Paul Helmke, Head Cretin of the Brady Campaign, has a post up at HuffPo wrestling with a conundrum: Who Would Oppose Closing The Gun Show Loophole?
Anybody who (a) actually understands how guns are regulated but (b) isn’t an anti-gun ideologue desperate to bullshit people into supporting his agenda, that’s who. Here’s a simple truth: there is no gun show loophole. There is no law that applies outside gun shows that does not apply inside gun shows. This is nothing more than PSH over the fact that ordinary citizens who don’t sell firearms commercially are by-and-large still free to dispose of their own private property without a half-assed government permission slip.
At the outset of this post, I want to make something abundantly clear: I do not deny the existence of right-of-center groupthink. There are certainly people on the right who do not trouble themselves to consume a balanced diet of news and opinion, and who succumb to an echo chamber effect that leaves them reeling when they come into contact with reality. But a HuffPo column by Chez Pazienza, ascribing to groupthink and echo chamber effects the explosion of center-right rage over the healthcare reform bill, is itself an example of groupthink and echo chamber effects — on the left.
The first clue is Pazienza’s largely-favorable linkage to proven liar Eric Boehlert, a guy who makes a living dispensing sanctimonious Gorillas In The Mist-style commentary on conservatives for the consumption of other smug liberals. Boehlert, who has spent his entire career in a creche of left-wing conformity, is no more qualified to engage in a psych diagnosis of conservatives than I am to perform open-heart surgery. The next time he makes a good-faith effort to understand a conservative’s or libertarian’s worldview and motives will be the first time.
Pazienza’s thesis, borrowed from Boehlert, is that the right is so infuriated by the passage of ObamaCare because, basically, they get all their news from Rush, from Hitler’s cable network (i.e., FOX), and from right-wing blogs. These information sources provided a completely distorted view of reality — principally, that ObamaCare was “destined to fail and fail miserably because this is America and in America the good guys always win — and we’re the good guys” — such that conservatives were completely poleaxed when the thing advanced through Congress and ultimately passed. This, says Pazienza, explains why conservatives are now working their way through the Kübler-Ross grief cycle, lingering in the denial and anger stages.
The story, like most of Boehlert’s œuvre, is compelling if you’re a lefty looking for reinforcement of your prejudices. Ha, ha, those stupid wingnuts, who only listened to FOX and were repeatedly blindsided. We smart, sophisticated liberals would never fall thrall to a partisan narrative and throw a very public tantrum when reality intruded.
The other thing that it has in common with most of Boehlert’s work is that it’s complete horseshit. Practically from Day One there were influential conservative commentators and high-profile right-of-center blogs predicting that the thing would probably, eventually, pass given the political juice available to its proponents. Even Rush allowed for the possibility that the bill might pass by threatening to move to Costa Rica if it did (something that lefties are having no end of fun with). Sure, outfits like FOX and right-of-center blogs reported on — and conservatives were buoyed by — the various legislative setbacks and problems the bill experienced along the way, and conservatives were certainly optimistic that it could be stopped. But only in Boehlert’s and Pazienza’s strange alternate universe is optimism the same as being unrealistic or delusional about either the political math involved or the modern Democratic Party’s damn-the-torpedoes ideological commitment to statism. Perhaps the only thing that conservatives are truly surprised by is the number of Democrats from competitive districts willing to walk the plank for party leadership given how the midterms are shaping up.
Besides, the Boehlert-Pazienza thesis cuts both ways: if conservative optimism was delusional, what of liberal pessimism? Which wingnut echo chamber was President Obama thrall to when he grew so concerned for the bill’s survival that he begged House Democrats to save his presidency by passing it? Was Jane Hamsher under the influence of a Sean Hannity Mind Meld when she predicted that bipartisan populist outrage would kill the bill? What right-wing false consciousness befuddled Paul Krugman to the point of sackcloth-and-ashes despondency over prospects for reform, and of very nearly washing his hands of his secular savior?
The fact of the matter — which either escapes Boehlert and Pazienza, or which they wish to hide under their beds from — is that passage of this bill was a very near thing, and its defeat always a serious possibility, due to divisions in the Democratic caucus owing to the bill’s widespread unpopularity. (And yes, yes, individual components of it poll favorably, but that’s like polling people about whether they like free ice cream; the bill in aggregate, which is what Congress was actually considering, has consistently polled around ten points underwater since last year.) Even given the amount of political juice the Democrats could bring to bear, it was hardly an inevitability that this monstrosity would lurch across the finish line. Yes, there are lots of dashed hopes on the right, but nominally right-of-center folks are not, by and large, infuriated because their favored news sources lulled them into thinking this day would never come and now the hangover sucks. Rather, they’re pissed because they think the bill is both substantively and procedurally wretched: that it will do incalculable damage to the country’s fiscal position and irrevocably worsen its laws and its character, and that it was passed under false pretenses via one of the most corrupt legislative processes in recent memory (several Bush-era shenanigans notwithstanding). And they’re not without ammunition for those views, contrary to what Boehlert and Pazienza might (and probably will) try to claim.
