Obama and the Generals: decison-making on military matters
Presidents are civilians, but they are also Commanders-in-Chief. Generals advise them in times of war, but there is an inherent conflict present in the relationship.
The buck stops on the president’s desk. But especially when he has no military experience or knowledge (and President Obama has neither, although he is not alone among past presidents in having little or none of both) it can be difficult to for a president to weigh how much to rely on his generals and how much to rely on himself.
LBJ famously faced this conundrum, and he solved it rather poorly. Sometimes he relied too much on his civilian “best and brightest” such as McNamara, and sometimes he believed the generals. But he was aware of his own limitations, as suggested by this excerpt from a April 1964 phone call with McNamara:
LBJ: Have we got anybody that’s got a military mind that can give us some military plans for winning that war?
RM: Well, Buzz Wheeler is going out with me.
LBJ: I know but he went out last time and he just came back with, with planes, that’s all he had in mind, wasn’t it?
RM: Well we, uh, yes, well he had more than that but he emphasized the planes. And the planes, Max Taylor agrees, are not the answer to the problem. Whether we should have more planes or not is another question, but it’s not going to make any difference in the short run, that’s certain.
LBJ: Let’s get some more of something, my friend, because I’m gonna have a heart attack if you don’t get me something. I’m just sitting here every day and uh, this war that I’m winning and I’m not doing much about fightin’ it, and uh I’m not doing much about winnin’ it, and I just read about it and uh. Let’s get somebody that wants to do something besides drop a bomb, but uh, that can go in and take in after these damn fellas and run them back where they belong. It looks like-…
We need somebody over there that can give us better plans than we’ve got, because what we’ve got is what we’ve had since ’54. We’re not getting it done, we’re, we’re losing so we need something new. It’s uh, if you pitch this ol’ southpaw every day and you wind up as the Washington Senators and you lose, well uh we’d better go us get us a new pitcher.
RM: I know it-
LBJ: Let’s find one. And tell those damn old generals over there to find one for ya, or you gonna go out there yourself…
Johnson struggled for his entire administration with this dilemma and never found a satisfactory answer, and it wound up ending his presidency prematurely. Now Obama faces a different version of the same conundrum. And I’m not at all sure that he’s aware of his own limitations in the area.
Let’s just assume, however, that Obama’s heart is at least in the right place, and that he wants the US to succeed in Afghanistan (if only to shore up his own reputation as a tough guy, or for other, less narcissitic, reasons). Even so, it’s not at all clear what’s to be done, just as it wasn’t clear for LBJ in Vietnam or for President Bush in Iraq. The surge was Bush’s answer during his administration, and it turned out to be a good one. But the decision wasn’t arrived at until a great deal of time had passed, and valuable blood and treasure wasted.
Obama is not short on advice, but of course it’s contradictory. There’s been a great deal of discussion about whether McChrystal was right in publicly discussing what he thinks ought to be done, or whether he should have kept quiet and taken it up with Obama only (of course, if Obama had previously consulted McChrystal—his own hand-picked commander in Afghanistan—more often, it might have been easier for the general to go the private route). But I’m more interested in the question of how a civilian president makes military decisions, including how he much he decides to follow the advice of his military advisers.
There is little question that Obama’s approach to Afghanistan was never well thought out, and is still very confused. We don’t need to see the inner working of the Obama circle to conclude that; as Christi Parsons reports in the LA Times:
The exchanges suggested some disarray in the Obama administration’s attempts to forge a new policy on Afghanistan and underscored wide differences among top officials over the correct approach.
Ah, but things were so much clearer to candidate Obama! Back in March of 2008, he had no problem seeing what Bush was doing wrong, and talking about it:
Obama said that while President Bush has said that he follows the advice of his generals regarding Iraq, when they give the president advice he doesn’t like — cautioning against the War in Iraq, for example — Bush doesn’t listen to them.
“There were generals at the beginning of the conflict that said this is going to require many more troops, will cost us much more … those generals were pushed aside,” Obama said.
Hindsight is wonderful, but the shoe is on the other foot now. And it’s not so easy after all, is it, President Obama?
I have never seen any indication that Obama tried to understand the phenomenon of Islamic terrorism aside from the multiculti PC point of view and NYT spin. And if you don’t understand the enemy, you have no frame of reference for asking further questions and evaluating proposals for addressing the problem. We know that Bush talked with people like Bernard Lewis to try to understand the culture and mindset of our enemies. I am pretty sure he came away from his research with the feeling that being wobbly was the surest way to encourage AQ. Obama seems to have come to another conclusion, but I don’t think he is very adept at understanding other mentalities (think of small town PA) and therefore he has a shaky basis for his decisions. AQ is probably saying now, “Just a few more bombs and he will change his mind.”
Once again, Obama shows that he doesn’t know what he doesn’t know.
The problem here is that candidate Obama made it quite clear that he believed Afghanistan was a crucial war and most of his comments indicated a willingness to ramp up the effort there as we wind down in Iraq. I happen to agree wholeheartedly with this which is part of why I supported Obama. However, there are many liberal Democrats who think that we ought to be winding down in Afghanistan now, so Obama has pressure from the left, including from Joe Biden, to ratchet things down.
I think this would be a mistake. The threat of terrorism against the United States is real, it is significant, and it deserves an exceptionally strong response. A lot of the problem I see in thinking about this issue is people get stuck in “hawk/dove” discussions, when the real issue ought to be effectiveness in securing our nation. In other words, I support and supported a strong effort in Afghanistan and Pakistan because I believe that’s where our main security challenges are. Candidate Obama expressed this view on many occasions, even suggesting that if Pakistan did not do something about their frontier provinces we’d do it ourselves.
My feeling is that Obama’s basic inclination is to go forward with McChrystal’s recommendations. He’s essentially saying, just going after Al Qaeda isn’t sufficient because if the Taliban are left in place Afghanistan will remain unstable, and that will be a breeding ground for more terrorism against us in the future. I agree with this. However, Obama’s own advisers and many within the Administration will probably be arguing against this view. Many of them are suspicious of Petraeus as well, though I think they shouldn’t be — Petraeus, I believe, is secretly rooting for Obama to succeed, not only because it’s his patriotic duty, but because I think he respects Obama (again, based on various reports I’ve read regarding his interactions with Obama).
My hope and prediction is Obama will go with his initial instinct and ramp up in Afghanistan, despite pressure from the left and from within his Administration. I hope I am right!
Not only does Obama seem a bit short on military knowledge, not to speak of experience, but he came through Harvard, which if I remember, got rid of ROTC in a hussy-fit. He nicely represents the absence of military understanding of many of his leftist supporters.
ROTC was started in 1862 with the Morrill Act, which established the land-grant State Universities, and was and is mandatory at State universities, if I remember correctly. At State Universities, men had to take the first two years, in the late ’40s, unless disabled; I discovered later the medical requirements for remaining in the program were higher than being drafted for the Korean war.
Regardless, when I was in ROTC, I somehow got the idea that it was part of our cultural devices for maintaining civilian control of the military; note that it was set up in the middle of the Civil War, by northerners who had had enough of would-be aristocrats with an understanding of how to use the military for their social purposes.
According to Wikipedia, currently ROTC officers compose a combined 39 percent of all active duty officers. In Korea, as an EM (medical requirements lower, perhaps not incorrectly), I was intrigued with how our remarkably competent West Point officers carefully handled and used draftees. The mix works.
Obama’s supporters, particularly the academic side, just don’t get how one maintains civilian control; first, the civilian has to have a clue how things work.
A little O/T but not much: best wishes for General Petraeus in getting a clean bill of health following treatment for early-stage prostate cancer.
The esteemed Mitsu supported Obama because of his willingness to ramp up in Af-stan as we ramped down in Iraq. This differs from McCain’s views exactly how?
Greetings:
At the risk of being trite, an anecdote:
Back in my Army days, my favorite Platoon Sergeant told me the following:
There’s a statue of an infantryman with his back pack and bayoneted weapon in the infantry training center at Fort Dix, NJ. The name of the statue is “The Ultimate Weapon.” In this business, you don’t have nothin’ till some 20 year old with a long rifle tells you you have it.
“Let’s just assume, however, that Obama’s heart is at least in the right place, and that he wants the US to succeed in Afghanistan”
That presumption is erroneous in that he does not believe in using US military might to achieve success.
That is why his behavior appears to be ‘confused’. His instincts are to search for a ‘solution’ that does not rely on force. He envisions some kind of Afghan strategy that uses the military as police and, arrests the Taliban and Al Qaeda.
Obama’s military ignorance and liberal-philosophical obstinacy prevents him from understanding and thus accepting the military reality that police forces of necessity are only truly efficient in an urban society and cannot be successfully implemented by occupying military forces. Additionally, a police force cannot deal adequately with organized terrorist and quasi military opposition.
The biggest problem for Obama’s desired strategy is that with the Taliban and Al Qaeda using Pakistan for refuge from pursuit, only low level fighters can be apprehended.
So the conflict will inevitably drag on until the majority of Afghani’s ultimately decide that the Taliban is the winning side and then, the war will be lost.
As a former United States Marine, if the chain of command is broken in communication regarding war strategy it’s not positive. For the country.
OT
Hayward is answering questions about his “Is conservatism brain-dead” article.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/discussion/2009/10/02/DI2009100204023.html
The part I don’t understand is Obama’s review of the strategy.
I thought he had a crystal clear strategy of killing or capturing OBL, along with as many gun-totin fanatics that got in the way. The idea, supposedly, was to prevent AQ from being able to carry out more attacks on American soil.
If Obama asked McChrystal to implement that strategy, and the general responded that he needed more troops to do it, then send the troops.
During the campaign, he was all “John Wayne”, and now he’s all “Woody Allen”.
