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Plotting the Great Canadian Novel

A story in Canada's National Post struck me as so bizarre that I felt as though I were reading a jape, not reportage. And yet, there it was, dated June 1, not April 1. It seems that a study indicates that more than half of Canadians would like a two-tiered health-care system, allowing some choice. You see, Canada's socialized system is often so slow that people die waiting for treatment. Many go to the much-maligned Evil Uncaring America for timely, life-saving service. So enter (for Canadian purposes of balance) a health care economist at the University of Alberta:

Prof. Smythe said there may be some argument to be made in favour of private medicine from a libertarian point of view, but he said there is no economic case to be made for it.

No economic case for it! How droll. Such a weird, counterfactual statement seems to come not from a professional but from a fictional character — say, from a character in a Tom Sharpe novel titled, perhaps, Bend Over the River:

Dr. James Smythe's name gets switched, in a database glitch, with Mr. James Smythe, garbageman. When he goes for a check-up and is diagnosed with cancer, he is made to wait for treatment to begin. After many months' delay, he starts to complain, and then someone notices that they have the wrong info in the computer on him, and a contract-worker tech guy finds the snafu. Within minutes a doctor cheerily speeds Smythe on to chemo, apologizing: if we had known you were a major health care economist, of course, we would have given you treatment right away. But take heart: 'There are no inefficiencies in government-provided health care.'
Not long after, Smythe dies of congestive heart failure, a complication of chemotherapy.
Meanwhile, Jim Smythe, the garbageman, quickly got an X-Ray for a sore wrist by paying a veterinarian some cash under the table. The X-Ray was clear, but while leaving the vet's, the Mounties arrest everyone involved, and impound the animals in cages, too. One escapes, bites a Mountie in the ass, and — because the embittered vet said the dog was under observation for rabies — the Mountie must endure a painful series of rabies shots. Alas, the final series of injections was noticeably painless, and the Mountie mysteriously develops breasts. At trial, Smythe falls in love with the Mountie, and they all live happily ever after.

Well, that's somewhat like a Sharpe plot. Get the point?

Designations   |   June 2, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ThinkingMatters

Am I blue?

Evangeline Walton's retellings of the Welsh Mabinogion (especially The Children of LLyr and The Prince of Annwn) rank high amongst modern retellings of ancient myth, and sit nicely beside the works of fantasists such as Peake, Tolkien, Cabell, and Beagle. This much I knew.

What I did not know until today is that she was blue. She didn't have the blues. And I doubt if she gave others the blues. No, I mean, her skin color was blue. It seems that she lived in China in her youth, and her parents administered silver nitrate (or colloidal silver?) for medicinal purposes. And the silver turned her blue.

It somehow seems fitting. Didn't ancient Brit warriors paint themselves blue? Perhaps her affinity with their chosen color allowed her to write so sympathetically and imaginatively about The Island of the Mighty.

Designations   |   June 5, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ReadingMatters

A book worth two subtitles

"Throughout the history of doubt," writes Jennifer Michael Hecht in her fascinating new book, Doubt: A History: The Great Doubters and Their Legacy of Innovation from Socrates and Jesus to Thomas Jefferson and Emily Dickinson, Epicurus and Lucretius were probably the most consistently visible figures. And she follows up this statement with a long paragraph in her final chapter, filled with citations from Hume, Bruno, Augustine . . .

My favorite passage? Hecht quotes Thomas Jefferson:

As you say of yourself, I too am an Epicurean, and in another private letter he wrote: Question with boldness even the existence of a God; because, if there be one, he must more approve the homage of reason than of blindfolded fear. . . . If it end in a belief that there is no God, you will find incitements to virtue in the comfort and pleasantness you feel in its exercise and in the love of others which it will procure for you.

There's a lot of interesting information and argument in Hecht's thick book. Indeed, this may be the first acceptable history of unbelief and of the doubting strain of philosophical theology I've read. Too many books on atheism are badly written, or mean-spirited, or even silly. This one is not. The final chapter nicely caps off a wealth of perspective. It is titled The Joy of Doubt. This corresponds, I think, to my favored phrase: The Gospel of Incredulity. I'm also reminded of Nietzsche's La gaya scienza, which one scholar recently translated as That Frolicking Wisdom. Jefferson's homage of reason is a good thing to direct towards a thinking being. Jennifer Michael Hecht's whole book is a material instance of such an homage — to her readers. But it's also a joy to read, which is even more important than homage, perhaps.

