is perhaps no time since that speech was given and ideals expressed that Americans are in greater denial of their merit and awareness of their guile.

If you’ve been watching the political scene over the past 18 months, you’ll have noted that candidate and President Barack Obama is a frequent user of the rhetorical trick known as the “Straw Man".

The “Straw Man” is an indefensible argument which is substituted and represented as the principal or true argument of one’s opponents. When someone can not find a way to defeat their opponent’s argument, they substitute the Straw Man as their opponent’s argument and rip it to shreds. In this way, they hope to gain the agreement of their unwary audience, and translate the agreement on the Straw Man argument to agreement in general.

In the attached article, E.J. Dionne makes copious use of the Straw Man. Let’s look at just three examples:

1. If you saw a woman struck by a car, would you call an ambulance right away? Or would you first ask for her papers to make sure she was not an illegal immigrant?

   First, note that Dionne starts his article with this, as if to say, “My readers are so gullible, I’ll give ‘em the straw man right off the bat.” Dionne wants the reader to infer that being against a government program to provide health insurance to illegal immigrants means that they will not be helped in an emergency. But if the reader gets past the hyperbolic incitement of this first sentence without immediately switching their web page to La Raza’s donation site, they’ll see that Dionne himself admits this is false: “As for immigrants who are here illegally, those who go to an emergency room already receive medical attention, and they should.” Oh, I have ripped your torso to shreds, and now I realize that you are but a man made of straw.

2. If someone living down the street from you were suffering from the H1N1 flu, wouldn’t you want him to get immediate medical help? Would you rather see him in pain and perhaps spread the disease to others in your neighborhood?

   Because that’s exactly what conservatives have been saying in Town Hall meetings all summer. Does any health care reform that Dionne favors even address immunization and the control of communicable disease epidemics? I didn’t think so.

3. And what evidence is there that Obama is tearing down our “institutions and traditions"? There is none, unless you see it as an affront to our traditions that we have our first president whose father was born in Kenya, or that the American people decided to elect someone other than a conservative as our commander in chief.

   Dionne is referring to a quote from Rush Limbaugh. But Rush never mentions the paternal pedigree of Obama or anyone else, and doesn’t insinuate that we would lose our institutions and traditions if anyone other than a conservative were elected. In fact, he believes this because health reform is yet another federal power grab that is not among the enumerated powers of the government in the constitution (our most revered institution) and because we have a tradition of self-reliance and personal responsibility that we water down with every welfare-state encroachment in our lives. But Dionne pretends that it is about these other things with no proof whatsoever.

While Dionne and those who agree with him may think this Straw Man tactic is clever, I think it a sophomoric and despicable practice for a professional journalist, and one that is ultimately ineffectual on the educated reader.

But its not just Dionne. If we step back and look at the larger debate on health reform, the Straw Man appears in macro. Realizing that their arguments for more government involvement in health care generally and the “public option” in particular are falling flat, the left wants to introduce a larger Straw Man, the Daddy Straw Man. This is not about a single argument or talking point but about the terms of the debate: changing the general issue under debate so as to convince people to agree with them in general, and thus to agree with them on health care.

This would be defensible if it was simply widening the debate to be about personal versus social responsibility or the role of government generally. Calling your opponents “socialists” or “capitalists” or “friends of Marx” or “apologists for the free market” is not disingenuous; it attempts to show that your opponents’ policies on health care are part of an ideological pattern that you may reject from your underlying principles. But to widen the debate (or raise the stakes) is not a Straw Man tool. And the left know that they can not win on this ground either.

Rather, the Daddy Straw Man is to move the debate into something that is not related to health care, either specifically or generally. The claim that health reform opponents are driven by racism against our president is such a Daddy Straw Man.

The left simply wants to find something, anything, with which moderates or independents will agree with them. Then they figure that by identification, like so many other Democratic constituencies, they will walk in step with them on the issue of the day: health care.