“. . . when he has no military experience or knowledge . . . it can be difficult to for a president to weigh how much to rely on his generals and how much to rely on himself.”
Neo, military experience really isn’t the problem. As a former staff officer, I can tell you that the most important thing the president needs to provide is not experience or knowledge. In formal terms, his job is to provide the commander-in-chief’s intentions. In other words, he needs to set the strategic goal, e.g. victory is defined as . . . whatever. He needs to tell his military staff, this is where you are going, this is what you’ve got (resources) to get there, and these things you may/may not do. They will take this guidance and return with several courses of action from which the president can choose. Or he can send them to try again. I don’t mean this as an insult, but you could do the president’s part in this, guaranteed. President Obama is doing the right thing if he’s not sure. Take the time to plan. I’m no fan of his, but it’s necessary to do this. However, and this is a big however, in the end he must choose. And in my opinion, that’s his biggest problem. He’s not a decision maker, and there’s simply no substitute.
I don’t accept the assumption.
His tough talk about Afghanistan was like all lefties’ talk. Macho creds, not wimpy anti-war types, as a crutch on which to get us out of the irrelevant Iraq.
Nobody ever believed the left, including zero, really meant it.
They and he mean to bail on Astan as soon as they can.
It was a lie for tactical purposes.
Anybody who thinks otherwise hasn’t been paying attention.
“There were generals at the beginning of the conflict that said this is going to require many more troops, will cost us much more … those generals were pushed aside,” Obama said.
What Bush was getting from those Generals was, “This war is better left not fought.” That was political advice and Bush was correct in ignoring it. The question of war itself is always a political decision, not a military decision, and is better decided on political grounds.
After the war has begun the moral imperative is to win the war — to never lose the war. The President must do whatever is required in order to win the war. That in itself is a difficult problem in judgement(how to win the war) but I don’t think it is Obama’s problem.
I believe Obama does not intend to win the war in Afghanistan. So far Obama has lived up to every Progressive meme and the Progressive meme on war is that the US must never win a war. His problem is how to lose the war without too much political cost to himself. In some ways this is even a more complex problem than simply trying to win the war.
Do you employ a strategy of feigning a desire to win the war while at the same time somehow sabotaging the military effort behind the scenes?
I think this has to some extent already been tried by delaying action on McChrystal’s troop request but it would require that McChrystal would acquiesce and I don’t think McChrystal will keep quiet. Obama’s mistake was to fire the previous general, who seemed to be a rather compliant fellow, and put McChrystal in his place.
That was an error of hubris: Get rid of anyone associated with the Bush administration. That deed done Obama should have chosen a General who had nothing to do with the successful effort in Iraq. Some sort of Pentagon yes-man.
A further problem for Obama: After you have attained the exalted rank of General you have very little to lose by speaking your mind if you do so judiciously and in respectful tones. Your only punishment would be a comfortable retirement.
Do you paint the war as not worth winning because the Afghan regime is corrupt and the Afghan people are repulsive and/or not willing to take up their share of the fight? If public opinion remains negative toward the war for a considerable period of time(a year? 18 months?) Obama could paint himself as “regrettably” bowing to the wishes of the public and make a quick withdrawal.
The war-not-worth-winning was a common argument in the Left’s campaign against the Iraq War and it even has the benefit of a VERY corrupt Karzai regime. It’s familiar and has some credibility so I believe we will see this tactic more and more as time goes by. And public opinion certainly seems amenable to losing the war.
But to be used for maximum effect Obama has to avoid giving McChrystal enough troops to put the war on a successful footing. The public DOES always favor any war that America is perceived as winning — which right now it is not.
These are some quick thoughts. I’m sure other commentors can come up with other strategies of how Obama can lose the war without killing his chance for a second term. All it requires is to think like Obama must be thinking: How can I lose this war without getting myself in a bad place politically?
The debate going on within the Administration is whether or not we should be trying to defeat the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan as a nation, or whether we should be narrowly focused on capturing and/or killing OBL and the leadership of Al Qaeda. The argument in favor of the latter is that it is not our business to fight Afghanistan’s civil war for them; we should narrow our aims to simply Al Qaeda and leave Afghanistan’s civil war to the Afghans.
The argument against this view is that an unstable Afghanistan will give militant extremist groups time and space to organize and plan. The reason Al Qaeda chose Afghanistan in the first place was it was a failed state; leaving it in the throes of a civil war is foolish because it leaves us exactly where we were prior to 9/11: with terrorist groups having a safe haven in which to train operatives and plan operations against us.
I believe this is the argument McChrystal gave Obama and it is an argument which I think any pragmatist President would have to take very seriously. This is why my prediction is Obama will take his recommendation, because it is based on sound strategic thinking.
As for those of you who think Obama wants to “lose” because he is a “progressive” — well, I think that’s a pretty bizarre and ridiculous view of the guy. What would possibly motivate anyone to take up such a position? Sometimes I think some of you just live in a strange fantasy world in which you make up adversaries with motivations that make no internal sense, just because it’s easier to think about things that way.
Pakistan and Afghanistan combined have somewhere in excess of 200 million muslims, how many do you suppose are supporters of the Taliban? It is, unfortunately, a black hole. Obama has spent how much time conferring with the active duty military during the last now nine months? During his campaign he emphasized how important Afghanistan was, but his priorities have been everything but… Here again we see Obama the enabler, similar to the situation in Iran, providing the enemy the critical time they most need; and having made Guantanamo a more significant issue than troop casualties in Afghanistan.
Didn’t Obama say in one of his autobiographies that he would side with the Muslims, when push came to shove?
Mitsu: In light of Obama’s treatment of Honduras and Israel, it does not seem at all “bizarre” to me to think that Obama wants to lose Afghanistan in some manner that provides political cover.
“Sometimes I think some of you just live in a strange fantasy world in which you make up adversaries with motivations that make no internal sense, just because it’s easier to think about things that way.”
Mitsu, you’re projecting again…. Obama is a dedicated left-wing operative, he hasn’t been shy to advertise it, ie. redistribution… He is as well a closet moslem, deeply inculcated during his earliest formative years, and many of his well documented personal relationships have reflected a bias for associates who are fundamentally sympathetic to the islamist agenda. From Israel to Honduras, as well as his recent treatment of the Dalai Lama, it appears that America’s enemies have a friend in the White House. Denial is not a river….
Afghanistan is a matter of direct national security importance; Honduras is not. I’m not sure what you’re referring to vis a vis Israel; like every American president for decades, he’s doing what he can to try to advance a stable resolution of the conflict. If you’re referring to his desire to have Israel freeze settlements, that’s perfectly in line with that goal. But that’s a totally separate topic which I don’t have time to debate right now.
Mitsu wrote, “What would possibly motivate anyone to take up such a position?”
Your premise is slightly flawed Mitsu.
He isn’t interested in seeing a STRONG United States defeat anybody.
Haven’t you heard his speeches abroad?
Besides ‘capturing’ OBL – Obama isn’t interested in being in Afghanistan. So therefore it is my belief that he will figure out a way to move our strategy – losing Afghanistan but working ever harder to capture the one man.
What kind of success will that be?
It can be said that he is the head and that the body will die. Or it can be said that will strengthen the Taliban’s anger and when it does control the country will reconstitute with even more forces.
It’s actually a pretty risky strategy also if he changes the strategy to allow us to lose Afghanistan while having riskier and riskier operations to get the one man.
It would allow them to control us.
“Honduras is not.”
Honduras will be, when given enough strategic time and political cover from the Democrat’s current administration, Hugo Chavez and company rachets up the stakes… As far as Israel is concerned, there is no question that it is now a casual throw away item for the left in America.
I don’t see any reason to believe that Osama bin Laden has been alive for the last several years. And anyone who believes that the global jihad is about one man is a fool.
The debate going on within the Administration is whether or not we should be trying to defeat the Taliban and stabilize Afghanistan as a nation, or whether we should be narrowly focused on capturing and/or killing OBL and the leadership of Al Qaeda. The argument in favor of the latter is that it is not our business to fight Afghanistan’s civil war for them; we should narrow our aims to simply Al Qaeda and leave Afghanistan’s civil war to the Afghans.
Actually, I’m not awfully far from this same line of thinking myself, but with some important caveats. My strategy would be to first defeat the insurgents and do what would be needed that the terrorists would have no safe haven in Afghanistan afterward. I believe these goals could be accomplished without a total nation building as was required in Iraq or even trying to resolve all the tribal conflict but stand ready to revise that opinion if needed.
The “civil war” the commentor mentions was and is a series of violent conflicts between tribal factions. In this sense ALL tribal-oriented cultures are in a constant state of “civil war” but these conflicts in no way parallel real civil wars such as the American Civil War or the Spanish Civil War, which were political conflicts. A bunch of tribes constantly jockeying for dominance in no way constitutes civil war, unless of course you are biased like Wikipedia.
As for “killing OBL and the leadership of Al Qaeda,” OBL and the leadership is probably in Pakistan, not Afghanistan. It will not help Obama to kill them in Pakistan by losing the war in Afghanistan. If we “leave Afghanistan’s civil war[tribal conflicts] to the Afghans”(translation: unilateral withdrawal) the Taliban will no doubt control events in short order in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The argument against this view is that an unstable Afghanistan will give militant extremist groups time and space to organize and plan. The reason Al Qaeda chose Afghanistan in the first place was it was a failed state; leaving it in the throes of a civil war is foolish because it leaves us exactly where we were prior to 9/11: with terrorist groups having a safe haven in which to train operatives and plan operations against us.
I believe this is the argument McChrystal gave Obama and it is an argument which I think any pragmatist President would have to take very seriously. This is why my prediction is Obama will take his recommendation, because it is based on sound strategic thinking.