Designations   |   June 6, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ThinkingMatters

Dead at last

Well, Ronald Reagan has been dead over a day now, and I've managed to avoid reading any thinkpieces on his legacy. But since within moments after hearing the news I had begun mulling over What Reagan Meant To Me and To America and the World, I won't hide my enlightenment under a bushel. Here goes . . . at least, here goes The Short Version:

Reagan is commonly credited with three major accomplishments:

1. He renewed Americans' faith in their government.
2. He stood up against the Soviet Union, and, with his courage and bold strategy, won the Cold War leading to the demise of Soviet Communism.
3. He changed the direction of the American government.

It is obvious that the third point is a crock. American government grew under his leadership, just as California government grew under his governorship. The flavor of politics may have changed, but the direction and nature of government did not. We must not give him credit for this third point.

What of the second point? He did stand up against the Soviets. For telling the truth — that the Soviet Union was an Evil Empire, — he should be praised. But for outspending the Soviets? Well, the strategy hastened the end of the Soviet Empire — allowing a milder empire, the Russian one, to take its place — and it ended the Cold War without a major war. A plus, no? I guess so. But it was not the only way to go. If we could have been more patient, we wouldn't have had to embroil ourselves further into the complexities of America's military-industrial alliance. And he wouldn't have had to make the deal with the Democrats to increase domestic spending. That is, we might have had more freedom sooner. And by pulling back from engagement with the Soviet Union — which would have collapsed sooner or later any way, as the old guard died off and the younger generation increasingly coveted capitalist success — America might not have become addicted to the World Policeman role, and we would have been saved our current war with Islam.

Finally, what to make of the first claim made for Reagan, that he renewed Americans' faith in government? Well, he did. It's obvious that he did. I lived through that period, and I saw Americans throw off the hair shirt they had dutifully and morosely put on after the revelations of Nixon's betrayals.

But the faith in government was not a renewed faith in greater liberty. It was a faith in the status quo, with a few hesitant steps rightward. As such, this faith has become a stumbling block to progress, and Reagan scuttled the one advantage he had going into the '80s, an advantage he could have played for greater liberty. Instead, he chose to play foreign policy and gave Tip pretty much everything he asked for.

Reagan also:

1. Illegally engaged in warfare with Nicaragua, thereby solidifying the Republican Party's alliance with the Imperial Presidency, and setting the party foursquare against the Constitution . . .
2. Stepped up the War on Drugs, killing innocents, sending thousands of peaceful people to jail, ruining the lives of millions, wasting billions of dollars, and further eroding civil liberties and the moral capital of people tempted to imbalance by pleasurable drugs . . .
3. Put the chief political critic of his economic program, George Herbert Walker Bush, on the ticket with him, and thus put in place one of the most cynical dynasties in American history . . .

The infamous Laffer Curve is a good signifier for the Reagan Presidency as a whole. Not because it is voodoo, but because it truly describes what Reagan managed to accomplish. The curve, you will remember, plotted the rate of taxation against revenues collected. At some point when increasing the rate (percentage of income), revenues would actually decline. This is plain economic sense, and sometimes does indeed happen. Reagan set much store for this, in his arguments to decrease marginal tax rates. And tax revenues did increase during his term in office. Whoopee. What this has to do with liberty is a little slippery. For intrusive government grew at a greater rate under his leadership. Yes, some people paid less taxes. But a lot of (other) people got less liberty. Basically, Reagan strengthened the power of the federal government, as have all our so-called Great Presidents. He fiddled with things like tax rates and a few regulations (though remember, Carter was a bigger deregulator), and in turn he increased the state's scope in our lives, and he got Americans to buy into it, with their faith. Some hero: he maneuvered to increase the power of governance.

For these defining features of his career, I remind myself that — no matter how good he may look in retrospect, against slick liars like William Jefferson Clinton and numskull liars like Rutherfraud Bush — he was still a disaster for the country, and most especially for the cause of liberty that he proclaimed to defend.

Designations   |   June 7, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ThinkingMatters

Lolita had a precursor?

She did, indeed she did. Or: It did, indeed it did.

Over a month ago, on this page's left-hand column (wirkman.networkings), I logged a most interesting link: New Lolita Scandal! Did Nabokov Suffer From Cryptomnesia? by Ron Rosenbaum. Yesterday, via email, Jesse Walker pointed me to commentary on the Volokh Conspiracy. The Volokh conspirator is right: the new Lolita scandal is a truly weird story. But let's go back to Rosenbaum's New York Observer article:

Lolita is causing trouble again. At least, that's been the way it's been portrayed in the European press, which has overheatedly raised the specter of plagiarism*: Did Vladimir Nabokov lift the controversial plot, indeed the very name of Lolita, from a 1916 German short story called Lolita?
But more interestingly, there are fascinating implications for understanding Pale Fire, which followed Lolita seven years later. And then there's cryptomnesia.

