Michael Crowley ruins an otherwise good post on the Obama administration’s engagement with Russia over the Iranian nuclear program with this aside: [Read more →]

Russell Arben Fox asks:

How should a distributist or localist or communitarian in America feel about proposals which would attempt to provide the same sort of equalization which Democratic party reformers are squawking about, but do so solely on a state-by-state (or perhaps region-by-region) basis?

Just more of the same? No different from any other kind of centralization? Or different in degree, but not in kind?

First, you have to remember that successfully reorienting our healthcare system requires two things: cost-sharing pools and competition. We need to do two things to achieve this:

1. National sale of insurance so that insurers can scrap together larger cost-sharing pools (which lead to lower premiums) and drive harder bargains with healthcare providers and suppliers.
2. An end to anti-trust exemptions so that health insurance consumers have choices and the industry can’t fix prices. Consumers of healthcare especially need the freedom to exit if they are unhappy with their insurer.

I think many localists and states’ rights advocates miss the larger picture when they advocate for more state control of health insurance. For one thing, many of the problems we currently face are rooted in state-based monopolies in the insurance industry, largely due to the restriction on interstate sale of health insurance and the anti-trust exemption these companies receive. This also leads to overcharging from the supply side and consequently unaffordable healthcare for many Americans.

This is a confusion of scope and scale. Simply because something is able to be sold on a national level does not mean it is in any way more or less “centralized” than if something is sold locally. The problem arises when monopoly or tyranny exist, not simply when something is very large. For instance, a local grocer could very well constitute a monopoly if it were the only grocer in town. It could then wield monopolistic power over the local community, driving up prices and driving down quality of goods and services. The same is true of healthcare. [Read more →]

I agree with conservatives like David Horowitz and John Hinderacker; in light of the shooting at Ft. Hood, we need to reassert and protect our values.  The question of course, is the who we’re protecting our values from.  Hint: it’s not Muslims.  But first, a few quick points about Muslim-American attitudes:

1. Muslim-American are overwhelmingly happy with their place in the United States:

Back in 2007, the Pew Research Center released the first comprehensive survey of Muslim-American attitudes.  According to the survey, nearly eight out of ten Muslim-Americans say that they are happy with their lives in the United States.  To break that down a bit, 24 percent of Muslim Americans would say that they are “very happy” with their lives, 54 percent would say that they are “pretty happy,” and only 18 percent would say “not too happy.”  Among the general public, those numbers are 36 percent, 51 percent and 12 percent respectively.  Which brings me to my next point…

2. Most Muslim-Americans see no conflict between religious commitment and living in a modern society:

63 percent of Muslim-Americans say that they see no conflict between being a devout Muslim and living in a modern society.  What’s more, a strong plurality of Muslims (43 percent) say that Muslims coming to America today should adopt American customs.  By contrast, only 26 percent say that they should remain distinct, and 16 percent say that they should try both.  Indeed, reading through the report, the vast majority of data suggests that on the whole, Muslims are glad to be in the United States and happy with the opportunities the country provides them.

Unfortunately, a good majority of Muslims are also worried about various forms of discrimination, racism, prejudice and stereotyping.  19 percent of Muslims say that they are worried about discrimination/racism/prejudice, 15 percent are worried about being viewed as terrorists, 14 percent are worried about ignorance of Islam, and 12 percent are worried about stereotyping.

This is a really important point.  Contra the Hinderaker’s and Horowitz’s, we have absolutely nothing to fear from the 2.5 million Muslims who call the United States home.  It’s to our credit as Americans that we have built a society where people of different religious beliefs and cultural traditions can live and work in peace without fear of harassment.  Insofar that we should worry about anything, it’s those who would ostracize Muslims and use the weight of the federal government to isolate them.  Anger and hostility breed hatred and extremism, and if we want to remain a society committed to tolerance and mutual respect, then we should work our hardest to marginalize anti-Muslim voices.

The numbers of dead and wounded are different according to the source, but it looks like American soldiers opened fire on other soldiers at a Texas Army base.  According to the New York Times: [Read more →]

This exchange between Rod Dreher and Ta-Nehisi Coates on the basis of opposition to same-sex marriage is interesting, if only because it provides another striking example of how ones identity has an incredible impact on how one views the world and other human beings.  That is, it’s pretty easy to believe that bigotry drives political action against same-sex marriage when you yourself belong to a minority group that was a regular target of disenfranchisement (or worse) for more than a century.  That said, while I see where Dreher is coming from, if Pew has their numbers right, the data is firmly on Ta-Nehisi’s side:

49 percent of Americans believe that homosexuality is “morally wrong,” while only 9 percent view it as morally acceptable.  35 percent say that homosexuality isn’t a moral issue at all, and 7 percent say that it depends (and I’m not sure what that means, at all).  Broken down by age, the numbers tell a familiar story: a solid majority of Americans 50 and older view homosexuality as morally wrong (about 53 percent), whereas only 38 percent of the 29 and younger crowd feels similarly.  Surprisingly (to me at least) a slight majority – 51 percent – of Americans aged 30-49 view homosexuality as morally wrong.  Though if disaggregated, the number of people who disapprove of homosexuality might be greater at the end of the age distribution.

If there’s any takeaway from this, it’s that we really should stop underestimating the extent to which raw prejudice drives political decisions.  As Freddie remarked on Twitter recently:

It has become impolite to say so, in either direction, but never doubt many in this country hate and fear gay people.

The corollary to this, of course, is that in a country where a near-majority is morally opposed to homosexuality, it is ridiculous (and almost cruel) to expect gay people to rely exclusively on legislatures as they fight to secure their rights as American citizens.  And that’s especially the case when you realize that when legislative efforts are successful, there is almost always an immediate effort to rescind or overturn the legislation.  The simple fact is that if current demographic trends hold true, a majority of Americans will eventually support marriage equality.  In the meantime though, I think LGBT activist groups should take a page from the Civil Rights Movement and again begin focusing their challenges on the courts.  It simply doesn’t make any sense to rely on the generosity of the majority (indeed, if black people did, segregation would have lasted for a whole lot longer).

Or at least it does in my hometown, which voted overwhelmingly against what would amount to an average of $11 more a year in property taxes to shore up a failing school budget.   [Read more →]