I think this post is mostly just a bit of being a punk, and as you know, I’m a big supporter of being a bit of a punk. But come now, Conor. One policy position that’s important with Democratic activists is health care reform, which continues to poll well when removed from the context of one party and one ideology despicably, flagrantly and knowingly lying and fear-mongering about it. And an example that Conor seems to think is self-evidently unpopular, the legalization of drugs, is in fact quite popular when it comes to the only drug Democrats would actually consider legalizing, marijuana.

One wonders what, exactly, Conor thinks has been happening for the last several years, as surely two landslide elections sweeping out conservative politicians everywhere would have to have at least some electoral support. Not to mention the fact that, while conservatives traditionally led in brand-identity and self-identification, liberal policies have consistently outpolled their conservative counterparts. I mean, surely Conor is aware that withdrawal from Iraq, a Democratic policy proposal, has been broadly popular for many years and remains so today; that abortion access with some restrictions, despite some rightward movement recently, remains a majoritarian American position; that a majority of Americans think that Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell should be repealed; etc.

Of course, one iron-clad rule of mainstream conservative thought is that conservative policy proposals and the conservative vision must be insanely popular at all times, and that any evidence to the contrary is to be ignored or derided. (No matter what the situation, the first impulse among movement conservatism: declare victory.) Maybe Conor is falling into that trap here. I can understand it; it’s been such a furiously guarded notion since the time of Reagan that it can be hard to let go.

But mostly, I think Conor is just rattling the cage a bit, being a bit of a punk (in the good way), and earning himself some cred to use on cute conservative girls he meets at those Georgetown soirees I keep hearing about.

So– Conor Clarke has written to me to suggest that I have misrepresented him here. (And misspelled his name.) The offending post is here, and the offending line is, “both sides have crazies, and that they are exactly the same in number and influence.” I was responding, in part, to this post, but more generally to what I felt at the time was an unwillingness for people to accurately reflect the tenor and size of the less honest parts of the town hall protests. But, of course, it was stupid to say “like Conor Clarke” while complaining about more people than Conor Clarke, and egregiously bad form to complain about him specifically and not link to any work of his. What I said above, I understand now, is not Conor’s view. It was a stupid and unfair thing to say, I shouldn’t have said it, and I apologize to Conor.

The Wind
by James Stephens

The wind stood up, and gave a shout;
He whistled on his fingers, and

Kicked the withered leaves about,
And thumped the branches with his hand,

And said he’d kill, and kill, and kill;
And so he will! And so he will!

… from Mac fans if this or this had been the doing of Microsoft or Steve Ballmer. But it was Apple and Steve Jobs, so it’ll be stony silence, or yet more hero worship, fanboy-ishness, equivocation, and abandonment of discretion and the critical capacity. [Read more →]

You know, Marc, maybe you should just stop digging. Just a thought.

You can count me among those who, in regards to the Abdelbaset Ali al-Megrahi situation, think a life sentence means just that– you spend the rest of your life in prison, and it doesn’t matter if you’re going to die of old age or of bowel cancer or whatever else. You’ve been condemned to live and die in prison.

It seems to me that one of the chief reasons that a life sentence is such a terrible punishment is not only that you must spend your life in prison, but that you must spend your death there, as well. In the moment that we would all like to take place with a modicum of dignity, and in what must be the most profoundly personal and rightfully lonely of one’s existence, to endure it with all the indignity, lack of control and worst of all, lack of privacy that prison ensures, is a punishment in and of itself, a sentence not of death but in death. It’s something I would never want to contemplate; it seems to me a truly terrible thing. But civil society must have terrible punishments for terrible crimes, and the horrific and intentional murder of dozens of innocents in the commission of terrorism most certainly fits the bill.

I believe in the ability of criminals to pay their debt, I believe in rehabilitation, and I believe in compassion. But I also believe that some crimes are horrible enough that a fair and impartial jury may say, “For your crimes, we have determined that you will never, ever again be free.”

is entirely right, and on the occasion of his post, I say again that the culturally and socially liberal leanings of many reporters cannot begin to overwhelm the reflexive, self-congratulatory political anti-leftism of the national media. Many people, foremost “a little criticism for column A/a little for column B”-style Broderist centrists like Conor Clark, have taken the occasion of the health care debate and town hall lunacy to say that both sides have crazies, and that they are exactly the same in number and influence, and on and on. That sort of pleasant fantasy is destructive enough simply for how it occludes our understanding of reality, but it’s particularly a problem because, as Greenwald ably describes, the factual accuracy of the opinions of one side or the other’s more vocal members has no bearing on how they are treated by the media and blogosphere.