The origin of the term “Straw Man” is from military training. Recruits in training would attack with bayonets and other close combat infantry weapons a man made of straw who could not fight back. On the battlefield, such training would be used on real enemies who could. If soldiers saw one of their own shy away from a confrontation with the enemy and instead insist on attacking a battalion of scarecrows, they would laugh him off as a coward.

In political discourse, attacking a straw man is a retreat from an argument one does not want to lose to an argument against no opponent one is assured of winning. E.J. Dionne, President Barack Obama, and all those on the left who are trying to substitute a debate on race for a debate on health care, I say this: You are running from the real debate on health care because you are losing and have no confidence in your arguments. You may save your skin by changing the debate and fighting the Straw Man. But you are cowards for it.

Hillary Care, Obamacare, now Kennedy Care. Those Democrats sure know how to remind the American people what distant corner of the political spectrum health care reform is coming from.

In this article, Nicholas Lemann of the New Yorker magazine suggests that the death last week of Senator Ted Kennedy (D-MA) may help the Democrats pass a “substantive health-care bill” in the same way that the death of his brother, President John F. Kennedy, led to the passage of Medicare and Civil Rights legislation in the mid-sixties. This article is an attempt to use the death of Ted Kennedy as another reason to pass some kind of Democratic health reform.

Lemann says that what created the critical mass to pass Medicare in 1965 was “the martyrdom of John F. Kennedy, which made Congress and the public far more amenable to liberal reforms, and the legislative skill of Lyndon Johnson.”

First of all, let’s dispose of the swooning hero-worship: a martyr is “a person who is put to death or endures great suffering on behalf of any belief, principle, or cause” (dictionary.com); John F. Kennedy did not die on behalf of health care or civil rights or any other political ideal. He was no martyr. He was killed by a man who had no political agenda in the act and simply wanted to make his mark. Enough with the transparent Kennedy love fest.

Lemann has some wrongheaded comments about today’s political environment also:

Now, suddenly, it seems that everybody … is beating up on the formerly untouchable Obama, and taking the health-care battles to be evidence of Presidential weakness. This is absurd. Obama has already substantially realized his Reagan-size Presidential ambition, though in a manner almost opposite from Reagan’s: he has significantly increased the size and scope of government—just look at the classic measure, the increase in federal spending—but hasn’t set out to change the prevailing rhetoric about government.

Ha! Lemann is right, with wonderful insight, that Obama is pursuing his ambition in a manner opposite from Reagan, but this is precisely evidence of his weakness as a leader. Reagan changed how the public felt about government, what Lemann calls “the prevailing rhetoric", and got a Democratic Congress to advance his agenda. Obama has immense majorities on Capitol Hill, but has not changed how people feel about government. Reagan had limited practical authority, but substantial influence. Obama has substantial practical authority, but limited influence. Who is the cypher and who is the leader? A leader who acts without persuasion is not a leader, he is a fool. And Obama can not even persuade members of his own party, let alone Republicans.

Lemann’s reasoning as to why Kennedy’s death will help health care reform might be lifted from the mind of a circling vulture:

Kennedy’s death, last week, will cost Obama a vote in the Senate, but this may be outweighed—is it too much to hope?—by the good feeling that Kennedy’s decades of large-heartedness have generated, and by the unmistakable sense that universal health care was his enduring wish. His death could spur health-care legislation the way his brother’s death spurred civil-rights legislation.

Now this naked call to pass legislation based on an emotional appeal to satisfy the “wish” of someone who supported its general intent, and yet who now is dead, has been made by a number of people in the past week, including high government officials like House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-CA), Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV), former Democratic presidential candidate Chris Dodd (D-CT), among others.

I could understand if their appeal is symbolic, to name the legislation after a standard-bearer. I could even understand if their appeal is a rally, to motivate with emotional manipulation partisan supporters to work harder in support of health reform legislation. But to cooly suggest that this serves as a substitute for rational argument, that it might sway opponents or the disinterested, is quite insulting.

