On Cadillacs and Health Care

I could never get affordable, or even any, health insurance until Obamacare was passed, since I was diagnosed with a chronic illness at the age of 23 and never worked for a big enough employer to get health insurance through them. But some would argue that people not being able to afford a good health insurance policy is like some people not being able to afford the car or house they would like to have. Sure, it would be nice if everyone could have a Cadillac, but in a free market economic system, some can afford it, and some can't. We'd bankrupt our country if we went socialist in such a way that we tried to give everyone who wanted one a Caddy. Besides, who would work hard if Cadillacs were distributed in accordance with need. What goes for Cadillacs, should go for health insurance. It is an individual's responsibility, not government's, to take care of our health. If we go socialist to the extent that will be necessary to make sure everyone has health insurance, we will end up with economic failure like they have in Venezuela. 

This is not an argument I buy, by the way. 

Where were you?

Alan Jackson's famous song is here.  I know where I was. I was in the shower. My wife came in, and I thought she was just trying to tell me to hurry up. Then I learned that the unimaginable had happened.

NeverEdwards

 Let me pose the general question of when a candidate's moral problems ought to cause a voter either to vote for someone who is further away from you on the political spectrum that that candidate, or at least withhold support from the candidate closer to you and so, by default, help the candidate further away to get elected. The issue is complicated. It has to do with the extent to which a) the candidate's moral failures, or the discovery thereof, are going to affect the performance of their duties or cause a voter backlash which will benefit your ideological opponents in the long run, and b) whether you think the candidate in the other party isn't just someone who disagrees with you on some things, but in fact embodies an ideology you consider to be simply evil. A liberal, on those grounds, might, knowing what we know, vote for Mitt Romney in an election against John Edwards , because of Edwards' willingness to violate campaign rules to escape the consequences of an illicit affair, if he thinks conservatism to be an ideology with whom he merely disagrees. If he thinks it's the embodiment of evil, he may vote for Edwards anyway, because Romney's conservatism is too evil not to vote against. NeverEdwards is silly in light of that, they might argue.

On Edwards, here. 

Ben Shapiro Interviews Feser

Here. 

A Christian in journalism

Here. 

From a facebook discussion on politics,as it concerns fact-checkers

In political discussions, particularly on Facebook, I like to fact-check the claims people make. But some conservatives, goaded on by Trump, don't like fact-checker. They think they are a bunch of liberals. But I don't see them recommending any conservatively acceptable fact-checkers. Do we live in a postmodern world now, where there are no facts, only the interpretations of facts? 

How do YOU determine what is true in politics? It seems to me, on one way of viewing things, we determine what is factual by whether it fits with the ideology we espouse. We assume that only those who are on our side of the ideological fence have any willingness to look at facts and determine what is factual. But why think that. I used to think that the MAGA hats were all made in China, until I fact-checked, and discovered they weren't. 

Or we can think that there are really no facts, only interpretations of facts, and so we can pick and choose based on our ideology what is a fact, since facts are determined by ideology. But that is exactly the kind of postmoderism that conservatives decry. Or we can ask who is doing their homework and working at getting their facts straight, regardless of ideology. 

When I was young I watched the Senate Watergate hearings thinking that Nixon was almost certainly innocent. I thought Democrats like Same Ervin wanted Nixon to be guilty, but why in the world would anyone but a bungling underling do something so stupid as to bug the DNC headquarters at the Watergate hotel. Surely Woodward and Bernstein at the Post were liberal Democrats who were eager to see Nixon fall. John Dean was just trying to save his hide. John Ehrichman came in and finally set everyone straight. And then there was the Saturday Night Massacre, the House judiciary impeachment hearings in which one pained Republican named Railsback laid out the evidence that Nixon was guilty, the Supreme Court said the tapes had to be released, and finally the web of lies fell apart. In the words of the Who, I won't be fooled again.