So if the Boehlert-Pazienza thesis is such transparent horseshit, why would Boehlert and Pazienza peddle it? Simple: projection. They’ve succumbed to the same failing that they ascribe to conservatives, and are so enmeshed in a partisan narrative — conservatives are laughably ignorant victims of a false consciousness that liberals see right through, and so it’s scarcely necessary to address their arguments on the merits — that they’re unable to deal with reality.
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I’m into it with my beloved cousin, again. He writes, in relevant part:
we are not talking property or labor here Brett….what we are talking about is simple LIFE, LIBERTY and the pursuit of HAPPINESS. This is the right of every person walking the earth and is God Given. Problem is for the LIFE part you need Healthcare. Every other industrial nation in the world gets this except us.
I reply:
We *are* talking about property and labor, though, Josh. Your “right to life” means that government can’t arbitrarily take your life, i.e., murder you. It doesn’t mean that government is obligated to provide you with all the necessities of life, like food and clothing and shelter and, yes, healthcare. Those things are, as important as they are to human existence, commodities. They don’t grow on trees. Someone, for example, invests capital into becoming a doctor and setting up a medical practice. There is no political magic wand you can wave that gets around that reality. So when you say healthcare is a “human right” what you are really saying is that somebody else should be forced to provide you with healthcare — either the doctor himself, or taxpayers.
Yes I am saying that my country absolutely is obligated to do that! Bret, we already do and in a much much much more expensive way! We pay when they go to the ER and can’t pay for it. We pay for that with our taxes and our premiums. So why not offer them preventative care at a lower cost and take care of our citizens? The Constitution also does not state that corporate interests have the right to make life or death decisions regarding citizens of the United States. People who constantly try to throw the Constitution into the argument regarding modern complex issues either have no better ideas or no real argument for their cause. I still have not heard one person explain why it is BAD for government to help a sick citizen but OKAY for a corporation to refuse to cover them and allow them to die.
Let’s unpack that, a little at a time.
“Yes I am saying that my country absolutely is obligated to do that!” But that’s the thing, Josh — it’s not “your country” that’s going to foot the bill. Sure, the check might be drawn on the U.S. treasury, but the actual greenbacks come from other people. So, again: you are saying that someone else, some other person, should be forced to provide you with healthcare. That’s quite a controversial proposition given the American ethos of self-reliance and self-sufficiency.
“Bret, we already do and in a much much much more expensive way! We pay when they go to the ER and can’t pay for it. We pay for that with our taxes and our premiums.” Nobody’s defending the U.S. healthcare system as a model of efficiency, but it’s only true that “we all already pay” because emergency rooms are required by law to treat anybody who walks in the door (nobody is compelled to pay higher insurance premiums resulting from indigent care, since nobody — at least for now — is compelled to buy medical insurance). So repeal the law; using emergency rooms as primary care facilities for the indigent is an exercise in forcing a square peg into a round hole anyway.
“So why not offer them preventative care at a lower cost and take care of our citizens?” Preventative care doesn’t save money. Making preventative care available to everybody as part of a healthcare reform bill will actually raise costs, not lower them.
“The Constitution also does not state that corporate interests have the right to make life or death decisions regarding citizens of the United States.” Quite so. This is because the Constitution is a charter for a national government and not some loopy anti-corporate manifesto. The Constitution is concerned with what government may and may not do, not with what citizens and corporations (who are really just associations of citizens) may and may not do. A medical insurance company’s right to pay or not pay a claim derives from a voluntary contract between it and the policyholder.
“People who constantly try to throw the Constitution into the argument regarding modern complex issues either have no better ideas or no real argument for their cause.” Er. You were the one who brought it up, my friend.
“I still have not heard one person explain why it is BAD for government to help a sick citizen but OKAY for a corporation to refuse to cover them and allow them to die.” Let me take a stab at it, then.
- It’s not inherently bad for government to help a sick citizen. It only becomes bad when government does so by infringing on the personal or economic freedoms of other citizens, as by saddling them with mandates and taxes. A point I’ve made over and over again here is that socializing (in the spreading-it-around sense) injustice is not the same as redressing it. Some injustices, like chronic illnesses, simply cannot be redressed. Life sometimes simply drops a crap sandwich on your plate. Forcing the rest of us to take a bite doesn’t change the taste.
- It’s okay for a medical insurance company to refuse to cover a citizen because medical insurance companies aren’t charities. The owners of a medical insurance company have made a capital investment in the company; the company’s board and managers, in turn, have a legal obligation to conduct the business in a way that maximizes the value of that investment. Given the nature of insurance (any insurance, not just medical insurance), it’s frequently the case that refusing to cover a high-risk consumer is a more financially prudent course.