Now, prior to the unearthing of a 1916 story entitled Lolita (written by someone calling himself Heinz von Lichberg), it was well known that Nabokov's Lolita had several precursors in Nabokov's short stories and, most strikingly, in The Enchanter. The latter, a posthumously published novella, received some commentary from Rosenbaum. But, oddly, he neglected to quote from the third paragraph of the great novel itself:

Did she have a precursor? She did, indeed she did. In point of fact there might have been no Lolita at all had I not loved, one summer, a certain initial girl-child. In a princedom by the sea. Oh, when? About as many years before Lolita was born as as my age was that summer. . . .

Based on this explicit talk of a precursor in the novel in question, I hazard that Nabokov had no weird forgetting-and-remembering, no cryptomnesia. He deliberately and playfully concealed the ur-Lolita as an elaborate joke for future readers, the audacity of which we can now appreciate. The initial story he read by the sea (why not?), in Germany, to which his family fled after the Revolution (and after The Great War) in 1919.

The narrator of the mid-'50s novel, Humbert Humbert, was born in 1910. He knew Annabel (the initial girl-child) in 1923. The starting year of the novel's main timeline (when HH meets Lolita) is 1947. He was 13 when he met Annabel, and 24 years elapsed until he met Lolita, making her eleven at the novel's start — nymphets appear only between the ages of nine and fourteen.

Nabokov wrote The Enchanter in 1939. In Lolita, 1939 is the year mon oncle d'Amerique bequeathed HH an inheritance. What does this mean? Anything? Perhaps when Nabokov set down, in America, to turn The Enchanter into Lolita, he started playing with numbers and dates as well as words and references (throwing in Poe for good measure). The first likely chance he had to read the ur-Lolita was when he was 20, in Germany. We could say that Nabokov's Lolita was born in 1939, in The Enchanter. So do the math: the initial girl-child he loved, one summer, about as many years before as my age was that summer, gives us 1939–20=1919. Yes, 1919, the year he went to Germany, three years after von Lichberg's Lolita was published!

Perhaps I make too much of the dates. But the narrator of Lolita gives a number of crucial dates. And I suspect the author of the book had more in mind than just establishing a chronology for his characters. The idea of a youthful precursor to his great, mature work, was irresistable. Plagiarism? That's nothing compared to concocting an elaborate jape.

And this jape, we should add, mirrors the subject of the novel: pedophilia. Humbert Humbert, a middle-aged man, breaks a near-universal taboo when he sets out to take young Lolita for his own. Nabokov, a middle-aged author, breaks a near-universal taboo when he took the name and theme of a short story he had read in his youth. The parallel is striking. Not laugh-out-loud funny, but droll, worth a smile. Like many another Nabokov literary jape.

Perhaps it's my indecency, but I'm pleased to note that jape rhymes with rape.

Designations   |   June 9, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ReadingMatters

* I note that I've used a lot of quote-unquotes in this piece, and of course am using the quotation tag in HTML 4. But none of these, alas, are readable to users of Windows' Explorer browser. Too bad. Some of this won't make sense to those who rely on that defective browser. Well, write to Microsoft; they make the only modern browser that doesn't use the quotation tag properly; I use a Mac, and the Mac version of Explorer works just fine. Some nincompoop at Redmond decided that one essential tag of HTML shouldn't be supported in their flagship product. So, Explorer users: suffer or switch.

The gun in the president's hand is smokin'

How far up the chain of command did the authorization to torture go?

This week's big story provides the answer: Attorney General John Ashcroft has formally refused to give Congress a memo — legal advice — that implicates the president. At least, that's how I look at it. As summarized by ABC News Online, the Washington Post reports that an August 2002 memo sent by the Justice Department in response to a Central Intelligence Agency request for legal guidance said international laws against torture may be unconstitutional if applied to interrogations conducted in the war on terrorism.