Update: From the comments of Greenwald’s piece:

“The Maturation Cycle of Bush Administration Scandals

1. Crazy, hysterical, paranoid accusation by wild-eyed, partisan, left-wing loonies.

2. Old news.”

Exactly right. When stories like this first came out, they were the opinions of crazed, socialist loons, according to our media. When they are proven to be true, hey, who cares. Yesterday’s news.

Why, it’s almost enough to make you doubt whether the media actually has a liberal bias….

from Gregg Easterbrook: “While the fixed vote in Iran received extensive international attention, the world paid no notice to an honest election in Indonesia — the world’s largest Muslim nation. As recently as the 1970s, Indonesia was a repressive military dictatorship; gradually it has become a democracy with a civil-society basis and freedom of speech, plus strong economic growth. And America did not force this outcome on Indonesia or, for that matter, have anything to do with what happened — Indonesians made their nation a democracy entirely on their own. Why do the same politicians and pundits who have limitless breath to denounce the troubled Muslim nations say nothing about the success story of Muslim Indonesia? Islamist fanatics hate freedom in Indonesia as much as they hate it in the United States and Europe, and have committed awful crimes against Indonesia democracy. But the world only notices Indonesia when a bomb goes off there — how about some notice for social and economic progress?”

Conor’s new piece for AFF on Andrew Breitbart and the conservative/Hollywood divide. I think his analysis is exactly right. [Read more →]

when people can’t take any dubious argument, shoehorn in a “death of traditional media” angle, and call it a day. That whole line of inquisition is becoming a meaningless, non-falsifiable feint. Incidentally, the studio apparently thinks GI Joe did so much worse in its second week because of… bad reviews.

The Grey Monk
by William Blake

I die, I die!” the Mother said,
“My children die for lack of bread.
What more has the merciless Tyrant said?”
The Monk sat down on the stony bed.

The blood red ran from the Grey Monk’s side,
His hands and feet were wounded wide,
His body bent, his arms and knees
Like to the roots of ancient trees.

His eye was dry; no tear could flow:
A hollow groan first spoke his woe.
He trembled and shudder’d upon the bed;
At length with a feeble cry he said:

“When God commanded this hand to write
In the studious hours of deep midnight,
He told me the writing I wrote should prove
The bane of all that on Earth I lov’d.

My Brother starv’d between two walls,
His Children’s cry my soul appalls;
I mock’d at the rack and griding chain,
My bent body mocks their torturing pain.

Thy father drew his sword in the North,
With his thousands strong he marched forth;
Thy Brother has arm’d himself in steel
To avenge the wrongs thy Children feel.

But vain the Sword and vain the Bow,
They never can work War’s overthrow.
The Hermit’s prayer and the Widow’s tear
Alone can free the World from fear.

For a Tear is an intellectual thing,
And a Sigh is the sword of an Angel King,
And the bitter groan of the Martyr’s woe
Is an arrow from the Almighty’s bow.

The hand of Vengeance found the bed
To which the Purple Tyrant fled;
The iron hand crush’d the Tyrant’s head
And became a Tyrant in his stead.”

A lot of people have written that health insurance isn’t really insurance, and that we don’t think of it as insurance. And they’re right! How health insurance works and how we think of it really is quite different from how most other forms of insurance work.

There is one way in which health insurance works like other kinds, though, and it’s important: every customer pays for the tangible benefit of a few. If everyone who had fire insurance actually had a fire, there would be no fire insurance industry. You couldn’t make enough money. Instead, everyone who has insurance pays in, and only a few have a fire, and then part of everyone’s premiums go to the few. Not everyone who has auto insurance has an accident, but everyone who does pays for those who do– because they might end up one of the few.

Heath insurance is a little different. Very few people go for long without getting some kind of compensation for their contributions to health insurance. But, again, most people pay in more than they take back out; if that wasn’t the case, there would be no health insurance industry. Couldn’t be. We pay in, or should, understanding that we may end up paying far more than we will get back out, because in the event of catastrophic illness or injury we need comprehensive coverage. This, incidentally, is what is so utterly criminal and disgusting about the conduct of health insurance companies that seek to ditch patients because they get sick or wiggle out of covering major expenses. That’s what everyone who pays for health insurance is paying for. (It would be constructive if some of those opposed to reform were more upfront about how incredibly poorly behaved many insurance companies and HMOs in this country have been.)

I point this out merely to say that as much as there are benefits to viewing health care in more conventional consumerist terms, particularly when it comes to cost reduction, there are limits to thinking about shopping for health care like you’re shopping for groceries. Part of health care access has to be an actual kind of insurance, payment for catastrophic expenses. That can only come from pooled resources, which doesn’t have an analog in a simple consumerist vision. It may offend some people’s individualist sensibilities, but part of covering health care is and will continue to be sharing expenses for the benefit of a few.