Who on the left is readable?

The New Neo Posted on by

Jay Nordlinger asks an interesting question:

Do you have a go-to lefty? Someone or someones who will give you the best arguments of the “liberal” side? (I hate the corruption of the sterling word “liberal,” but there’s nothing that can be done about it.) Do you have writers whom you turn to for the sake of “balance”? Liberals who are interesting, honorable, and worthwhile?

Mickey Kaus would be the person who comes to mind for me, and Camille Paglia—although both, and the latter especially, can’t really be pegged as “liberals,” exactly. I’ve linked to both of them before.

After that there’s a tremendous falloff, except for people in the process of change from left to right, who really don’t fall into the same category.

Commenter “Eric” mentioned this essay by Tom Junod the other day, and I have to say I liked it very much indeed. You can feel Junod’s natural intelligence and honesty struggling mightily against his kneejerk tendency to parrot the party line, and—in that article, at least—his thoughtfulness wins out.

I also developed a bit of a fondness for Timothy Noah when I read his debate with William Voegeli on income inequality a while back. At least in that particular exchange (I’ve read little else by him) he seemed thoughtful, respectful, knowledgeable, and witty, and although I thought Voegeli won the debate, I thought Noah acquitted himself well.

You may note that at the time of that exchange Noah was a writer for TNR, but he’s a writer for TNR no more. He was summarily fired by Franklin Foer when the new owner came on board and decided that the magazine was going to become an even emptier and more leftist rag than ever. Noah landed at MSNBC, not exactly the open-minded venue either.

So that’s it for me. How about you?

Ever hear of temporary health insurance?

The New Neo Posted on by

Articles such as this one puzzle me somewhat:

Nelson, who will be 62 in January, said he had been without health insurance since 2009 and is trying to get coverage for him and his wife…

He was skeptical about Covered California’s offer of a grace period for those who were unsuccessful in signing up for coverage Monday.

“But that’s predicated upon, among other things, getting the first step done so that I can apply. But I can’t get the first step done, so I don’t think it would apply,” said Nelson, who has a doctorate degree in natural sciences. “And I’m sure there will be a lot of people like me.”

I have no doubt there are. And, having spent a great deal of time on the California website myself doing research, I’m not defender of the site (nor of Obamacare, as anyone who reads this blog regularly knows).

But my point is this: why are so many people such as Nelson so very frantic at the moment? I fully understand why people who already had coverage that’s ending in January would be scrambling and almost desperate to get coverage that picks up where theirs left off. And I understand why those with pre-existing conditions who had trouble getting it before would be chomping at the bit as well. But for someone such as Nelson, who had no coverage before and who appears to have no pre-existing health condition that would drive him pronto to the doctor, why the terrific rush to get covered immediately? The Obamacare penalty doesn’t kick in unless a person hasn’t enrolled by March 31, 2014, and by my math that’s a full three months away. The present deadline (whatever it was or is) is only for coverage beginning on January first of 2014. If a person isn’t ill, and hasn’t had coverage in years, there’s nothing exceptional about that date, although it’s understandable to want to be covered as soon as possible.

But if a person is really eager to be covered tomorrow (and I mean “tomorrow” literally) there are temporary alternatives. Most people don’t seem to realize, and most newspapers don’t appear eager to tell them, that if they don’t have pre-existing conditions they can sign up in the meantime for what’s called “temporary” health insurance. It’s catastrophic insurance and non-compliant with the Obamacare regulations and therefore does not protect against the penalty if it’s held past March 31, 2014, but it’s better than nothing, and it’s relatively inexpensive (and, by the way, gives you choice of any doctor you want).

Several reputable companies sell it; it hasn’t been outlawed yet. The buyer pays month-to-month or in one lump sum for up to six months in California (a person can sign up for two 6-month periods, but that’s the limit in California and many other states). A person can drop it as soon as he/she obtains permanent coverage from Obamacare or elsewhere.

So someone like Nelson (who appears to have no pre-existing conditions; at least, the article doesn’t mention any) could buy temporary insurance, and as long as he drops it by March 31, 2014 and picks up Obamacare-compliant insurance instead, he won’t even be liable for the Obamacare penalty. For a 62-year-old man in California in the San Luis Obispo area such as Nelson, a policy with a $7,500 deductible would cost about $275 a month (I checked) or about $199 a month if paid for by the lump-sum method. For a man of 32, living in the same area, that same policy ($7,500 deductible) would cost about $77 a month, or a little over $52 a month if paid for in one 6-month lump sum (and not much more for a deductible of $2,500, although the differential for someone of Nelson’s age would be much greater).