The Reuters report is even more interesting:

President Bush, as commander-in-chief, is not restricted by U.S. and international laws barring torture, Bush administration lawyers stated in a March 2003 memorandum.
The 56-page memo to Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld cited the president's complete authority over the conduct of war, overriding international treaties such as a global treaty banning torture, the Geneva Conventions and a U.S. federal law against torture.
In order to respect the president's inherent constitutional authority to manage a military campaign ... (the prohibition against torture) must be construed as inapplicable to interrogations undertaken pursuant to his commander-in-chief authority, stated the memo, obtained by Reuters on Tuesday.

Though Ashcroft and Rumsfeld and Rutherfraud B all say that torture is horrible and would never have been approved, now we find that the administration was legally briefed that torture would be legal if authorized by the president!

So, if I now believe that the authorization to torture prisoners went all the way to the top, you will have to agree: I'm not blowing smoke. The gun, smoking, is in the president's hand.

Designations   |   June 10, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ThinkingMatters

Small r, big R

Hyperbolic titles are often the norm in journalism, especially partisan journalism. So I suppose it's pointless to complain about this one — The Last Noble Defender of the American Republic — which suggests that no one other than the subject interviewed*, Gore Vidal, nobly defends our shiny, if perishing, republic. But before one can work up a complaint, the editors move on to an introduction, the first sentence of which demonstrates not insult, but injury . . . to the English language: Gore Vidal is a national icon. As the nation buries Ronald Reagan, I guess I'll bury the historic meanings of icon**, which has now been completely usurped by the illiterate; the word now apparently means nothing other than somebody famous or important. Talk about a sign of the times!

But the offenses to intelligence do not stop there. The editors need to justify that title, so they cast about for an authority, whom they honor with anonymity:

. . . Vidal was described as the last noble defender of the American republic, America's last small-r republican.

That passive voice attribution can't help but annoy: who said this? And why is this person back-handedly slapping so many other writers, writers who are also small-r republicans?

I'm a small-r republican, and could lay claim to the title better than Vidal, since he*** advocates a domestic superstate redistributing wealth to a maximum degree — not exactly a small-r republican idea.

Of course, the longer big R Republicans hold office, the more kick a anarchist I'm tempted to become.

Designations   |   June 11, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ThinkingMatters

Term limits kick in

I've supported term limits for a long time. I just unearthed and uploaded an old short piece on the subject by me, from late 1992, called Kicking the habit. Though I didn't make clear the difference between term limits on our representatives to the federal government and to our respective states' governments, I see nothing else I'd like to change in the piece.

The basic idea is that voters support term limits pretty much the same way smokers sign up at a Schick Center and light up their last cigarette.

Well, Oklahomans will soon know what it's like to have kicked the bad habit of career politicians. The first horde of politicians are leaving office in the state as a result of the term limit measures I wrote about in 1992. Long time to see the effects of a bill, no?

According to the newspapers, three major consequences have become apparent:

1. a lot more people are signing up to run for office than in the past
2. many relatives of termed out representatives are running, simply to cash in on name recognition
3. first-term representatives are being given important committee positions

I'm happy with all three outcomes, though the new form of nepotism gives me a bit of pause. [Note: not all of the stories I'm here referencing were placed for public view on the Web; sorry.]

Designations   |   June 14, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ThinkingMatters

Libertarianism in One State: Still Worth a Try?

Last year in Reason, the world's premiere libertarian magazine, Ronald Bailey presented a set of arguments suggesting that the current War Against Islam (I'm not calling it anything else) is a good thing. His piece's title was clever: Libertarianism in One State. He suggested it wasn't possible. Freedom does not stop at the water's edge. It was entirely theoretical, and didn't deal with many of the actual issues with the Gulf War.

My reaction, on first reading the piece, was well, it's worth a try; why not try freedom at home before exporting it? Why give up freedom at home in the hopes of increasing smaller measures abroad, first? At least libertarian isolationists wouldn't be easily led by unscrupulous men encouraging unrealistic expectations.

But I had to think back. Over ten years ago, I appeared to be in Bailey's camp. When Reason's current managing editor Jesse Walker interned at the magazine I worked for, in Port Townsend, he expected to meet, in me, a neocon. My short rebuttal of a Sheldon Richman argument led him to suspect as much.

Jesse was surprised to find that I opposed the Gulf War of the time, and that I was deeply suspicious of all American foreign policy.

So, how could I have written that piece, Wars for liberty? Isn't it a straightforward attack on non-interventionism?

No. In that little piece I argued against a few standard libertarian arguments against interventionism. The arguments seemed so weak to me that I had to attack them! Like Bailey's piece ten years later, it was entirely theoretical, and didn't deal with many of the actual issues with the Gulf War.