Lemann’s calculated assessment that this will “cost Obama a vote in the Senate” and his “hope” that this may be “outweighed” by the “good feeling” that people will supposedly remember on witnessing his passing is about as distasteful and opportunist as selling toy guns at the funeral of a soldier. Good feeling? I mean, how many people come to a wake, not only ready to party, but with gleam in their eyes hoping that even though the bugger’s not around anymore, this will be outweighed by the greater fun everyone is having remembering him? Has he no tact?

And it is no less offensive to the rest of us, especially those who opposed the bleeding-heart liberalism Kennedy became synonymous with, that as “his enduring wish", we are obligated as citizens to repay a debt for the “large-heartedness” that this man suppusodely bestowed upon us? And in a strange reversal of tradition, it is we the living who should give up our opposition to this reform to honor the dead as our will and testament to him.

“Grandpa, why did you support adding another trillion-and-a-half to our national debt, that I must pay with taxes and interest?”
“We owed it to Ted.”
“Ah.”

Most people would have quite obvious objections to such posturing on an intellectual level. To me, it adds absolutely nothing to the case for government health care or any kind of reform. It is just as persuasive as to argue against such an ugly monstrosity by saying we must “win one more for the Gipper,” who Lemann assiduously points out was against government involvement in medicine for as long as he was actively involved in politics. It brings no merit to the case one way or the other.

This line of thought, however ridiculous, nonetheless is perfectly in line with liberal political sensibilities. Liberals do not advocate a political system (or set of policies) because they will get satisfaction within such a system after it is created. They advocate a system to get satisfaction from the advocacy itself! If we’re talking about a symbolic vote, like public commendation for a charity or a sports team, this does not have adverse consequences. If we’re talking about one-sixth of the national economy, the adverse consequences are enormous.

It is well known in the study of public choice that people vote to express themselves; generally, they do not vote for policies that they believe to be best for the country, or best for themselves, but rather vote to express who they are, what they believe in, and what makes them proud. This is true of voters of all stripes, conservative and liberal.

However, conservatives favor policies that give more power to the individual while liberals favor policies that give more power to the government. Conservative policies work when the individuals in society act freely; the voter (or policy advocate) is not responsible for making a policy work. Liberal policies work when people pay their taxes, legislators create government programs, and civil “servants” administer them; the voter can claim responsibility for the policy because the taxpayer (and even the civil servant) does not have a choice in the matter.

Think of it this way. When Congress passes some government program, liberals get their names immortalized (forever) as the great leader(s) who “solved” this-or-that or “saved” millions of people from this-or-that, even though the funding of the program is paid by taxpayers. It is in the nature of liberal advocates to think of programs as expressions of their magnanimity or benevolence or humanitarianism whether or not the program in itself makes sense. As a result, they identify health care reform with politicians and movements, not with citizens and the resulting health care system. Here the appeal is the same: you let go of your health care, and you can share in the emotional satisfaction of being part of Kennedy’s enduring wish. Forget whether your health or finances would be improved, forget even whether other people’s health or finances would be improved, this was a cause of a great man and you can be part of it.

I have a counter-argument: fight this reform—that is the cause of reason and you can be part of it. I ask you, which argument is more self-indulgent?

Discrimination has become a dirty word. When most people hear the words “discriminate” or “discrimination", they immediately drop everything they’re thinking about and look for racism or sexism or some kind of mean-spirited exclusion of a class of people from some activity because of something they are born with, can’t do anything about, and has nothing to do with their abilities. It is like when you are given a page with three hundred words on it, one of which is “retarded". Within seconds, that word leaps out at you as you think, “Whoa! That shouldn’t be in there.”

But because of this specific application, the word discrimination is widely misused and misunderstood. Indeed, sometimes you hear politicians say that you should never discriminate against anybody. I remember Sen. John McCain say that once about ten years ago. People like these may have read a lot of books about civil rights and feminism and tolerance and open society. It is pounded into our heads in every level of our education and by all of our institutions that “discrimination is wrong". But did they ever think to question what is meant by “discrimination"? If they had, they would know that such a statement is utterly meaningless.