I believe the commentor is wrong that McChrystal gave Obama any such argument. I think rather that Obama asked McChrystal for a plan to win the war against the insurgents in Afghanistan, which McChrystal did, which Obama shelved, which McChrystal recently spoke out about, perhaps because he saw that Obama was implementing the strategy I outlined above in my first comment. With men like McChrystal it’s a simple matter: If you ask for a plan I’ll give you a plan but don’t act like the plan doesn’t exist or I’m liable to call your hand. Obama has probably not often dealt with such straightforwardness and probably thought he was dealing with a sycophant.
As for those of you who think Obama wants to “lose” because he is a “progressive” – well, I think that’s a pretty bizarre and ridiculous view of the guy. What would possibly motivate anyone to take up such a position? Sometimes I think some of you just live in a strange fantasy world in which you make up adversaries with motivations that make no internal sense, just because it’s easier to think about things that way.
I don’t think in terms of “bizarre and ridiculous.” I simply note behavior and draw conclusions. There is no war that America has waged that the commentor can cite that has had real Progressive approval and backing. What Obama is in the process of illustrating is that he never really approved of the Afghan War. All that was window dressing to get folks like the commentor to vote for him.
When the Progressives support a war that the US is engaged in I will revise my opinion. But if I were the commentor I wouldn’t sit on a hot stove waiting for THAT to happen. On “motivations,” there are so many blogged about, some fantastic, some believable, that someone should write a book on them and probably has. Myself, I think Progressive behavior has both historical and psychological underpinnings and is mainly based on the conflict between the ideology of the Left and traditional American values.
The islamists have long said that there are a million more Osama’s waiting in the wings to take his place; but there is only one Obama, a one man serial diversion, neutralizing effective efforts and force against America’s most significant enemies, ie. http://gatewaypundit.blogspot.com/2009/10/obama-kicks-iranian-people-defunds.html
I agree with Mitsu here. I’m cheek by jowl with him on this.
I only wish to add:
I think continuing to enforce the no-fly-zones and keep Iraq contained and their nuclear program suppressed over these past 7 years would have been fatal to any effort in the Middle East. Imagine having a nuclear Iran and a nuclear Iraq right now! Because while Iraq may have had a ‘dormant’, nuclear program, they would not have been idle over the past 7 years.
In hindsight, we would have ended up fighting Iraq right now. if we hadn’t done it in 2003 we would be faced with doing it right now.
It was inevitable. It was the least-worst choice of all the bad choices.
Ozyripus. I was commisioned in 1990 out of the ROTC program at Arizona State with a BSEE funded by a 4yr DoD scholarship. It was very fun, very rewarding and I’m glad I did the whole thing.
In Air Assault and Airborne units, because they are elite units, most of my fellow officers were academy grads. There was no in-between with those guys, they were either the best of the best, or execrable weasels of the lowest order. The best far outnumbered the least.
When I meet a fellow ROTC officer, at least I knew there’s a guy who could face all the temptations of a college environment and not succomb.
After getting my commission and a BSEE from the party school (but good engineering program) of ASU, I knew I could withstand any temptation. (well, at least know which temptations, and how much, I could afford to indulge in. Heh!)
First referral here.
>Progressives
You’re again talking about the far left, not liberals. Liberals (such as myself) have supported quite a few military operations we’ve engaged in, including the war in Afghanistan (initially) and the operation in support of Kosovo, to name two. I personally supported the first Iraq war, as well, along with many of my liberal friends — but not the second (again I don’t want to re-argue that one).
Obama is a pragmatic liberal, not a member of the far left. There are very few national politicians who are part of the far left; the closest one can think of might be Dennis Kucinich, but he is a marginal figure within the party.
My current concern vis a vis this issue is that Obama will end up ordering a smaller troop increase, like 20,000 troops. Based on his comments today I’m thinking he’s hoping for something along those lines. I hope that will be sufficient but I personally believe sending in a larger number of troops now would end up costing us less in terms of lives and money over the long run, so I really hope he resists the temptation to split the difference. If he does go with a smaller increase, I presume Petraeus and McChrystal will do the best they can with it; but I suspect that will be far less optimal than sending in the full complement McChrystal recommends.
I personally supported the first Iraq war, as well, along with many of my liberal friends – but not the second (again I don’t want to re-argue that one).
But the incomplete resolution of the first made the second inevitable.
Hate to tell you, but if you are an Obama-lovin, socialist healthcare supportin global warmist, you are far left.
A ‘pragmatic liberal’ is just a leftist with a sense of patience who appreciates good camouflage, but they still want my money, my cigars, my guns and my kids’ hearts and minds.
My current concern vis a vis this issue is that Obama will end up ordering a smaller troop increase, like 20,000 troops.
That is my fear as well. He will half-ass it like he has everything in his life. It will get more people, including friends of mine, killed and will increase the human misery.
Obama is not pragmatic, he simply does whatever will increase the human misery. He’s a bad guy.
Congrats Gray, I went another way, 16 years enlisted, then commissioned based on being a top performer. The bottom line in all of this is; Give us a mission and we will go to the ends of the earth in making it happen, if we ask for X resources to complete the mission we need them and then they are given, if not then leadership needs to modify or cancel the mission, period.
Obama has zero leadership experience, we knew this, now it is demonstrated real time.
I actually thought we should have taken out Saddam in the first Gulf War as well. However, I also felt that trying to do so a decade later was a mistake for a wide variety of reasons. Again: don’t have time to debate that yet again, but I wanted to make clear my position.
>Hate to tell you
Whatever you might think about this, Gray, the fact remains that most of the views you ascribe to leftists simply are not views held by liberals. I know, because as I have often said I have leftist friends. Many leftists hold views such as: the Democratic and Republican parties are virtually identical, liberals are nearly as bad as conservatives, they tend to believe any American foreign policy or war is done only to advance American corporate interests and is virtually always a bad thing, most are Marxists of various kinds (though they are typically, in the US at least, not Stalinists and are quite opposed to tyrannical centralized power). Liberals don’t hold those views, so to conflate us is just to engage in fuzzy thinking.
I want to mention, by the way, that though I disagree with my leftist friends on many issues — I do agree with them on some issues. Not on Marxism, not that every American war is a bad one, not that corporations control everything, etc… but I agree that American foreign policy has propped up dictatorships in some cases, in support of corporate interests, I agree that we have engaged in destabilizing democratic movements abroad in the name of fighting Communism, I agree that corporate power needs to be watched carefully and balanced with democratic power, etc. I agree with a lot of their critique of corporate power without agreeing that EVERYTHING we do is meant solely to prop up corporate power, and I certainly don’t agree that we ought to get rid of corporations and capitalism.
So I, and most liberals, agree with some ideas from the left but not all by any means, and I agree with some ideas from the right, as well.
Many leftists hold views such as: the Democratic and Republican parties are virtually identical, liberals are nearly as bad as conservatives, they tend to believe any American foreign policy or war is done only to advance American corporate interests and is virtually always a bad thing
Oh, you mean Ron Paul supporters!
Our ‘liberals’ now are very far left. The only difference between a liberal and marxist is that marxists don’t necessarily despise their own race.
Dear Neo,
re: and valuable blood and treasure wasted.
It’s not wasted if it helps find the right way of doing things, and that is a slippery devil. The Kasserine Pass was a disaster but it forced an entire reworking of tank strategy and tactics.
>Our ‘liberals’ now are very far left. The only difference
>between a liberal and marxist is that marxists don’t
>necessarily despise their own race.
You obviously don’t understand what Marxism is.
but I agree that American foreign policy has propped up dictatorships in some cases, in support of corporate interests
Oh, so your’re not a leftist or marxist, just a liberal with a soft spot for the Soviet Union and their satellites.
Just a little pink, not red-red. One who would at least say ‘please’ before confiscating the fruits of my labor instead of just pistol-whipping me.
>a soft spot for the Soviet Union and their satellites
I was and have always been implacably opposed to the Soviet Union. However, I have always been in favor of democracy. Our foreign policy during the Cold War included helping to overthrow democratically elected leaders if they were even slightly to the left of center; i.e., we deposed leaders in Latin America and replaced them with dictators even if their views were no more radical than, say, the Socialist Party of France or Sweden. This was in the name of fighting the Soviets but I believe it was primarily counterproductive to our own national security and led to blowback of immense proportions. One can make a good argument that our deposing of the democratically elected Mossadeq in Iran eventually led to the backlash which became the Iranian Revolution.
You obviously don’t understand what Marxism is.
Marxists don’t even understand what marxism is!
If you asked three marxists what marxist thought, principles, and theories are, you would have three different opinions until two joined together and purged the one and then the stronger shot the last before killing himself.
There’s your history and practice of marxism.
Regardless of which Marxists you talked with, they all believe that capitalism is a system which will eventually self-destruct, that markets should eventually be abolished, etc. These are simply views which liberals don’t share, at all.
I was and have always been implacably opposed to the Soviet Union. However, I have always been in favor of democracy.
I believe, and I have always believed that 2 + 2 =4. However, I have always been in favor of it being 5.
that markets should eventually be abolished, etc. These are simply views which liberals don’t share, at all.
Except when it comes to the health care market, the securities and stock market and the energy market.
A marxist is a liberal with intellectual consistancy and the courage of his convictions.
I’m not sure in what way being opposed to the Soviet Union and being in favor of democracy is supposed to be somehow contradictory.
>Except when it comes to
Yes, liberals do not believe that markets are the best way to do EVERYTHING; i.e., liberals are not radical libertarians. I am not in favor, for example, of privatizing the police force, or privatizing the fire department, or privatizing public libraries, or privatizing the army, or privatizing all public schools, or getting rid of consumer protection laws or getting rid of building codes or letting people put up their own private traffic signals and road signs. I, like most liberals, believe there are things the government can and should do, within limits. The limits are set by the constitution and by democratic elections — which I believe is a pretty good way to prevent tyranny.