But regarding the actual war taking place, the Gulf War as begun by either George Herbert Walker Bush, Saddam Hussein, or April Glaspie (take your pick) . . . well, let's just say I was deeply suspicious.

Indeed, I suspected it was being promoted by the Bush Administration in a conscious or near-conscious attempt to justify a new round of military build-up. There's just not enough money in peace — at least, not enough money for the kind of businessmen Bush was involved with.

A few years earlier, as the Berlin Wall fell, in a little room overlooking uptown Port Townsend, Washington, my colleagues and I discussed the likely result of the end of the Soviet Empire. Who would America select next as its Enemy Number One? We all quickly agreed: Islam. I was still a little surprised to see how quickly the George H.W. Bush orchestrated the Iraq war, though.

At the end of Wars for liberty, I asserted that a non-defensive war may be justified along these lines: Intervene in those conflicts when (a) it is in your interest to do so, and (b) you have good reason to believe you can make the situation better, and the resulting peace just.

My position on the recent wars against Iraq has been fairly consistent:

• these wars have not been in U.S. interest, in no small part because they encourage and breed more terrorist enemies, not fewer
• because of the nature of militant Islam, the likelihood of the U.S., by military force, establishing a peaceful and just outcome is extremely slim

Recent events in the region have solidified my darkest suspicions. And barring a possibility of peace, or of encouraging (by force!) a pro-Western view of freedom in the region, the current wars are completely unjustified.

As for Bailey's Libertarianism in One State gambit, I realize full well that conflict in foreign lands tends to decrease our liberty here. I just don't see the point in rushing to give up our liberties at home so that ungrateful foreigners in thrall to a desperate ideology can be given a few more liberties than they had asked for. In short, what might be called Mahayana Libertarianism does not inspire me. It is not workable, at least when Muslims are the target of our sacrifice. Instead, Americans should be leading by example, and enticing Muslims with our vibrant culture. This would be far more effective in creating liberty abroad than our neo-imperialist warmongering. Libertarians who say they desire more commercial republics around the world might consider emphasizing unilateral free trade. Carrots will be more successful than sticks in encouraging commerce. Why is that? I think it has something to do with commerce being all about mutual enticements. If you want commercial republics, think free trade, not managed trade and never-ending warfare. Not, in fine, the Republican Party and the Bush administration.

When Bailey's piece first came out, I was utterly disgusted. But perhaps he is no more a proponent of the War Against Islam than I was, years earlier. We both just don't have much truck with standard libertarian arguments against intervening in foreign conflicts. Well, it's a possibility. Not likely, but . . .

Designations   |   June 15, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ThinkingMatters

Of Cleopatra

Designations   |   June 20, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala

Dracula sucks

I've confessed this before: I really enjoyed Dracula 2000.

Now, I've just watched its sequel. And as vampire movies go, it sucked. (Sorry.) It's just bad. The cast isn't very good, the composer isn't as good as the one used in the original, the writing at the dialogue level is mostly unmemorable, and the basic concept is to the original what an issue of The Watchtower is to The Gospel According to John.

There was one bit of cleverness: the addition into the vampire lore of The Men in Black. Amusingly, the men in black who clean up after the vampires and their dead bodies are priests - literally men in black. Less amusingly, the hero of this film is a Japanese martial-arts priest (sort of a Ninja Priest). Even less amusing, his mentor in the priesthood is Roy Scheider. (Has Scheider made a good movie, by the way? Since the '70s, I mean...)

None of the actors remain the same from the original. The only character to continue, Dracula himself, is played by a different actor, too.

There's no point in listing all the things wrong with this movie. Though I shouldn't let it go without saying that the two scenes with Roy Scheider are terrible; Scheider appears as a priest, but he might've well been a vampire himself, for he sucks all the life out of the scenes he's in.

And to add a final insult, this movie's ending literally begs for a sequel. Well, maybe not quite literally. Dracula himself sets up a sequel by begging for a return of his priest nemesis.

Dracula 2000 was a B movie that somehow transcended its origin and genre. Its sequel has reaffirmed the Grade B roots so firmly that no future sequel will arise from the grave that its creators have dug.