I hope that helps.
Comments
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I’ve been reluctant to open up comments on the blog, principally because I’ve been skeptical of policing comment-thread pissing matches and/or dealing with trolls and spam. But I’m going to start enabling comments and trackbacks on new posts on an experimental basis, to see if doing so enlivens the blog at all.
Participation in the comment threads is subject to a zero-tolerance “don’t be an ass” policy enforced at the sole discretion of the management (me).
A Goodist Triumph
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Thanks to FB friend Corrina for pointing me to this article in the WSJ, in which Bret Stephens argues that President Obama was actually the perfect pick for the Nobel Peace Prize… at least, according to the values that have underlain the award for most of its history. Stephens:
[M]ost of the prize winners draw from the obscure ranks of the sorts of people the late Oriana Fallaci liked to call “the Goodists.”
Who are the Goodists? They are the people who believe all conflict stems from avoidable misunderstanding. Who think that the world’s evils spring from technologies, systems, complexes (as in “military-industrial”) and everything else except from the hearts of men, where love abides. Who mistake wishes for possibilities. Who put a higher premium on their own moral intentions than on the efficacy of their actions. Who champion education as the solution, whatever the problem. Above all, the Goodists are the people who like to be seen to be good.
For example:
Characteristically, the Nobel Committee awarded no Peace Prizes for most of the Second World War: not to Franklin Roosevelt for turning America into an arsenal for democracy; not to Winston Churchill for rallying Britain against the Nazi onslaught; not to Charles de Gaulle for keeping the flame of a free France alive; not to the U.S. Army Rangers for scaling the heights of Pointe du Hoc on a June morning in 1944; not to Douglas MacArthur for turning Japan into a country at peace with itself and its neighbors.
These were the soldiers and statesmen who did more than anyone else to assure the survival of freedom in the 20th century. Being Goodists, however, the Nobel Committee chose instead to lavish its honors on people like the wan New England pacifist Emily Greene Balch (in 1946), the tedious British disarmament obsessive Philip Noel-Baker (1959) and the Irish antinuclear campaigner and Lenin Prize Winner Seán MacBride (1974).
These names don’t exactly spring to mind as having made a lasting and genuine contribution to world peace. Nor, one suspects, will history lavish its highest honors on Kofi Annan, Jimmy Carter, Wangari Maathai, Mohamed ElBaradei, Al Gore or Martti Ahtisaari, to name some of this decade’s winners. They are merely the Frank Kelloggs and Seán MacBrides of the future.
In other words, the Peace Prize is generally awarded to dangerously naive fools rather than to individuals of actual accomplishment — and in that light, Mr. Obama is perhaps an ideal Nobel Laureate.
The Lady Has A Point
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Bobbi’s comment this morning was “So you see an upside to five hundred channels and nothing on?”
“Sure,” I replied, “instead of ninety percent of America listening to three guys telling them what to think every night, now we’ve got seventy percent of America listening to five hundred guys telling them what to think, twenty percent playing video games or watching DVDs, and ten percent chatting about what they think on internet forums. You can’t get a good pre-genocide Nürnberg pep rally going if half your audience is listening to shortwave rants about flouride in the water, cheering for the opposition, or playing World of Warcraft.“
True dat.
This Is News?
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On approximately the same level as these, “Water Is Wet, Studies Show,” headlines we’re occasionally bombarded with is the news that government employees sit on their asses surfing Internet porn all day. Now, sure, there are plenty of competent, earnest federal workers who would never do anything like this — but as endemic as this kind of thing is in the private sector, did anybody really imagine that it would be better in the more accountability-free environment of government employment?
9/11
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This eighth anniversary of that horrible day is going to be marked by a lot of solemn and sorrowful symbolism — flags at half mast, wearing red, and the mouthing of phrases like, “Never forget.”
This day doesn’t make me sad or solemn. This day enrages me, as white-hot an anger as when I woke up that morning and learned what had happened.
Dept. of Contrariness
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There’s a meme, today, floating around Facebook: “No one should die because they cannot afford health care, and no one should go broke because they get sick. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.”
While I’m largely sympathetic to the sentiment on an “in a perfect universe where healthcare grew on trees” level, it’s exceedingly tiresome to have to explain the laws of scarcity to people over and over and over again. I’m thus tempted to start a counter-meme: “No one should be forced to pay for someone else’s health care. If you agree, please post this as your status for the rest of the day.”
Unfortunately I suspect that metaphysical confusion about what precisely constitutes ”force” is at least as great as economic illiteracy. Explaining the difference between taxation and a contract is unlikely to prove less tedious than explaining scarcity.
Senator Ted Kennedy Dead At 77
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My thoughts about the man are unprintable. I will thus confine myself to offering condolences to the people who loved him.