If you are a Democrat, you naturally want evidence to come out that supports what you believe as a Democrat. If you are a Republican, and like what the President is doing in general, you don't want it to be true that he has, for example, violated campaign finance laws in paying women for their silence in order to influence the results of an election. And then there is such a thing as evidence. We might ask this question-do the news sources you like ever report anything embarrassing the their own political beliefs. Do they ever retract claims that are shown to be incorrect?

The fact check that I quoted estimated the difference between what Trump spent on vacations as opposed to Obama more conservatively than I expected. But since it comes from Snopes, I guess you have to assume that, no Obama spent more money on vacations than Trump. This in logic is called the ad hominem fallacy. We don't look at the case a person presents, we look at the source instead. If we don't like the source, it has to be false, even if it isn't. Liberals can do the same things as conservatives, in which case it is guaranteed that no discussion on the issues on which we differ can be discussed with the hope of progress. You get conversations like this: 

L: Cohen pleaded guilty to a campaign finance offense and implicated Trump. 
C: You're only saying that because you are a liberal. 

Look, I would be more impressed by conservative complaints about fact-checkers if conservatives could point out some fact-checkers to me that were more credible than the ones I use. (chirping crickets).

Supporting Trump and summoning the White Witch

Gina Dalfonzo, a former writer for Charles Colson's Breakpoint, claims that Christians who support Trump are doing what Nikabrik was doing in summoning the White Witch to defeat the Telmarines.

Here. 

Five Views of Meaning Without God

Can there be meaning in life without God? Here. 

A voice from the past

Egil Krogh, one of the conspirators, speaks regretfully of the Ellsberg break-in, an attempt to punish free speech during the Nixon administration. He wondered if these lessons from the past were lost on the Bush administration.

Hate speech laws

I am inclined to oppose hate speech laws.  laws like that would put Trump in jail for sure, and it would be a Pandora's box we would never be able to close.

What if?

Trump says he would retain his support if he were to go to Fifth Avenue and shoot people. But what if he were to sign an amnesty bill, or a single payer health plan.

Trump has no conservative principles, even though he gets conservative results. So if it were ever in his interests to do these things, (for example, facing a Democratic Congress about to impeach him), he might say "Look, I do deals. My VP, he's got conservative principles, so he will veto everything you try to put through. I don't have such principles, so for heaven's sake don't impeach me. 

I always think I'm right. Not that there's anything wrong with that.

People sometimes criticize others because they "always think they're right. But don't we always think we're right? If we don't think we're right, we change our minds. Then, we think we are right about that.

"The media" is a myth

Why do conservatives think there is a liberal media when most of their information about the news comes from sources with a conservative point of view? Doesn't it make more sense to say that there are liberal media sources and conservative ones? Many years ago, at least all television news came from three networks, and so if you thought all the broadcasters there were conservative, you still got your news from there and had to work to find a conservative perspective. (Except in Phoenix, where the newspaper was known for its right-wing stance). But now? To say that "the media" is liberal is to deny that Fox, Drudge, and Breitbart are part of the media. But they are part of the media. The fact is that today people can choose the political perspective from which their news comes. Which, I think, explains the polarized nature of the political arena today.

"The media" is a myth. No one political perspective controls all the sources of news and information.

Hey, whatever happened to the falsification challenge

Peter Atkins' atheism certainly fails it.

Could Trump end up signing a single payer bill?

Nunes seems to think it essential that Republicans be re-elected to majorities in both houses of Congress, because Mueller won't exonerate the President, so we have to. Nunes has done everything possible to limit inquiry into the President's conduct with Russia and to attack the propriety of the Mueller investigation with questions about FISA warrants, etc. If the Dems win the majority in the House, then he loses the chairmanship of the House Intelligence Committee falls to the aggressive Democrat Adam Schiff, who wants to do a thorough investigation of the Russia scandal along the lines of the Senate Watergate Hearings under Sam Ervin in the 1970s, which revealed the White House Tapes, included John Dean's harmful testimony against Nixon, and eventually resulted in the Nixon's resignation to prevent inevitable impeachment and removal. If that happens, Nunes says on the tape that everything will be lost. I take it this means impeachment, or if not, maybe Nunes fears that Trump, facing a Democratic Congress, instead of just vetoing everything they put through, decides that he is the ultimate dealmaker, and so to prevent impeachment, maybe he will sign some things the Democrats want on immigration or health care. Who knows, maybe even single payer. After all, Trump's conservative convictions are questionable, even if the actions of his administration are conservative. Maybe he thinks the Democrats won't impeach him if he makes a deal with them, because they know that Pence is a much more principled conservative and would never sign Democratic bills.