On the other hand perhaps privatizing the postal service might be a good idea. I don’t see a compelling argument the postal service ought to be a public entity — a regulated private postal service might work better.
The question is, when does the market do the best job? We can look at empirical evidence — the market does a great job at delivering most goods and services, but it helps to have regulation of some kind (again: consumer protection laws, for example).
As for health care, that’s a long and involved discuission which I also don’t have time for, but in brief we spend about twice as much as other major industrialized nations on health care and evidence shows we don’t have significantly better health outcomes. Sure, we may have shorter waiting times for some things, but if you’re a member of an HMO you may have significant wait times anyway, and of course if you’re uninsured you may simply die before getting treated (a recent study estimated 45,000 people die every year from lack of adequate health insurance, an astounding number). My personal view is we could solve this via new regulations of private health insurance, a la what they do in Switzerland.
>A marxist is a liberal with intellectual consistancy and the
>courage of his convictions.
No, a Marxist is someone who believes, erroneously, that the market is going to implode because the marginal extra value of labor time will get small enough relative to sunk labor-time in capital that the system will implode. Liberals don’t believe this because it is wrong, for many reasons. Marxists believe that it is possible for all goods and services to be efficiently distributed via some sort of mechanism that doesn’t rely on market mechanisms — liberals believe most goods and services can only be distributed efficiently using the self-organizing principle of a market (or other similar mechanism; i.e., one could imagine, perhaps, a future “market” that involved multi-dimensional money or something of that sort).
Progressives
You’re again talking about the far left, not liberals. Liberals (such as myself) have supported quite a few military operations we’ve engaged in, including the war in Afghanistan (initially) and the operation in support of Kosovo, to name two. I personally supported the first Iraq war, as well, along with many of my liberal friends – but not the second (again I don’t want to re-argue that one).
Obama is a pragmatic liberal, not a member of the far left. There are very few national politicians who are part of the far left; the closest one can think of might be Dennis Kucinich, but he is a marginal figure within the party.
Of course I’m talking about the far Left. I count myself as a liberal — a classic liberal with conservative traits. I’m mostly Neoconservative on foreign policy. I’m an independent that’s somewhat centrist. If you’ll look at some past posts by Neo you’ll see that I’ve had some long and lively debates with commentors that are on the Right of the political spectrum on everything from immigration to gay marriage.
Obama is far Left, Progressive, the terms are for all practical purposes the same thing. The Kosovo operation is not what I would call a significant war with important strategic ramifications for the US, likewise Grenada in 1983 and Panama in 1990 for different reasons.
You can’t support a war “initially,” you either support a war or you don’t. Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and now Afghanistan — all have been undermined by the far Left, which often manages to garner liberal support in doing so. Those poor deluded fools are known as “useful idiots.”
There were really no first or second Iraq Wars. Those false distinctions are mere rationalization. There is one war which Bush senior tried to end with the Saddam regime in place which had to be continued 13 years later by Bush junior because his father’s strategy did not work. Bush senior’s strategy was worth a try because nation building in the Middle East is costly in terms of both life and treasure but Saddam never complied with a single agreement. If Saddam had played it smart he could have still been happily torturing hapless Iraqis in Baghdad but as some despots WILL do he chose the hard road. He mistook a father’s prudence for a son’s lack of resolve and now he is dead.
When Obama was elected I was disappointed but not bitter. “Give him a chance,” I said, on this very blog. I was hoping he would prove to be merely liberal, a condition I could live with. But I refuse to be blind. Every major move he’s made has been far Left. When Obama begins behaving in some significant way as other than far Left then I will revise my opinion. He’s so Progressive he’s predictable, the latest case in point being Afghanistan. Didn’t we all know his feigned support of the Afghan War was mere posturing? Sure we did, although some of us had hopes.
(a recent study estimated 45,000 people die every year from lack of adequate health insurance, an astounding number).
I always wondered who believed in that nonsense. Since you’ve been posting on the blog, I have been astounded at the complete bullshit you are willing to believe and repeat: Global warming nonsense, healthcare nonsense, foreign policy nonsense. It seems the more outrageous the propaganda, the more willing you are to believe it if it fits your politics. Maybe you are just gullible.
When faced with a loopy statistic like that, don’t you ever wonder: Where did that data come from? How could you trace a cause of morbidity back to lack of health insurance? Do coroners actually list “lack of health insurance” as a cause of death?
How could My personal view is we could solve this via new regulations of private health insurance, a la what they do in Switzerland.
‘Cuz y’know, we are a small, wealthy, culturally and racially homogenous society with extraordinarily strict immigration policies, strong Christian ethics with liberal banking secrecy laws going back centuries and the Alps protecting our borders.
What is wrong with you? Or do you just say nonsense like that to wind me up? If so, it’s funny, and it works….
Marxists believe that it is possible for all goods and services to be efficiently distributed via some sort of mechanism that doesn’t rely on market mechanisms – liberals believe most goods and services can only be distributed efficiently using the self-organizing principle of a market
As I said: A marxist is a liberal with intellectual consistancy and the courage of his convictions.
>loopy statistic
Unlike you, Gray, I don’t believe that every statistic coming from scientific studies are “loopy” just because they don’t comport with my politics. The 45,000 figure is from a Harvard Medical School study published this year.
http://www.reuters.com/article/healthNews/idUSTRE58G6W520090917
>Or do you just say nonsense like that
I’m not sure if you’re aware of this, Gray, but what I just said is that I support health care reform without a public option, precisely the thing Republicans have been advocating. I think a robust private cooperative such as what some Republicans have been pushing could well work just fine to deal with the crisis of runaway healthcare costs we face in our country. In this I am again at odds with most in the Democratic Party; but I think the public option particularly as it has been conceived in current legislation is unlikely to work well.
>As I said: A marxist is a liberal with intellectual consistancy
>and the courage of his convictions.
You’re misspelling the word “consistency”, by the way.
Do you believe that the police ought to be privatized? The army? That all government services ought to be privatized? If you do, then I suppose I can understand why you think the only two “intellectually consistent” options are having a bureaucratic centralized government controlling everything and having no government whatsoever, except to adjudicate contract disputes, with everything in the private sector.
There are very few Republicans, however, who adopt that sort of radical libertarian view. Since most Republicans don’t hold that view, you must then believe that Republicans are basically Marxists as well.
“Obama is a pragmatic liberal, not a member of the far left.”
Hard to believe someone who is as obviously well informed and literate as Mitsu can say that with a “straight face”… Indirectly related, show us the records, everything, including the long form birth certificate, which should be no problem for a “pragmatic liberal”; let’s see that “transparency” we were promised early on, so far all we’ve seen is a liar and a fraud, and it has been obvious for a long time.
http://townhall.com/columnists/ThomasSowell/2008/10/27/obama_and_the_left?page=full&comments=true
From the article: The Harvard study, funded by a federal research grant, was published in the online edition of the American Journal of Public Health. It was released by Physicians for a National Health Program, which favors government-backed or “single-payer” health insurance.
Naw…. They’d never ‘cook the books’. I’m sure they are just as ethical and non-partisan as ACORN.
They excluded older Americans because those aged 65 or older are covered by the U.S. Medicare insurance program.
Can you see why that simple exclusion would lead to a skewing of results to get precisely this result? Why this result is due to your selection bias and not actual results?
Furthermore: researchers overstated the death risk and did not track how long subjects were uninsured.
Which means that if your were unisured at any point during the study and later died for whatever reason, including murder, accidents, suicide, whatever, you counted in the 45,000 even if you had insurance when you died
How can you read that article and not understand that? How? Why are you so gullible? Where is your ‘bullshit filter’?
Oh come on, you’re recycling ACORN and Bill Ayers as “proof” Obama is a leftist? I really don’t have time to go over every right-wing conspiracy theory, except to say: John McCain has attended ACORN rallies in the past, ACORN, for whatever problems it has as an organization, has in the past received funding from many sources, including Republicans, and the fact that Obama was associated with ACORN doesn’t mean a thing about him being a leftist any more than the fact that McCain attended an ACORN rally means he is a leftist. Same story with Ayers — give me a break. I have leftist friends, as I’ve often said, yet I am not a leftist.
I’m not even going to get into the whole birther thing.
You’re misspelling the word “consistency”, by the way.
Yes, but at least I misspelled it consistently, because I am intellectually consistent, but I am not a marxist or a liberal, or a loopy libertarian.
Do you believe that the police ought to be privatized? The army? That all government services ought to be privatized?
Of course not. Are you done with that straw-man yet? I think the Constitution struck the correct balance.
I have leftist friends, as I’ve often said, yet I am not a leftist.
It’s OK, we tell ourselves a lot of little lies to make life more bearable, but we really can’t expect everyone to be complicit in our own little lies just to maintain our own self-image.
and the fact that Obama was associated with ACORN doesn’t mean a thing about him being a leftist any more than the fact that McCain attended an ACORN rally means he is a leftist. Same story with Ayers
In the vernacular, this debate technique is known as “pissing on your back and telling you it is raining”.
Ooh, it’s late. My work here is done.
G’night.
>Which means that if your were unisured at any point during
>the study and later died for whatever reason, including
>murder, accidents, suicide, whatever, you counted in the
>45,000 even if you had insurance when you died
That’s completely ridiculous, Gray, that’s not what the study says at all; it is about comparing death rates of the insured and uninsured, i.e., those uninsured at the time of death. Secondly what the study says is that the uninsured have a 40 percent higher chance of death even when controlling for socioeconomic status and other risk factors. The figure is not “the number of uninsured who died” but rather the number of people who died in excess of the rate they would have died had they had health insurance.
I knew personally a women who died very likely from lack of health insurance: she was about 25 years old, a bit overweight, and was experiencing chest pains. She decided to wait to go to a doctor until the fall when she was going to get a job. She died in her sleep of heart failure about a month after first experiencing symptoms. Her death may well have been prevented had she seen a doctor earlier.