Discrimination is treating people differently for a reason. It is the opposite of being indiscriminate, which is to choose at random.

When we choose our friends and associates we select people with similar interests and values; we discriminate against people we have nothing in common with, have conflicting values, or simply don’t like. When an employer hires an employee they select someone who is qualified for the job and is eager to take the job; they discriminate against applicants who are unqualified, do not appear sufficiently engaged, or will cause problems for the company. In just about everything we do, we discriminate. It is a sign that we are observant and selective based on information we obtain.

What the civil rights and feminist movements taught us was that some people’s physical traits were ignorantly used as discrimination criteria in our social associations. People saw differences in personal traits, such as race, sex, and ethnicity (national origin) as indicating limitations of capability or character, and this perception was due to ignorance (or animus) rather than objectivity. There were certain highly visible physical differences in people that did not translate into anything much beyond physical appearance. Consequently, these physical traits were generally set aside as social taboos (and in cases of employment and other contracts, legal ones) when being discriminate in social associations. In an enlightened society devoid of ignorance, this did not require the force of law: you had nothing to gain and much to lose by limiting your associations through such discrimination.

However, almost everything else that one could learn about another person remained, rightfully so, fair game for discrimination. Certainly one should discriminate against people (in employment and in friendship) who have a history of violence. Whether this is an abject disqualification must be judged on what is known of this and other factors. Of course, if you dislike someone simply because their favorite color was green, you are not a very good judge of character. But you are only foolish, or quirky at best, not morally wrong.

Nevertheless, because the idea of nondiscrimination was so emphasized in the civil rights battles of the past, many people believe that discrimination itself is wrong. In fact, discrimination is simply acting on observation; it is not a moral issue at all. The moral principle is that one can not and should not deduce character limitations from observations of specific physical traits, of which there are a limited few (race, sex, national origin; in most cases also age and religion). It is the mental deduction between observation and acting upon it (discrimination) that is morally wrong. Of course acting upon it is morally wrong also, but that should not confuse one to think that acting on all deductions from observation is wrong.

This clarity of thinking has been lost by liberals in recent years. While there is still progress to be made to eliminate ignorant discrimination based on race, sex, and ethnicity, liberals are now pushing to eliminate discrimination against people based on non-physical characteristics and behavior. They oppose discrimination based on sexual orientation, even though it is far from clear that this does not lead to differences (positive or negative) in character. They decry discriminate law against legal or even illegal immigrants. They want “equal rights” such as voting rights for convicted felons. And now, in this article, Jonathan Alter says we can not discriminate against sick people.

Here is the crux of Alter’s argument:

The core principle behind health-care reform is—or should be—a combination of Social Security insurance and civil rights. Passage would end the shameful era in our nation’s history when we discriminated against people for no other reason than that they were sick.

It is clear here that he is speaking of the practice of withholding coverage from people who have pre-existing medical conditions. But is it “shameful” and wrong to discriminate against sick people? If you are talking about who you take as your friends, perhaps it is; unless their disease is communicable, their sickness should not affect your friendship. If you are talking about employment, that is a different matter; some diseases can severely impair your ability to do your job, while others do not affect job performance at all; it is a judgment call based on the kind of sickness and the kind of job. But here we are talking about health insurance companies. They will be financially responsible for the costs associated with someone being … sick! This is precisely what they should be discriminating against! Just like an automobile insurance company doesn’t care much about you except for your driving history, a health insurance company shouldn’t care about anything except for your health history. It only shows how far we have gotten from basic concepts of what insurance is for and how it should be priced that this is not obvious to a man who is a senior editor for one of the nation’s most prominent news magazines.

What’s next? Colleges can’t discriminate against stupid people in admissions? Banks can’t discriminate against low-income people when making loans? Fire insurance salesmen can’t discriminate against convicted arsonists? It is silly to think that different facets of your situation in life do not have consequences in your social and economic affairs. It is asinine to expect that the very people who would be negatively effected by them should ignore them. It is offensive to demand that the government force them to.