That’s a lot less than either person would pay for regular insurance under Obamacare. It’s even less than most would pay with subsidies under Obamacare. And although temporary insurance only pays once the buyer meets that deductible, and therefore everything prior to that must be paid for out-of-pocket, it offers some peace of mind against catastrophic loss. Isn’t that what insurance was originally supposed to do?

Not a perfect solution, to be sure. But many people might prefer it to nothing and to anxiety while waiting for the recalcitrant website. Not only does it protect from catastrophic events, but it would buy time to let the Obamacare situation sort itself out at least a bit, if such a thing ever happens.

So I repeat: what’s the big rush to get Obamacare for those who don’t have pre-existing conditions? I think it’s because most people don’t even know about the existence of temporary insurance. Why the newspapers seem to be keeping mum about this option I’m not sure, but my guess is that they either are unaware of it too, or they are reluctant to say anything that would lessen people’s motivation to buy Obamacare ASAP.

I’ve had temporary health insurance myself in the past (I think I’ve mentioned that I’ve had almost every kind of health insurance under the sun), and I really liked it. It was exactly what I was looking for: low premiums, protection from the worst, with everything else out of pocket. My only regret was that I was forbidden by law keep on buying it past the two 6-month periods. Somehow the government decreed—even years ago, before Obamacare—that there needed to be rules to “protect” people from this sort of thing.

Hey, let’s have more government involvement in health care

The New Neo Posted on by

Because it’s working out so well.

It occurs to me that the category “health care reform,” which I created on this blog in 2009 and have since assigned to this post and to over three hundred others, seems more and more Orwellian every day. I suppose it depends on what the meaning of the word “reform” is, but all the usual definitions involve the idea of change for the better—of improvement. But perhaps what’s meant by Obamacare is re-form, as in “to mold anew into a different shape, not necessarily a better one.”

A good question

The New Neo Posted on by

From Victor Davis Hanson, on how the precedents Obama has set could result in a changed America even after he leaves office:

So we are living in scary times. The nation has grown used to the idea that what the president says is probably either untrue or irrelevant ”” and yet it does not really any more care which.

The people also assume that it doesn’t matter if our pundits talk of the person in the White House as a “messiah” who prompts tingling legs, or if they take notice of perfect pant-leg creases, or, of course, if they declare that he is the smartest president ever.

The result, in the Age of Obama, is a deeply rooted cynicism that works out something like the following: The president of the United States is now an iconic figure and thus cannot be held to the minimal standards of veracity demanded of other Americans. The press is an advocate of his agenda and picks and chooses which scandals can be half-heartedly pursued without endangering their shared vision.

How could the media possibly repair its sullied reputation without appearing abjectly hypocritical or artificially zealous? How can the next president resist assuming the extra-constitutional prerogatives of the current one?

I’m not so sure that people have become quite as blasé as all that. Also, it wouldn’t be such a bad thing if distrust of a president leads to less willingness in the future to turn power over to the central government. But what Hanson is saying is that the combination of this distrust, an acceptance of it, a president willing to abuse his power by extending it in extra-constitutional ways, and a press inclined to give him a pass on his abuses, bodes very ill for the republic.

I would like to reassure him on one score, though: if a Republican is elected president, we’ll see the press immediately snap back to its traditional role as critic and gadfly, and this will help shape many people’s perceptions of that president even though some may see it as a hypocritical double standard on the part of the press. It’s only with a Democrat (such as, for example, Hillary, who would also be the first woman president) that they’ll continue to go all woozy, although I don’t know if we’ll ever again see the extreme degree of worship they extended to Obama. For starters, there can be no second first African-American president. What’s more, Obama cast a spell over them in some additional ways—the power and basis for which I don’t completely understand although I’ve theorized and studied and written about them for six years—that even Democratic successors may have difficulty duplicating.

So the campaign slogan for the next Republican candidate for president could be: “Vote for me, and help the press start doing its job again!”

Merry Christmas!!

The New Neo Posted on by

holiday-cheer-christmas-tree.gif

On Christmas Day—blog?
I’d rather have grog,
Or maybe eggnog,
Then go walk the dog.
Or watch a Yule Log,
And eat like a hog,
Then go for a jog.
Blogging’s a bog.
My mind’s in a fog,
Or maybe agog
From much dialogue.
I’ll return to the slog
Tomorrow, and blog.