>Are you done with the straw man yet?
If you believe, like I do, that SOME things are best done by the government, then both of us think that the government ought to do some things. The question is, how much? Liberals think the government should do a little more than conservatives. Marxists believe there should be NO free market whatsoever.
That’s completely ridiculous, Gray, that’s not what the study says at all; it is about comparing death rates of the insured and uninsured, i.e., those uninsured at the time of death.
No. They didn’t correct for that.
They interviewed the subjects once with self-reported insurance/non-insurance status and then assessed the mortality of the group of all causes 9 years later. They had no way of knowing whether the person was insured or uninsured at the time of death, nor necessarily what they died of– just the self reported status during the single interview within the 9 years.
It is a horseshit study. You cannot be this stupid and gullible.
I’m sorry about your friend. I won’t use your anecdote to make an obvious or unkind point.
Mitsu,
Liberals see only the good that will come from their programs and never think of the unintended consequences. When someone tries to discuss this, perhaps only to improve the proposed program, they are called cold hearted, selfish, and racist. Liberals don’t accept that sometimes there are no good choices–only bad and worse. Ardent Obama supporters believe in “Imagine.”
Obama himself believes in himself. He doesn’t question the received wisdom of the leftists because he would have to admit he was wrong in following their philosophy. If forced into choosing between leftism (as in Jeremiah Wright) and his own survival, he will throw th ideology under the bus and pretend he never supported it in the first place. He may call this pragmatism, but it’s not. It is ego protection and very superficial thinking.
If he had a clue about fighting Islamic terrorism, he would not be displaying his lack of resolve to the world. A serious leader would have been in frequent contact with McChrystal and asked him all the hard questions–but not putting his doubts on the front pages of the world’s newspapers.
I note Mitsu tried to get the question ref astan shifted to zero’s supposed motivation, away from his actions.
Told you.
Medicare is nice, but it has gaps. The part the insured has to pay each year goes up. Hence the availability of “Medigap” insurance, which starts at $3k a year.
Uninsured drivers are more likely to have accidents. Irresponsible in one, irresponsible in another.
You’ll also note that Mitsu didn’t figure anybody would dig into the study quoted. Learning anything, Mitsu?
He supported the first Iraq war but not the second. Sure. Always support some other war, except the one we’re currently fighting.
Opposed the USSR, sure, along with any attempts to defend ourselves.
Old, old song.
My turn to be Gray and to tell Gray there’s no point in arguing with Mitsu about health care. He has made every one of these statements and told the same anecdote on a previous health care thread here earlier this year. He was roundly and thoroughly debunked by a number of commenters, several of them doctors. He answered none of them in any substantive way, moved to a different thread and started over with the same platitudes. When the debunkers showed up there too, he took off and hasn’t been seen here much, if at all, until now.
Gray, it is pointless, you can tell him up one side and down the other that comparing health care outcomes in countries with wildly different demographics tells you nothing about the effect of the way they fund their health care (as just one example, when mortality rates in the car-happy US and the public-transportation-happy Europe are compared, do they take out the auto accident deaths?) , or that trusting studies from admittedly-biased sources isn’t very smart, and it will get you exactly nowhere. He will just blandly talk about something else.
I am beginning to think that Mitsu IS the Mitsu Emulator.
Mrs. Whatsit.
You see the strength of the left. They never quit.
Ron Radosh made the point that when he went to college as a red-diaper baby, they made sure to take over student organizations by the simple–but arduous–technique of making EVERY meeting, getting there early and never leaving until last.
Mitsu isn’t going to be persuaded. The implication that he could be, that he is arguing in good faith, is a lie.
Even if he gives up on us by eventually figuring out we can’t be fooled, he will go someplace else, start over, and hope to find someone more gullible.
Sorry I’m late to this discussion
Expat (first comment above), you’re coments are provocative.
“if you don’t understand the enemy, you have no frame of reference for asking further questions and evaluating proposals for addressing the problem. ”
Obama did understand the enemy; his enemy was not Al Qaeda, his enemy was George W. Bush. Thus, he campaigned as the anti-Bush. Whatever Bush did was wrong; whatever position Bush took was incorrect.
He successfully used that to get elected, because 53% of the American public bought the spin willingly promoted by an anti-Bush Obama-sycophantic media.
Now, Obama finds himself stuck with an unwinnable “war of necessity” that even the former Soviet Union couldn’t win.
Strangely enough, I expect his presidency to parallel Wolf Blitzer’s appearance on celebrity Jeopardy. Blitzer wound up $4,000 in the hole. A commenter noted that one does not go that far into the hole because one does not know something. One goes that far into the hole because one THINKS one knows something and does not. Therein lies Obama’s presidency.
“I’m not even going to get into the whole birther thing.”
Thank you, I’m not interested in your opinions, only interested in one thing; a credible exposure of the authentic long-form birth certificate; followed by the college records, etc. It’s too easy Mitsu, a truly “pragmatic” person would say, let’s get it out there, and put the issue to rest. It isn’t going to happen until they’ve had an opportunity to replace the original record with some adequately doctored version…
zero’s real enemy in the election was Bush. True enough.
But what or who is his enemy in general, now that he’s elected?
Looking at the cumulative effects of his actions, it’s hard not to wonder.
Himself, I think.
Obama has already stated he doesn’t believe in the word ‘victory’. Since Obama doesn’t believe in victory, just what does he believe in, a draw? Retreat with honor? Peace for our time?
Gray
Our ‘liberals’ now are very far left. The only difference between a liberal and marxist is that marxists don’t necessarily despise their own race.
YES! I impressed my kids with a parlor trick when the “future evolution” show was on on Discovery Channel. I could guess how the future would go every single time. How? Simple. This was written by liberals. I just had to assume, in order, that humans, mamals, warm blooded creatures would be on the hit list for the crime of being too much like us.
Frankly, of all issues with our left, this is the one that scares me most. I’m very afraid it is the motor behind all their decisions and all the “feel good” do goodism is just a disguise.
Gray and Portia, this reminds me of a conversation I had, quite a few years ago now, with a very left/liberal friend of mine, during the time when I was beginning to move away from my former liberal Democratic views. We were talking about why this was happening and I said that one reason was the self-loathing I saw among too many of our left/liberal friends — both as to their humanity with regard to, say, environmental issues, and as to their nationality with regard to foreign policy. I was amazed when my friend — who is still very much on the left/liberal continuum and a pacifist besides — thought that over for a moment and said, “Yes, you’re right, that’s true.”
Obama is a pathological liar. Bush isn’t. What more is there to say.
With personal virtue and political support/stubborness, you can get stuff done. Without it, you might as well jump off the bridge cause you ain’t getting victory from the corrupt, the clueless, and the arrogant.
McChrystal does understand what needs to be done to change the flow in Afghanistan. IT’s the same thing that was working in Vietnam, until Democrats and ‘smart power’ idiots came along that thought their economic mastery translated to war mastery. It is the same thing that did work in Iraq.
Insurgencies are insurgencies are insurgencies. A leader that can beat one, can beat the others given resource availability.
Margaret Thatcher in a 1981 speech:
For me, pragmatism is not enough. Nor is that fashionable word “consensus.” . . .
To me consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects–the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner “I stand for consensus”?
I am beginning to think that Mitsu IS the Mitsu Emulator.
Mitsu has a conscience redactor. People of a certain intelligence level combined with a certain ideological bent are very brilliant at not hearing what they don’t want to hear.
It’s not that they can’t compute what you have said. It is that they won’t allow what you have provided to change their mind. This requires an adroit manipulation of one’s mental compartments, but as the Soviet Tass and NKVD demonstrated, many people do have the requisite mental flexibility.
On the other hand, this kind of conscience redactor operating at your subconscious level does tend to make you rather dense on some subjects. It’s like a person forgets what was said 10s ago, and acts, now, as if nothing you said has changed anything in his mind.
Which is true. Nothing you have said has changed anything. The fact that these people have an IQ level, whether self-admitted or objectively compared, to criss cross various data points and manipulate information from diverse sources, doesn’t mean anything. What matters is not IQ, it is judgment and wisdom.
IQ has never mattered, except in tactical instances where speed at problem resolution was paramount. On the strategic level, what matters is whether you can make the connections or not, not how fast you can make them. Cause it doesn’t matter how fast you can make them, as physical reality won’t let you modify things fast enough for it to matter.
Mitsu thinks Obama is smart, that Mitsu, by voting for Obama, is himself smart, just shows the human error of the religious faith and belief that ‘smartness’ allows you to get things done.
What would possibly motivate anyone to take up such a position? Sometimes I think some of you just live in a strange fantasy world in which you make up adversaries with motivations that make no internal sense, just because it’s easier to think about things that way.
The schism you see here is a result of your lack of personal knowledge of Vietnam and why Edward Kennedy voted to cut off their funds.
You don’t know what would put people in such a situation because you don’t care to learn about those situations.
You’re not smart enough to declare true omniscient and know what is or is not going inside people’s heads. You were wrong on Bush, and wrong on Obama. There’s no magic bullet here. Pretending you know what’s inside people’s heads, is not even scientific, in that you don’t even present it as a hypothesis that requires evidence. You just declare it as fact, with no reasons other than that you believe it is true.
I want to mention, by the way, that though I disagree with my leftist friends on many issues – I do agree with them on some issues.
Your ideal of what is true is hopelessly self-centered. Perhaps you believe that, same as with Bill Keller, that sitting on a fence hearing ‘both sides of the issue’ makes you an objective observer, but that would be the wrong judgment to make.
The search for truth is not based upon agreeing some with that group over there, and then agreeing some with this group over here, and then declaring neutrality or moderation because you’re split down the middle.