I'm trying to think of a better title than the lame Dracula II plus colon plus Ascension. Here are a few ideas, the last being the most deserving:

• Dracula 2000/2=x
• Dracula's Third Millennium
• Dracula's Bodysnatchers
• Dracula vs. the Mad Doctors vs. the Ninja Priest
• Dracula 2000 Betrayed

Designations   |   June 24, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   FilmFlam

Health Care: Ten Simple (?) Reforms

The only good reason I can see to vote for Kerry (and I won't) is to punish Bush and Co. A recent Washington Post article, The Choice for Voters: Health Care* or Tax Cuts, which looks at the key positions of the two candidates other than foreign policy, shows two utterly clueless politicians, if you ask me.

Notice that both Bush and Kerry reform our health care mess by spending more public money — Bush with his recent prescription drug package, pushed through Congress with the help of strategic lying — and Kerry with all his proposals. Neither talk much about the reforms that make sense to me, and would likely bring real reductions in cost to health care:

1. Do an end run around all the idiotic state regs that have made providing health insurance such a muddle. How? Allow health care to be purchased over the Internet.
2. Grant the same tax exemption to individuals that companies have, in providing health insurance — that is, don't tax individuals on the income they devote to health care insurance.
3. Sunset the corporate tax exemption (see above) in ten years. This would slowly get companies and large enterprises out of the insurance-buying business, and put this responsibility back on the individual, where it belongs. (Individuals could contract with insurance companies through group plans, but those groups would be fraternal organizations, churches, and the like, thus avoiding the silly inclusion of choosing a health plan based on choosing a job. The only groups that gain from the current practice, really, are unions, which find themselves in a position of bargaining power with their members and the large organizations that they put the squeeze onto. . . . (The human costs of the current system are people who are fired, and, at this, weakest moment in their life, run out of health insurance; terrible situation. Long-term economic costs of this include a tendency to make employment contracts stickier, when a more fluid system would benefit employees.)
4. Make the current medical IRA programs more robust, by letting anyone with an income opt for it, and letting one's tax-exempt contributions roll over from year to year. Establish an upper limit on a person's medical account — say $250,000 per person in a family. This would significantly reduce government tax revenues, but that's OK: the government would be saved from wasting money on national health care programs that are inefficient and would end up in dire rationing anyway.
5. Allow everyday medical expenditures to be paid for from medical IRAs, from doctor's visits through prescription drug purchases to vitamin purchases. (I foresee a Medical IRA Card, halfway between a debit card and a credit card. I think that this is what would've evolved had not the federal government screwed up health care.)
6. Establish loser-pay in all civil cases. This is common around the world, but our powerful lawyer lobbies have prevented it. This alone would probably save billions of dollars of wasted expenditures, chiefly the result of frivolous lawsuits, extravagant damages awarded, and malpractice insurance rates that have skyrocketed. Let the lawyers squirm.
7. Allow doctors and medical institutions to charge different rates to those patients who will sign arbitration agreements. Like the above, this could save us billions a year in no time.
8. If we can't agree on getting rid of the FDA, at least completely revise its manner of regulating and testing prescription drugs. Though Democrats are always saying that The United States is the only major industrial nation without a national health care system, they somehow never manage to croak out that the U.S. has the strictest regulations on prescription drugs, and that the looser testing requirements in most other industrial nations has not led to mass epidemics or death. Why be for the socialist systems in other countries, but not the freer systems in those other countries? Could it be that leftists and Democrats are just closet socialists and nothing more? Two-facedness in health policy is a way of life for them?
9. Legalize marijuana on the national level, letting the states regulate its growth, marketing, and usage. Allow doctors to prescribe it anywhere in the U.S. Consider doing this for a number of other currently prohibited drugs.
10. Make Medicare completely optional. At present, a person at retirement must enroll in Medicare if he or she wishes to receive Social Security benefits. This bit of outrageous compulsion is a betrayal of the government's promises with Social Security, and was a deliberate set-up by politicians in the '60s to lead the way to universal national health care (socialized medicine). Since that's the wrong way to go, get rid of this atavism.

Well, those are just ten things politicians could do to improve health care in this country. Is Bush talking about them? No. He takes pride, instead, in his massive and weird prescription drug care package tacked onto Medicare, making it less solvent than it already was. Kerry, of course, like Hillary Clinton before him, has no intention of moving the country to a freer place. He idealizes state-run systems, and obviously has little interest in empowering individuals.

For this, I'd sooner vilify him than vote for him.

Still, because of the massive degrees of deception and corruption and recklessness on the part of the Bush administration, I hope he's elected next November. . . . And then prevented, by a Republican Congress, from putting through one tiny part of his domestic agenda.

Designations   |   June 28, 2004   |   Wirkman Virkkala   |   ThinkingMatters

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