This is another recycled poetic effort. Be sure to click on the links to get the full flavor. By the way, the link for “the dog” goes to a photo of a dog almost exactly like my dog, who’s been gone about 10 years now. One Christmas we spent the entire day at a dog hospital having his stomach pumped (or charcoaled, or something like that) because he’d eaten some chocolate (minus the wrappers) that was inadvertently left within reach. He was a wonderful wonderful dog nevertheless.

Merry Christmas! Hope you’re all having a great one!

‘Twas the Blogger’s Night Before Christmas

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP.]

[NOTE: This small poetic effort of mine has become somewhat of a holiday tradition at neo-neocon. So here (with a few words changed for the sake of meter) it comes again—just like the holiday itself. Merry Christmas Eve to you all!]

‘TWAS THE BLOGGER’S NIGHT BEFORE CHRISTMAS

‘Twas the night before Christmas, when all through the ”˜sphere
Bloggers were glad to see Christmas draw near.
Their laptops were turned off and all put away
The bloggers were swearing to take off the day.

Their children were nestled all snug in their beds
While visions of extra time danced in their heads
With a father or mom not distracted by writing
No posts to compose, and no links to be citing.

But we all know that vows were just meant to be broken
And the vows of a blogger can be a mere token.
There’s always a chance that some sort of temptation
Will rise up to make them of fleeting duration.

For instance, there might be found under the tree
A sleek Mac; well, what better sight could there be?
And who could neglect it and wait the whole day?
It cries to be tried out, one just can’t delay.

Or maybe somewhere there’s a fast-breaking story
Important, and possibly leading to glory.
It can’t be ignored, there’s really no choice,
So add to the din every blogger’s small voice.

And then there are some who may just like to rhyme
(I’m one who at times must confess to this crime),
And it’s been quite a while since Clement Clarke Moore
Wrote his opus (though authorship’s been claimed by Gore)””

So it seems about time it was newly updated
And here’s my attempt””aren’t you glad you all waited?
Forgive if it sounds a bit awkward to read.
In writing, I set a new record for speed.

I had to get under the wire and compose it
Before Christmas Day. Now it’s time that I close it.
But let me exclaim (or, rather, I’ll write)
Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night!

Turley: morality and law

The New Neo Posted on by

[NOTE: In this post I discuss an article by Jonathan Turley about morality and law. In his piece, he doesn’t really go into the underpinnings of his argument, but what he’s dealing with is a heavy-duty issue that has plagued legal scholars and caused fierce debate for ages. I refer you to two much longer articles on the general subject, which tap into larger issues concerning post-modernist moral relativism in law: here and here.]

Jonathan Turley, a George Washington University Law School professor and the lead lawyer in the recent “Sister Wives” case in Utah, has written a celebratory piece about the verdict.

The court did not, by the way, legalize plural marriage, although in the first few paragraphs Turley seems to imply that it did (he clarifies it somewhat a bit later, but the facts could escape the casual reader). The case merely challenged, successfully, a Utah law against plural cohabitation of a quasi-plural-marriage nature (the “Sister Wives” husband is only legally married to one woman, but lives with three others in what amounts to a de facto plural marriage).

Here’s Turley:

…[T]he Utah ruling is one of the latest examples of a national trend away from laws that impose a moral code. There is a difference, however, between the demise of morality laws and the demise of morality. This distinction appears to escape social conservatives nostalgic for a time when the government dictated whom you could live with or sleep with. But the rejection of moral codes is no more a rejection of morality than the rejection of speech codes is a rejection of free speech. Our morality laws are falling, and we are a better nation for it.

Turley fails to define “morality laws,” but my guess is he is referring to laws about sex between consenting adults, as well as other laws that seem to rest at first glance on a similar conventional “morality.” However, many more laws than that—and, according to some thinkers and legal scholars, all laws—have elements both large and small that involve the enforcement of moral codes both overt and covert.

Turley misrepresents the position of social conservatives and the law. Most social conservatives are not “nostalgic for a time when the government dictated whom you could live with or sleep with.” Social conservatives generally believe that such laws are not something imposed from above on an unwilling populace, but expressive of basic mores and beliefs in our culture, and that these beliefs have been steadily undermined not only by judges, but in more basic ways by the educational system and the press and entertainment industry. The law is only part of that.

Turley writes that rejection of moral codes has no relationship to the rejection of morality. But that seems absurd on the face of it. No relationship? It may not have a one-on-one, directly causative and linear relationship, but it surely has some relationship. The two feed into each other and reinforce each other, with rejection of behavioral rules once thought to be the bedrock of morality sometimes leading the way, and rejection of laws underlining and enforcing those rules sometimes taking the lead.