There’s a basic epistemology problem here. A quality product, let’s take the New York Times for example, cannot be produced or maintained if all you do is to ‘react’ in knee jerk reflex to what ‘other people are saying’. What kind of standard is that? Is that objectivity? Is that even the truth? No, it isn’t. It’s just mixing up the opinions of two groups, using your judgment, to make yourself look like you aren’t taking sides.
I have said before that your judgment is inadequate, not to mention erroneous on key fundamental points. Others have chosen to argue your facts or presentation, and I leave them to it. But I always recognized that when your epistemology is hopelessly flawed, what point is there in contesting the facts? There is no common ground in determining whether facts happened or whether events are true if there are incompatible methodologies involved in deciding what is or is not knowledge.
When you look at two positions, opposite each, your way of thinking about them is not in any way shape or form like my own. I check the internal consistency, logic, and feasibility of each side’s arguments, totally independent of the other, in correlation to relevant details and histories. Then I check the other side’s consistency and logic. I don’t mix and match and say “look, I agree with things from both sides, that means I’m moderate and better able to form decisions than either side”.
You don’t have a better judgment capability because you think you agree with either side. Either you believe their methodology is right, or you don’t. It is as simple as that. Trying to pick and choose things requires the ability to create your own philosophy and world view. That would necessarily make it independent of anyone else’s view. But that’s not how you act. You often times use the claim that you are connected to either side as a way to dodge and evade the fundamental problems in your arguments.
My hope and prediction is Obama will go with his initial instinct and ramp up in Afghanistan, despite pressure from the left and from within his Administration. I hope I am right!
What would possibly motivate anyone to take up such a position? Sometimes I think … you just live in a strange fantasy world in which you make up adversaries with motivations that make no internal sense, just because it’s easier to think about things that way.
Hey, we agree! Or not. You see, it doesn’t matter if your conclusion looks the same as ours or McChrystal’s or Obama’s. What matters is how you got to the answer in the first place. Anybody can be right twice a day, if they are consistently broken. That’s not how we should decide how to resolve problems, however. Context. Wisdom. Judgment. Temperament. Character. These things matter more than whether something sounds right in the end, or even whether people agree that they sound right.
>it’s a horseshit study
I checked the study again by actually purchasing the paper and reading it in full — you are right that they compared mortality rates based on whether the study participant was insured at the time of interview. However, that obviously doesn’t invalidate the study, for obvious reasons. If in fact some of the uninsured at a given point in time later obtained insurance, yet their mortality rates are still 40% higher than the insured at a given point in time, that would argue that even brief periods of lack of insurance can have a major effect. Since the study controls for age, gender, ethnicity, income, education, health status at the time of interview, body mass index, exercise, smoking, and alcohol use… what other possible factor would explain why the uninsured (at a point in time) die at a rate 40% higher than the insured? The study also cites research indicating (as one might expect) that point in time lack of insurance is correlated with later lack of insurance, and also that intermittent coverage is also associated with worsening health and higher mortality (also as one would expect).
>He was roundly and thoroughly debunked
I’m just one person, and I don’t have time to respond to every comment everyone makes here — in fact I only have time to come over here and engage you guys periodically. However, the fact that someone posts a comment criticizing something I wrote doesn’t amount to a “debunking”; as I note above, Gray’s characterization of the Harvard study as “horseshit” simply doesn’t make mathematical or statistical sense. The only possible explanation for the result is that there’s some other factor correlated with being uninsured at a point in time which is highly correlated with mortality which they didn’t already account for — what would that be? Gray didn’t address that in his non-debunking of the study.
I’m just one person, and I don’t have time to respond to every comment everyone makes here –
That’s true only given the nature of the subject matter and details to which you raise, Mitsu.
Premises and logical traps can be easily explained, verified, or junked for everybody involved in the time it takes to go outside and write down the largest objects seen.
But that’s only true if it is the priority. It is not true if something else is the priority. When the devil is in the details, arguing the details is not going to reduce the complexity or time sink issue.
However, that obviously doesn’t invalidate the study, for obvious reasons.
There are more reasons than one for invalidating a study. A study about peanuts isn’t invalidated when a new DNA sequence of peanuts is created that debunks the ‘study’ of regular peanuts. But if the conclusion of the study on regular peanuts was that modified peanuts would be worse, obviously the possibility would exist for the actual peanuts in question to disprove a study.
Your methodology here is sloppy. “Obvious” reasons aren’t obvious in an argument. They are only obvious to you, the original proponent of that particular usage. Ipso facto, you have to justify your reasons, and not create self-justifications for them simply because you automatically label them ‘obvious’.
what other possible factor would explain why the uninsured (at a point in time) die at a rate 40% higher than the insured?
The simple explanation, not obvious to you, is that the un-insured are counting on emergency room post-problem care, rather than an insurance plan’s preventive care package or risk mitigating incentives. Obviously when people take riskier actions because they won’t have to pay for their care, while waiting until those problems avalanche, will have statistically higher problems than those who pay for their own care, and are motivated into taking preventive measures.
(also as one would expect).
These gross assumptions are an insult to the public body of discourse. As you would expect, not as one would expect. Your manifestly flawed epistemology does not automatically transmit to everybody else, individual or group, simply because you say it does.
The only possible explanation for the result
The only reason why you say there is a ‘only possible explanation for the result’ is because you think it is. And you think it is due to your personal limitations and beliefs on this score. What you based your judgment on for this concerns undisclosed assumptions and potentially fatally flawed premises. There is a major difference between feasible and possible. Everything is possible, but only some things are feasible.
Thus, it is not the only possible explanation. It is the only possible explanation from your point of view. This is not a particularly broad reaching one.
Afghanistan is a matter of direct national security importance; Honduras is not.
You pay little to no attention to honor, strength of character, or whether someone is a liar or not. This would tend to make you give preference to ideological and ‘intelligence’ criteria in deciding scale of threat or priority of problems.
Given your logic, Afghanistan wasn’t a matter of direct national security before 9/11. Things become issues for the nation’s security when you let it deteriorate enough. Advocating and defending Obama’s attempts to destabilize Honduras, on the justification that Honduras is not a current security issue to the US, is not a good idea. But you think it is.
I tried to look up your previous views on Iraq. If you would be so kind, validate whether you are the author or not of this piece.
Link
I’m just one person, and I don’t have time to respond to every comment everyone makes here…
I disagree with Mitsu on many things but having been a minority of one many times myself there is no getting around the statement above.
I agree, huxley, that’s true. There is a difference, however, between running out of time to engage on every front and simply continuing to repeat, as unchallengeable fact, statements that have been substantively challenged without acknowledging the challenges at all. However, I do believe Mitsu deserves a lot of credit for remaining civil even when trying to respond on multiple fronts to increasingly frustrated and sometimes hot-headed critics.
I really don’t know how we speak across the current red-blue divide.
Most of the debate is at the surface of the divide and people talk past one another for the most part and often with hot strident rhetoric.
The basic problems though are beneath the surface. We see the world in terms of different assumptions and attend to different sets of data, all infused with different emotional valences and associations.
At times neo reflects on these layers beneath the surface and that is the original quality that brought me here.
There is a difference, however, between running out of time to engage on every front and simply continuing to repeat, as unchallengeable fact, statements that have been substantively challenged without acknowledging the challenges at all.
Mrs Whatsit: I understand your frustration.
However, I do think it’s going to be a while before Mitsu again prefaces a passage here with “Clearly Obama is far more intelligent and competent than Bush”!
I often wonder if Mitsu reads the responses to his posts. He spends a lot of time defending “liberals,” whatever that term means. A lot of his concerns are semantic ones.
I spend a lot of my time here trying to explain what it is liberals believe, because I think at least there’s some hope of communication on that front, whereas it’s unlikely, it seems to me, that I’m going to convince many if any of you to change your minds about our policy differences. What I do hope to be able to do is at least clarify what it is our policy differences are, because a lot of the rhetoric here (as on other conservative sites) constantly conflates liberalism with Marxism, etc., which is simply wrong. Yes, liberals and conservatives disagree, but we don’t disagree as much as many of you seem to think.
Note that I’m not including Neo and a few others in this — it’s more the misconceptions I see coming from many commenters here I’m trying to address.
Ymarsakar: Most of your post amounts to “that’s just your opinion”, except here:
“The simple explanation, not obvious to you, is that the un-insured are counting on emergency room post-problem care, rather than an insurance plan’s preventive care package or risk mitigating incentives. Obviously when people take riskier actions because they won’t have to pay for their care, while waiting until those problems avalanche, will have statistically higher problems than those who pay for their own care, and are motivated into taking preventive measures.”
Yet that explanation is of course the whole point of the study — the uninsured avoid going to the doctor because of the fear of the large expense, and thus are more likely to die of untreated conditions, etc. That IS what most people think, particularly the authors of the study. The problem is, of course, that health insurance for people who don’t get it through their employer is often prohibitively expensive — it can be two or three times higher than group insurance. Furthermore insurance can be denied or even cancelled retroactively due to “preexisting conditions”. Finally, health care costs have been skyrocketing in this country, premiums have doubled in the last ten years. Something needs to be done. As I said above, I’m actually not as convinced as many Democrats that a public option is necessary — I think we could do just fine with some of the Republican proposals to create health care cooperatives and add private insurance regulations and a mandate for coverage.
Mitsu.
You keep going from strength to strength, not.
Individual health insurance costs less than group insurance.
I sell the stuff (uh-oh. somebody in the business, a leftie’s worst nightmare) and I can tell you about it.
Group insurance policies average pretty fat. The reason is that the associated higher premiums are deductible as a business expense, not reportable as income, and can be passed through to the consumer as a cost of doing business.
Individuals cannot afford to pay for an equivalent level of insurance where you wave your card and the bookkeeper kisses your shadow and never a bill will you see.
