Political Philosophy

Down in the Gutter With $30,600 a Year Plus Benefits

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The recent kerfuffle over the middle-class family of Graeme Frost who can’t “afford” medical insurance got me to thinking: Why do we think it unfair that some people must pay rather a lot for medical insurance?

Bonnie Frost works for a medical publishing firm; her husband, Halsey, is a woodworker. They are raising their four children on combined income of about $45,000 a year. Neither gets health insurance through work. Having priced private insurance that would cost more than their mortgage – about $1,200 a month – they continue to rely on the government program

Why do we as society seem to feel that a family who makes $45,000 should not have to accept the loss of lifestyle that paying $14,400 a year for medical insurance would entail?

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Ideology and Adaptation

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I’ve never been one for ideological purity.

For one thing, ideologies represents only imperfect models for how reality works and no real-world model will ever cover all contingencies. So always, in the back of my mind, I look at any given ideology and wonder, “What circumstances will this ideology not account for? When will it work best and when will it not?”

More importantly, though, the science of biology influences all my thinking. In biology, a strategy succeeds based on how well it adapts (from the latin for “to fit”) to the immediate environment. What works for a penguin in the Antarctic won’t work for a camel in the Sahara.

Of course, we don’t like to think of our ideologies as specific adaptations to specific environments. We prefer to think of them as eternal truths that remain the best choices in all times, places and circumstances. We look at solutions that worked in the past and think they will work now. We look at solutions that work now and think they would have worked at some arbitrary point in the past.

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Sharansky Still Gets It

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Few western public officials understand the current geopolitical situation, and especially the rationale for promoting democracy in the Muslim world, as well as Sharansky does. Of those who do understand, I don’t think any can explain things as clearly as he can.

There’s a quite good interview with him now in the Jerusalem Post:

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A Reflection on Watching Krauthammer

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The USA sent Canada its draft dodgers. In exchange, Canada sends us physicians, successful entrepreneurs and other highly productive people. I’d say we have gotten the better of this exchange.

The Left and Sex

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Some time ago, I made a humorous throwaway observation that Democrats didn’t believe in individual freedom of choice except in matters pertaining to sexuality.

At the time, I thought the statement a mere comedic exaggeration. As a libertarian, I consider each political ideology a mixed bag. Each political group gives freedom with one hand and takes it away with the other. I assumed that a little honest examination of all the Left’s policy positions would quickly reveal many areas completely unrelated to sex in which the Left advocated letting individuals make the decisions about what or what not to do.

However, to my disquiet, I cannot think of a single one! I honestly cannot think of a single non-sexual area in which the contemporary Left advocates letting individuals decide what or what not to do.

Can anyone else? I’m really serious about this. If you can think of an area please say so. If you can’t, ask around your leftist friends and contact me at shannonlove-at-chicagoboyz.net.

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