Turley posits that we are a better nation for the fact that “our morality laws are falling.” I suppose we just have to take that on faith, because it’s not readily apparent and Turley makes no special case for it. Turley finishes his column with a paragraph that aptly states and summarizes the basic attitude of the left and of many libertarians as well towards the issue of law and his still-undefined “morality”:

In truth, 19th-century Americans were no more moral than we are today. It simply appeared that way with the imposition of official morals, including (as Santorum recalls so fondly) being told whom we could love in our own homes. It is not a single moral voice that is heard today but a chorus of voices. Each speaks to its own values but joins around a common article of faith: the belief that morality is better left to parents than to politicians.

Again we have the idea that laws are imposed from above with no input whatsoever from the society that develops them. It’s as though space aliens dropped in to decree what would be allowed and what wouldn’t. And why is the individual morality of parents a superior standard to that of society as a whole? Do those “politicans” make the law in a vacuum, or are they not answerable to the people who elect them?

There’s much more—because this is a huge topic. But I’ll leave it at that for now—and to you.

To Santa or not to Santa?

The New Neo Posted on by

That is the question.

Here’s an article about people who either grew up without Santa or decided not to foist the belief on their own kids. Their stories vary. But I’ve got a story, too.

When I was a small child I believed in Santa. That is, I did until one night when I was four, when my seven-year-old brother decided to have a little fun with me.

He called me to his room and went over to the window, pointed up at the sky and told me with great excitement that he could see Santa’s sleigh. “Right there!” he said, and pointed again, up and over to the left.

I looked and looked and looked, straining with every fiber of my being to see. Maybe the sled was very high up and looked very small? But try as I might, no Santa.

“Don’t you see him?” my brother asked. “Right there!” he said, pointing again with great insistence.

But it was no go. It was just the sky, the stars, and the moon, looking as they always had.

Finally he said dropped the act and intoned, “Actually, you’re not going to see Santa, because there is no Santa. He’s just pretend.”

“No!” I shrieked. I was used to his teasing, but this was going too far. No Santa? How absurd.

Outraged, I ran to my mother, wailing, “He told me there’s no Santa! Make him stop!”

Now, I suppose my mother had a choice. She could either claim he was wrong and perpetuate the Santa myth for a while, or reluctantly and prematurely tell me the truth. I don’t know which would have been better, but she chose the latter.

I must say the news was a bitter disappointment. And I did feel a sense of betrayal; why had they lied to me in the first place?

If I’d been older, or if the revelation had been less traumatic, I don’t think the whole thing would have bothered me. But this particular memory was sharp enough that, when I became a mother myself, although we spoke to our son about Santa we didn’t over-empathize it. Gifts at the holiday time came from people; Santa was someone you went to see at the mall. Oh, and we did have a tradition of reading aloud “‘Twas the Night Before Christmas” every Christmas Eve. That seemed to be just about the right amount of Santa for us.

Ho, ho, ho!

santa2

Freedom of speech and the PC-crowd: whatever happened to the leftists of the 60s?

The New Neo Posted on by

Ace has a great article about the recent suspension of Phil Robertson and the firing of Justine Sacco because of non-PC speech:

A&E has the right to fire or suspend Robertson. So what? The argument is not about what people can do, it’s about what they should do.

Indeed. These company actions have a very chilling effect on freedom of speech despite their legality.

But there’s another angle, as well. Companies are primarily in the business of making money. My guess is that if Robertson had said the same thing without it having been broadly published or broadcast—for instance, if he’d said it in private to the CEO of A&E—there would have been no suspension. Or, if Sacco’s tweet had only been read by a few of her friends and not become an online cause célé¨bre, she’d still be working at IAC and the worst that might have happened to her is that a few people would have unfriended her on Facebook.

But once each statement became famous and notorious, and the drumbeat for punishment grew stronger, A&E and IAC executives most likely thought there would be negative economic fallout for them if they didn’t do something to show themselves on the side of The Good. A&E didn’t think quite far enough to see the possible backlash to that action. But I strongly suspect their motives regarding Robertson had less to do with stifling speech and more to do with succumbing to the pressure of others that they stifle speech or else.