So, individual carriers charge less and, mysteriously, are able to provide less.
One thing common to all individual policies is the deductible. They range from $250 annually to $2500, before you get into the HSA area.
Another is co-pay. Once you get past the deductible, some or most expenses are split, usually 80-20, with the company paying the larger share. Then, once a maximum is reached, usually $5000 split, the company goes to paying 100% of usual&customary.
There are different contracts, but this is a good outline.
So if you go to the doctor before you have spent your deductible, you will pay out of pocket, precisely as if you had no insurance. Some contracts have preventive benefits, but they usually don’t include “going to the doctor”, but instead listed preventive testing procedures.
BTW. Medicare, even including Part B, leaves you paying substantial amounts. That’s why companies offer “Medigap” insurance. It’s to cover the…gaps. What Medicare does not pay.
The only difference between the insured and the uninsured as regards “going to the doctor” is the assurance the former has that any big deal discovered will be taken care of. That’s huge. But it doesn’t address the question of people hesitating to spend their deductible.
Deductibles, I should say, are frequent in group coverage as well.
But a person with a $2500 deductible and a 60-40 split for the next $5000 is going to be out a good deal of money no matter how you look at it. You only hope they saved–not spent–the difference in premium between that and a high-benefit plan.
one side has a false set of premises that they never test, the other side has common sense because they have tested premises and have more operational knowlege.
This is why the idea, when your young if your not a socialist you have no heart, and when your old, if you are a socialist you have no brain.
this is really what it boils down to most of the time. untested premises against a series of tested premises they refuse to accept follow that series.
a lot of the premises that are given them are immoral to test and their common sense is broken.
i can see this condition in so many things that happen that arent even political. like a girl here in ny who ended up dead when she started poking the man with the gun in the chest and giving him a piece of her mind.
this is not insanity, its belief in a false set of premises and an inability to calculate a reality or situation any more because of it (and so you get more info of how to be from the ones that sound right).
this is how i explain what a lot of what Ymarskar is talking about in a different way.
how could you explain to that girl that that is not a possible action that would lead to a good outcome in the vast majority of cases almost to certainty.
like many others they will NOT believe a premised argument as to why it wont work. its no different for socialism in the common mans mind (even with a high IQ – capacity does not mean the tank is full of what it can hold).
in a vast majority even very basic premises are not even possible. I told someone yesterday that it was not possible to tax a corporation. you either take money from shareholders or you take money from customers, but there is no entity that pays taxes, only an entity that sees that as one more in a long chain of expenses and rules they have to follow.
they challenge every statement and their views are so relative that they cant make any meaningful distinctions to actually learn the premises. and yet, they want to learn, and earn more money, and so on and so forth.
to sum the effect in one sentence..
they will talk to you about how we all must tax the rich because they have too much and at the same time be buying a small stack of lottery tickets.
If in fact some of the uninsured at a given point in time later obtained insurance, yet their mortality rates are still 40% higher than the insured at a given point in time, that would argue that even brief periods of lack of insurance can have a major effect.
Cuz insurance is like magic and keeps you from dying? Really, you cannot be this stupid.
“I’d better not go outside in the rain, I had a lapse in insurance 5 years ago so I am more likely to get sick and die.”
Maybe Insurance even has its own placebo effect; if you tell someone the are insured whether they are or not, they will be healthier and have a less chance of dying in the next nine years.
Obama doesn’t even need to cover everyone, he can just send out letters saying they are now covered and they will get better and have a lower chance of dying….
Do you understand that the results of that study fully support that idea. ‘Cuz it’s the horseshittiest of horseshit studies!
After the imbecility, gullibility and scientific illiteracy you’ve displayed on this thread, Harvard is going to send you a cease and desist letter to prevent you from claiming they gave you a degree.
Maybe they’ll send you a partial refund on your degree if you send them this thread….
However, thanks for making me feel really good about my simple engineering degree from a lowly state school.
Gray.
It may be post hoc, propter hoc.
I have a relation who is the aforementioned adamantinely, actively clue-resistant.
She has a friend who got hospital sick because she didn’t have health insurance, couldn’t afford it, and so didn’t go to the doctor when she was only a little sick. Now she has health insurance through some local program. I asked my relation who pays for it and she looked blank. How it got paid for had never crossed her mind. Sort of like electricity comes out of the wall.
Howsomever, the tale of her friend is a staple of our conversations over the years.
The friend is, for reasons having to do with a disfunctional family, probably, unable to plan ahead, resist shopping for stuff she can’t afford. She got new cabinets. I said what’s the problem. She’s got to put her groceries someplace. “She doesn’t cook. Doesn’t know how.” Buys prepared food from the grocery store deli section, take out from fast-food places, and nukes prepared dishes.
She’s always broke. Didn’t have much to begin with but can’t be convinced to cook. Simply doesn’t penetrate.
Point is, irresponsibility has a number of manifestations, and having a life without health insurance might be one of them, but it’s not the only one and others will certainly have effects on mortality. Don’t know if she smokes.
A guy named Eberstedt–economist or epidemiologist–did some math. If illegitimacy were a disease, it would be the number one killer of infants in the country.
Infant mortality is associated to a great extent with illegitimacy, both here, and as a control, in various European countries. The Gold Medal in irresponsibility is getting pregnant while unmarried. Hard to expect a woman who would do that would be the average, detail-oriented, plan-ahead, alert type of mother.
It may be post hoc, propter hoc.
It’s not even that. There is no correlation whatsoever.
Stated correctly, the premise of the study would be:
“Out of all the people who died for all reasons, how many reported no insurance coverage when we interviewed them 9 years ago?”
That is what the study actually tested for. It means nothing. You cannot draw any causation or correlation from it. Furthermore, they excluded people over 65 precisely because they are all covered as well as being more likely to die in the 9 years.
The study proves nothing. It is horseshit.
Meanwhile this is a topic about Obama, his generals and Afghanistan, not health care.
Frankly if I were Mitsu, I’m not sure how many of the posters here I would bother responding to.
Too much of these recent discussions remind me of my time on the left. If you didn’t agree right down the line, you were ritually insulted and trashed.
Getting back to the subject of Neo’s post – I believe we have all the answers we need in order to know what Obama is going to do in regards to Afghanistan.
His strategy seems clear: Lose the war, which is in tune with classic Progressivism, i.e., America must not win a war(because it doesn’t deserve to win, because the war is for the wrong reasons, because lives and treasury are lost, because the enemy is better than America, because the entity being defended is undeserving of defense, etc., etc., ad infinitum).
Main tactic:
He will nickel and dime McChrystal. No 40,000 troops. As an old bureaucrat I know this tactic well. Make it impossible for the job to be done by changing the procedures, setting up roadblocks, harassing and humiliating the victim in various ways, i.e., requiring a multitude of pointless reports, frequently requiring certain behavior that necessitates the victim being away from the job, delaying shipment of needed materials and cutting the budget. The beauty of this approach is that you can castigate the hapless victim later for not meeting goals. Sweet.
Second tactic:
He will also play the Karzai corruption like a dueling banjo. Irrelevancies and side issues like the recent fraudulent election and the drug connection, issues known by Obama and everyone else for some time will be pushed to a more prominent place and the MSM has already received its cue. The acrid smell of feigned shock and indignation will waft from certain columns and editorials.
Supporting tactic:
Any criticism, either implied or direct, from military quarters will be treated as rank disloyalty and painted in dark and contemptuous tones. Yes-men with stars on their shoulders will be recruited as accusers. Admittedly this has limited value as a mind changer but it will help to drive out certain troublesome thoughts from the consciousness of the public.
Expected outcome:
All this will send a message to our enemies and our allies: America cannot be trusted to stay the course and meet obligations. The insurgency will treat this message like a stimulant, draw strength from it and redouble its efforts. The peasants in Afghanistan will know that resistance to the Taliban and alliance with US troops will earn them, their families and their local tribe a grave. Every terrorist in Palestine, Syria, Iran and Pakistan will widen their smiles, chuckle and nod knowingly to each other. Every home-grown terrorist in Europe and America will take heart.
Some other likely tactics:
The Afghan War detracts from America’s security by needlessly draining resources.
I love this one: Lauding the President for the “agonizing” nature of his decision which will counter the fecklessness aspect.
Finally: A graceful bowing to the will of the people. As the war grows worse, as it inevitably will, along with the negative propaganda from the MSM, and public opinion widens in its opposition to the war, at some point Obama will feel he can withdraw the troops with political impunity.
Good work, grackle. That’s the stuff. We must anticipate and not merely react.
I think grackle nails it: Half-ass it until it gets bad and then cut-and-run with political impunity ‘cuz it got bad ‘cuz you half-assed it.
This strategy will appeal to all of the dirty liberals ‘cuz “war is bad for children and other living things” and most of the stupid Republicans ‘cuz “If we ain’t gonna win, why are we even over there!”
80% approval rating!
Meanwhile this is a topic about Obama, his generals and Afghanistan, not health care.
The two are inexorably and fiendishly linked: Obama is “slow-rolling” his generals in hopes of winning the healthcare battle.
Frankly if I were Mitsu, I’m not sure how many of the posters here I would bother responding to.
Frankly, if you were Mitsu, you would be disingenuous, gullible and intellectually inconsistent.
Too much of these recent discussions remind me of my time on the left. If you didn’t agree right down the line, you were ritually insulted and trashed.
I’m sure I offended you. I’m sorry. I enjoy and value reading your comments. Having never been ‘on the left’ myself, I enjoy your insights and comments based on your previous experiences.
Having been all nice and said that, I’d like to kick Kathleen Sebelius right in the middle of the ass.