Nixon went to China. Clinton signed welfare reform. Trump.....

I mean it would repeal and replace Obamacare, now wouldn't it. 

What the laws say

This is what our laws say about foreign influence in elections. It says that foreign governments and foreign nationals cannot provide anything of value to American election campaigns, and campaigns cannot solicit or receive anything of value from foreign nationals and foreign governments. It doesn't matter whether it swung the election or not. Trump's tweet that people do this all the time and it's perfectly legal either shows massive legal ignorance, or is a bald-faced lie.

Here. 

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea is still in print

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea is going into its 11th printing, nearly 15 years after its original publication in September of 2003. IV Press has told me that this brings the number of copies in print to 10.882. But I'm still a one-hit wonder as far s monographs are concerned, and am of course no match for Patterson and Clinton.

Here. 

BOOKS.GOOGLE.COM.PH

C. S. Lewis's Dangerous Idea

Who ought to hold claim to the more dangerous idea--Charles Darwin or C. S. Lewis? Daniel Dennett argued for Darwin in Darwin's Dangerous Idea (Touchstone Books, 1996). In this book Victor Reppert champions C. S. Lewis. Darwinists attempt to use science to show that our world and its inhabitants can...

Ken Samples on Presuppositionalism

Here. 

Trump's choice

Does he really think that the evidence doesn’t support ongoing Russian interference (ongoing is the key word)?  If yes, he should commit to combatting it, if no, he should say that the while intelligence community is full of baloney instead of pretend to respect it. He can't have it both ways. 

A Day in the Life of Joe Republican

A redated post.

This post is dedicated to the memory of David Baur, a friend of mine whom I recently discovered died of a heart attack last August. He sent me this during the 2004 election campaign.

A DAY IN THE LIFE OF JOE REPUBLICAN

Joe gets up at 6 a.m. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee. The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for minimum water-quality standards.

With his first swallow of water, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to ensure their safety and that they work as advertised.

All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer's medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance - now Joe gets it too.

He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs. Joe's bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat packing industry.

In the morning shower, Joe reaches for his shampoo. His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.

Joe dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath. The air he breathes is clean because some environmentalist wacko liberal fought for the laws to stop industries from polluting our air.

He walks to the subway station for his government-subsidized ride to work. It saves him considerable money in parking and transportation fees because some fancy-pants liberal fought for affordable public transportation, which gives everyone the opportunity to be a contributor.

Joe begins his work day. He has a good job with excellent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards. Joe's employer pays these standards because Joe's employer doesn't want his employees to call the union.

If Joe is hurt on the job or becomes unemployed, he'll get a worker compensation or unemployment check because some stupid liberal didn't think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.

It's noontime and Joe needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Joe's deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Joe's money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression.

Joe has to pay his Fannie Mae-underwritten mortgage and his below-market federal student loan because some elitist liberal decided that Joe and the government would be better off if he was educated and earned more money over his lifetime.

Joe is home from work. He plans to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country. He gets in his car for the drive. His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought for car safety standards.

He arrives at his boyhood home. His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers' Home Administration because bankers didn't want to make rural loans. The house didn't have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn't belong and demanded rural electrification.

He is happy to see his father, who is now retired. His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Joe wouldn't have to.

Joe gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show. The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and conservatives are good. He doesn't mention that the beloved Republicans have fought against every protection and benefit Joe enjoys throughout his day.

Joe agrees: "We don't need those big-government liberals ruining our lives! After all, I'm a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have."

* written by Donna L. Lavins and Sheldon Cotler.