The latter impulse is actually even more cowardly than the first one, because a company would be acting in fear rather than out of its own convictions (although perhaps in this case it was both). At any rate, Ace highlights an interesting question Ann Althouse asked, and he answers it, too:

At the end of her post, Althouse asks:

“Why is the left taking the narrow view of the concept of freedom? It’s a general principle, not something you save for your friends. Like Paglia, I remember the broad 1960s era commitment to free speech. There was a special zeal to protect those who said outrageous things. Today, we’re back to the kind of repression that in the 60s seemed to belong to the 1950s. What the hell happened?”

I can answer this: They came into power.

This is a human thing, I’m afraid, and not a failing specifically located on the left.

Those who have less power — who fear coercion more — will naturally tend to argue for the widest possible latitude, the largest zone of tolerance, for “weird” beliefs, statements, or practices.

Those with more power — who fear coercion less, because, end of the day, they’ll be the ones doing the coercing — will naturally become more and more hostile to the idea that people can do whatever they like.

Ah, the 60s! Ann Althouse and I are of the same generation, but Ace is young enough (at least, by my estimate) to have no personal memory of that much-ballyhooed decade. I’m with Ace in saying that the left has the motivation now to let out its inner thug, but that thuggish point of view was always in evidence. The Left, even back in the 60s, did not have a live and let live attitude towards points of view with which it was in disagreement.

Yes, there were some free-spirited souls on the Left who really did champion tolerance of speech with which it disagreed, but they were always few and far-between. The hard Left and the love/peace hippie movement overlapped—but not all that much, except so far as the former was merely hiding and biding its time among the ranks of the latter. I saw enough of the hard Left in the 60s to notice the presence of a stifling and totalitarian impulse. And of course we had the example of Communism to see that trend in its full and sickening flower.

Orwell knew this impulse well, and in his book Nineteen Eighty-Four he came up with the idea of an invented language (“Newspeak“) having the goal of making it less likely that a person could state thoughts that ran counter to the Party line, or even to think them (“thoughtcrime“).

In Nineteen Eighty-Four it was the Thought Police who enforced the rules, scanning and seeking out any citizens–especially prominent ones, rather than proles—who needed restraining and retraining and maybe even destroying. The present-day PC-crowd, and groups such as GLAAD (whose website has the somewhat ironic tagline [emphasis mine] “leading the conversation for lgbt equality”), have become the new Thought Police. As the years have passed, and discriminatory acts and/or laws against gay people have become less common, they feel they must move on to the fight against speech and even thoughts they find offensive, and harness their power to silence and suppress them. Then, and only then, can we have a proper “conversation.”

Liberty, equality, security

The New Neo Posted on by

[BUMPED UP]

Commenter “Mrs Whatsit” observes:

“In my lifetime I never thought I would see anything like this,” said [commenter] Mythx. Oh, me too. In the early 1980s one of my law professors (wish I could remember which one) cautioned us that all that kept the Constitution going was the choice of our lawmakers and citizens to continue to respect it and continue to observe it ”” that whenever that choice ceased, so would the Constitution cease, and so would cease our greatness as a country. At the time, I listened uneasily and told myself that of course that respect would continue, that Americans would never be dumb enough to toss aside what made us great. Of course not. Only I was wrong, we are that dumb ”“and here we are.

We are that dumb. We are that ignorant of the lessons of history.

And we are that human. There seems to be something in human nature that inclines societies in this direction. For every person who values liberty, how many are there who would prefer security (or at least what they perceive as security)? I don’t know the ratio and I think it varies over time and place, but right now the latter group appears to be markedly in the ascendance.

But the tendency is there in all times and places, and there are always those who would dearly love to exploit that tendency for the sake of power and control. Sometimes it’s done “for their own good,” and sometimes just for the sake of power and control itself and/or riches and/or glory, although they usually pretend to be more well-intended than that.

In this context, the classic passage from Dostoevsky’s Grand Inquisitor keeps coming to mind. I’ve published it so many times on this blog I’ve lost count, but it never grows old and it never ceases to be relevant—unfortunately:

Oh, never, never can [people] feed themselves without us [the Inquisitors and controllers]! No science will give them bread so long as they remain free. In the end they will lay their freedom at our feet, and say to us, “Make us your slaves, but feed us.” They will understand themselves, at last, that freedom and bread enough for all are inconceivable together, for never, never will they be able to share between them! They will be convinced, too, that they can never be free, for they are weak, vicious, worthless, and rebellious. Thou didst promise them the bread of Heaven, but, I repeat again, can it compare with earthly bread in the eyes of the weak, ever sinful and ignoble race of man?