Just one more Mitsu-related remark from me, and then I’ll leave it alone — Mitsu, thanks (sincerely) for trying to help us understand liberals, but bear in mind when you’re doing it that many of us are former liberals ourselves, still have plenty of liberal friends, and really don’t need the help. I, for one, have no real-world conservative friends other than my husband. All of the friends I’ve accumulated along the way and everybody in my family of origin (but me!) is a moderate-liberal Democrat, just as I used to be. It may be that one reason I get so frustrated sometimes with you is that I encounter the things you say and the way you think so often in my everyday life.
I think that, at least in Blue areas, it may be liberals who are more likely to know nothing about conservative people or ideas except what they think they know (along the lines of stupid bitter gun-clingers who don’t care about the poor . . . ) I can’t count how often I’ve heard a liberal friend say, “I’ve never heard anyone make that point before” or “I didn’t know that” when I (gently) make an argument or raise a fact that’s well-known among conservatives.
Mrs.
You’re kind to Mitsu. But wrong. He knows this stuff. It’s just that it’s difficult to convince him we do, too.
He keeps thinking he’s getting over on us.
Mrs Whatsit, you nailed it. 80% of my Facebook friends self-describe as Democrats. It would have been higher, except they didn’t count the avowed socialists and communists. We know liberals, and we know the difference between liberals and Leftists and between those who are a little pink and those who are Red.
Neo-neocon’s site is full of former liberals, so their thought processes are no surprise to most of us.
Most of us former liberals are still surrounded by them, so we know how difficult–almost impossible–it is to discuss matters with them. They usually change the subject, go into ad hominem mode, or get angry or insulting if challenged.
I’ve just about given up trying to discuss things with a liberal.
nice comment mrs whatsit
As Chairman Zero Dithers, Troop Morale Plunges
http://www.moonbattery.com/archives/2009/10/as_chairman_zer.html#comments
“The many soldiers who come to see us have a sense of futility and anger about being here. They are really in a state of depression and despair and just want to get back to their families,” said Captain Jeff Masengale, of the 10th Mountain Division’s 2-87 Infantry Battalion. …
“We’re lost – that’s how I feel. I’m not exactly sure why we’re here,” said Specialist Raquime Mercer, 20, whose closest friend was shot dead by a renegade Afghan policeman last Friday. “I need a clear-cut purpose if I’m going to get hurt out here or if I’m going to die.”
Mrs Whatsit is on to something that Mitsu and basically all the liberal-left miss.
Those of us on the center-right and right know the liberal-left gospel pretty well because we have that gospel preached to us directly everyday from the media, movies, and academy. Whereas the liberal-left mostly knows the right through a cartoon version filtered through those venues.
This has even been borne out in studies. Judith Warner in a NY Times article on Palin mentions the work done by Jonathan Haidt:
Haidt has conducted research in which liberals and conservatives were asked to project themselves into the minds of their opponents and answer questions about their moral reasoning. Conservatives, he said, prove quite adept at thinking like liberals, but liberals are consistently incapable of understanding the conservative point of view. “Liberals feel contempt for the conservative moral view, and that is very, very angering. Republicans are good at exploiting that anger,” he told me in a phone interview.
Haidt is an interesting character. For those interested in the psychological dimensions to politics, as many who come to this blog are, he is worth checking out. Try this article.
Whereas the liberal-left mostly knows the right through a cartoon version filtered through those venues.
and since there are more of them their false reality is dominant, as it was in the soviet union. and we also have cartoon versions of the originating places as well.
that is, they cartoon their enemies to control what their group thinks about them
and they cartoon others like them that are known, so that they appear different and their goals appear differnt. but its exactly the same.. EXACTLY (as much as it can be in reality).
the whole of the public has the cartoon image of the enemy as a whole, that the left has as their enemy in part.
we share reality on stalin, hitler, and such, that is just as false as the reality the left believes of the small government, limited powers, maximum freedom people..
i followed the link and he is an adorno guy…
Why in particular do working class and rural Americans usually vote for pro-business Republicans when their economic interests would seem better served by Democratic policies?
because with socialists you dont have a job…
We psychologists have been examining the origins of ideology ever since Hitler sent us Germany’s best psychologists, and we long ago reported that strict parenting and a variety of personal insecurities work together to turn people against liberalism, diversity, and progress.
he is a leftist socialist… his liberalism is not john stewart mills… and my family was strict. thats why my cousin died of aids as a leatherman, my wedding was attended by my cousing with her black boyfriend, and i married a chinses woman.
he is just trying to push an old old old thing…
“scientific socialism”
of which most of the work that kicked it off was the guys of the franfurt school. most importantly theodore adorno, who created a sham with the “authoritarian personality”.
a complete projection and a practice in inversion.
we have refined our diagnosis: conservatism is a partially heritable personality trait that predisposes some people to be cognitively inflexible, fond of hierarchy, and inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death.
really?
cognitively inflexible… he means of less ability to think than a collectivist can thing… more original than a collectivist, etc. (again opposite what it is)
afraid of uncertainty.. how so? they dont want the state to make their lives certain, they want the freedom to fail and to enter uncertain areas. isnt knowing that a big all powerful state taking care of you in exchange for self determination in an uncertain world, being afraid of uncertainty?
(again opposite what it is)
and on fond of hierarchy… communists have a fixed feudal class system with only two classes. the upper class is a complete strict heirarchy were no one below can thing other than what above tells them too, and no one below can question or oppose above. compared to communists, american structure in mitliary and life was decidedly not heirarchical other than a temporary state that constantly shifted as people moved up and down the structure.
(again opposite what it is)
and on inordinately afraid of uncertainty, change, and death… thats why they want to be independent and not know the future but leave it up to themselves.. thats why they are willing to go to war to defend their property rather than give up their freedom. they are afraid of death?
most of the military is conservatives… and its the neo liberals who want everything made safe certain, with no waves, and no changes. (again opposite what it is)
and on progress… who is into social justice that stagnates progress, who is into taking all profits away and so stagnate progress, who is into central planning which stagnates progress, who is into stagnating nature so nothign goes away, who is into stagnating nature so that the weather doesnt change, who is into stagnating development by shorting darwin and abortions?
(again opposite what it is)
never trust a shrink that discusses republicans and conservatives, and then conveniently leaves out adornos authoritarian personality so you dont know where his metnors and others got their crappy communist idea. remember the goal of the franfurt school was the destruction of the west or rather answer the question about the west. and so they did to the west and its supporting structures. and given that their goal was utopia, they lie
do a search on Elliot Turiel with adorno, and see all the quotes and refernces that come up.
its not a great piece…
it basically does what leftists always do. they dont understand it, or it doesnt fit, so throw it out.
if morality is about how we treat each other, then why did so many ancient texts devote so much space to rules about menstruation, who can eat what, and who can have sex with whom? There is no rational or health-related way to explain these laws. (Why are grasshoppers kosher but most locusts are not?) The emotion of disgust seemed to me like a more promising explanatory principle.
he never studied the culture he wanted to destroy..
why menstruation? that has to do with fertility and choices and mates… how much mroe conflect and murder do we have in our society because we dont adhere to these certain rules.
on food, it was discovered that by forbidding certain foods, groups of humans could get along becuse they didnt compete for the same food. so you will find certain neighboring groups not eating certain foods, while the other group does. its a cultrual way of saying i will eat X and you will eat y and we wont have to kill each other over subsistence resources.
grasshoppers and locusts are the same creature. but one is a pestilence the other is not. and many when they change create toxins and things that were not present in the original.
basically the culture came up with traditions that worked, and unlike the author, they didnt throw out what worked, they kept it.
todays scientists are like the incompetent car repair man who ends up with extra parts they think they dont need.
The book of Leviticus makes a lot more sense when you think of ancient lawgivers first sorting everything into two categories: “disgusts me” (gay male sex, menstruation, pigs, swarming insects) and “disgusts me less” (gay female sex, urination, cows, grasshoppers ).
yes,. we do relate our emotions to food and disgust, but he gets it bacwards.
he doesnt know the history of gays other than the history gays promote. in a world without medicine, the sexual practices of gays tend to be deadly. (connecting where you dispose waste with other thigns tends not to be very healthy, is it?)
menstruations purpose is to renew the womb and dump desease that may have collected there so that the baby can affix itself. so in the past, swaping human blood, liek today, was a path to desease. and of course there was not tampons and other things… so things were not so pleasant to be around. (on the rag is becuse we used rags).
and his disgusts me less matches the same reasons. interfemale sex is not as desease ridden as intermale sex. women do not mix faeces with their other things (generally). and often their practices dont swap fluids. and so its less disgusting cause fewer die from it in past times.
cows, well i am not sure where he gets that one from. cows are generally liked… either for food, or for the reaons the brahmans do. howecver if he cant explain good biological practices agtainst desease have a purpose and its reinforced by genetics, then he sure cant see that such self control icons also serve a purpose.
For my dissertation research, I made up stories about people who did things that were disgusting or disrespectful yet perfectly harmless. For example, what do you think about a woman who can’t find any rags in her house so she cuts up an old American flag and uses the pieces to clean her toilet, in private?
did he establish that lack of respect towards symbols amoutns to no harm? to him its perfectly harmless cause he serves one master, utopia. but to others we embue things we like with meaning. the flag is meaningless to him, but i bet if he was married and i said let me cut up your wedding ring, you would get the same answer as someone who thinks the flag is important.
the issue is not in which things we think are important, but whether we have the capacity to respect things we dont understand, dont like etc.
he certainly doesnt have that capacity, and so he cant understand any choice outside his own choices. and he says conservatives are that way.
i dont have time now to read the rest… but i sure hope he ends up describing how he turned his course.
i am surrrounded where i work by these people. they are dorknobs, and dumb as doorknobs. oh they have high iq, but they also suffer GIGO.
thanks for the article huxley… 🙂
on another quick note jaybean address is sending out this message…
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