Anybody who reads this blog know what I think of the tactics of the latter-day American right — the quasi-Leninist tactic of throwing rhetorical bombs into crowded rooms so that the ensuing chaos and confusion will muddle the issue at hand, and, in doing so, could well derail any attempt to implement the kinds of policies that might support the common good but go against Republican liberal orthodoxy. It’s the “total war” politics of destruction, and truth is the first casualty. Indeed, truth is malleable and relative. How modern! (And yet they think they are conservative!) And no more is this the case than with the healthcare debate. As I’ve noted before, what is in fact a rather modest and incremental proposed change has been transmogrified into “socialism” and specters of the government drawing up lists of people to be killed. I find it very sad that Catholic bloggers and others in the public square are jumping on this bandwagon, crying socialism, making up stories of euthanasia, and treating the insurance coverage of abortion as the only worthwhile topic of discussion.
Remember the stakes. They are worth repeating and re-repeating. It is a scandal that 47 million are uninsured and a further 25 million are underinsured. It is a scandal that medical costs are probably the leading cost of bankruptcy in the United States. It is a scandal that the poor end up in emergency rooms, where the treatment they get is too little and too late, because they have no access to affordable primary care. It is a scandal that insurance companies prey on suffering by refusing coverage, dropping coverage, and denying claims — something that again disproportionately affects the poor. In short, the status quo is a gross violation of the basic principles of Catholic social teaching.
But this is all forgotten. The proposals are not being debated on their merits. The rhetorically violent tactics of the right seem to be detracting from the big picture. Eduardo Penalver does a nice job bringing together some of the sheer silliness of what passes for argument among the forces of the right:
“There’s a lot to be puzzled about in the “debate” (I hesitate to dignify it with that term) over health care reform: Palin’s exploitation of her infant son with her instantly infamous “death panel” comment; the anti-reform protester who was supposedly injured in a scuffle with SEIU members who is taking up a collection to pay his medical bills because he (wait for it) recently lost his job and is uninsured; the anti-reform protester at a townhall meeting in South Carolina who told his conservative congressman to “keep your government hands off my Medicare.” But I think this line from an Investors Business Daily editorial in opposition to health care reform may win the prize: People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn’t have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless. Can a democracy function at this level of discourse? The mind reels.”
Of course, Stephen Hawking is a good example of the British “socialist” healthcare system in action. There are many other examples. As recounted by a friend, the UK health system literally saved the life of one of Elizabeth Anscombe’s children who suffered a stroke at a tragically young age. The American doctors wanted to pull the plug, but her mother took her home to the UK, where she still lives. Of course, nobody is proposing anything close to the UK system, which anyway is single provider, not single payer. They are not even proposing single payer. What is on offer is a largely private system with checks and balances, and a very limited public option. Some socialism.
Let me address the Palin point. While intelligence is not her strong point, I still cannot believe Palin actually believes what she said. Yet again, she is exploiting both the Christian faith and her own children to further her own political ends — which in this case includes the derailing of healthcare reform. She is the epitome of everything that is corrupt and scandalous about the so-called religious right. But here’s the ironic part: in the current environment, it is very difficult for people with Down’s syndrome to attain adequate healthcare. Why? Because it is considered a pre-existing condition and so insurance companies don’t want to touch it. As the National Down Syndrome Congress writes bluntly: “People with Down syndrome have been and continue to be discriminated against with regard to access to health insurance, solely on the basis of the diagnosis of Down syndrome and without consideration of their individual health status or health histories.” One would think that a genuine pro-lifer, one who wanted to do something about the shockingly-high tendency to abort Down’s syndrome babies, would at the very least support universal healthcare reform that stops insurance companies from doing what they are doing. But that’s not the Palin we know.
It seems that many of the nosiest people who oppose this reform are precisely those who would benefit from it. Which brings me to Eduardo’s last point about democracy. I have been thinking about this myself a lot recently. Never have I been more disenchanted with modern liberal democracy than I am today. It strikes me as untenable. Then again, perhaps I need to take the longer view. While these know-nothings are louder than ever before, thanks to modern communications, there is nothing new about them. One of Andrew Sullivan’s commentor put it so very well:
“They have always been with us, the people who believed in manifest destiny, who delighted in the slaughter of this land’s original inhabitants, who cheered a nation into a civil war to support an economic system of slavery that didn’t even benefit them. They are the people who bashed the unions and cheered on the anti-sedition laws, who joined the Pinkertons and the No Nothing Party, who beat up Catholic immigrants and occasionally torched the black part of town. They rode through the Southern pine forests at night, they banned non-European immigration, they burned John Rockefeller Jr. in effigy for proposing the Grand Tetons National Park.
These are the folks who drove Teddy Roosevelt out of the Republican Party and called his cousin Franklin a communist, shut their town’s borders to the Okies and played the protectionist card right up til Pearl Harbor, when they suddenly had a new foreign enemy to hate. They are with us, the John Birchers, the anti-flouride and black helicopter nuts, the squirrly commie-hating hysterics who always loved the loyalty oath, the forced confession, the auto-de-fe. Those who await with baited breath the race war, the nuclear holocaust, the cultural jihad, the second coming, they make up much more of America then you would care to think.”
Let’s hope sanity prevails.
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