House of Eratosthenes

Charles Krauthammer exposes an ugly truth about these various efforts we’ve undertaken in the modern age to build our dream Utopian society that works “for the benefit of everyone”: A central pillar to the vision, is now and has always been, one of creating an exclusive club very much like the pigs in George Orwell’s Animal Farm. Unfortunately, he exposes this ugly truth not by realizing it about others and responsibly pointing it out, but by being a part of it.

Let’s see if we can have a reasoned discussion about end-of-life counseling.

We might start by asking Sarah Palin to leave the room. I’ve got nothing against her. She’s a remarkable political talent. But there are no “death panels” in the Democratic health-care bills, and to say that there are is to debase the debate.

Speaking of debasing the debate…if you pop that link open and read it, you’ll see the next several paragraphs after this snide little salvo, Krauthammer goes on to most articulately make Palin’s point.

The good Dr. Melissa goes after the good Dr. Charles with some points he should have been able to realize on his own. The truth is, even when Krauthammer makes Palin’s point apparently without consciously realizing he’s making Palin’s point while telling Palin to shut up, he fails to capture exactly how bad things might get. But the point isn’t lost on Melissa Clouthier any more than it’s lost on Sarah Palin.

Taken on its own, Section 1233 of H.R. 3200 is not a death panel. It’s more a death recommendation.

Dr. Krauthammer forgets though, that this isn’t the only death-related provision of the bill or of this health care legislation generally. The counseling is an indicator of intent. While a doctor is financially incentivized to have a death discussion, the government program will, by nature of sheer numbers, want people to choose, as President Obama says, a “pain pill over surgery.”

Further, the government, and a bureaucratic board of 27 appointees will be deciding care for people. That is, 27 people will be answering questions like: who receives care? Who qualifies? Who doesn’t? In what circumstances? It will be a bureaucratic answer and bureaucrats, who cannot be sued and have no incentive beyond cutting costs and appeasing political special interests. Individual needs will get lost in the collective good. Some people will die because of these choices.

This Utopian society we’ve been trying to build that nobody living or dead has actually seen…I’m just fascinated with it. During the planning and construction, someone is always being excluded from something. Old people should just die, former Governors of Alaska should just shut up, those people shouldn’t be in this town hall because they’re too well dressed.

We’re trying to find a way to get “everyone” covered, no matter what, so nobody’s excluded.

Before we talk about that, we should have Sarah leave the room.

She has the annoying habit of pointing out that this plan might give us an incentive to kill people.

Which, according to Krauthammer’s own words, is exactly right. She’s gotta go.

I would argue that the entire exercise of building this society is, from the foundation on up, riddled with contradictions. It has no clue as to whether it wants to honor the fundamental God-given right of humans to exist and to fight for that right to exist…it doesn’t know. Because its answer to that is both a yes and a no. Both of them rather emphatic. And so it labors under the heavy burden of an inherent contradiction. It ends up fighting itself. That’s why it’s failing.

When Dr. Clouthier cross-posted this at Right Wing News, Commenter CavalierX cut right to the heart of the matter in one deft motion, like a skilled surgeon wielding a sharp scalpel. Every single syllable of his is loaded with wisdom, you know this to be true because every single syllable of it could have been mine.

I generally like Krauthammer, but he’s an ass if he thinks there’s no such thing as a “death panel” just because the words “death panel” don’t appear in the bill that hasn’t been written yet. Someone’s going to have to make decisions on what qualifies people to recieve what treatments, and you can call it a commission, bureau, cabinet, task force or board — they will decide who lives and who dies. “Death panel” is as good a name as any.

You’re lacking in subtlety, Morgan, whereas the Good Doctor Krauthammer is not. In fact… I believe you and Dr. Clouthier missed Krauthammer’s point entirely… which was ALL about the tone of the debate. Dr. K has a valid point about the non-existence of death panels in the bill; there will be no Star Chamber where one’s fate is decided in the here and now. You did manage to pick up Krauthammer’s point that the government has no business incenting physicians to conduct end-of-life discussions, though. Bully for you.

Deploying language like “death panels” ends all debate, right here… right now. Emotional language like this evokes an emotional response and the end result is a shouting match. You… the guy who prides himself on rationality and logic… should be able to recognize that fact, but apparently you don’t. Is it because Saint Sarah uttered those “death panel” words? Or is it because Krauthammer dismissed her approach as being over-the-top… in so many words… thereby insulting She Who Would Be Queen? Would you respond the same way, i.e., leap to the defense, if David Frum had used the term? This is a perfect illustration about the nature of our political discourse I’ve been complaining about: it’s base… and debasing. Civilized people do not appeal to emotions — they appeal to rationality. Krauthammer gets this, and he’s understood it for as long as I’ve been listening to him and reading him, which is a considerable amount of time.

OT… but there’s this:

Every single syllable of his is loaded with wisdom, you know this to be true because every single syllable of it could have been mine.

Every time you say something like this… and it happens frequently… I wonder. You ARE being facetious, are you not? 😉
- bpenni | 08/22/2009 @ 10:16
Deploying language like “death panels” ends all debate, right here… right now.

Perhaps for the better. You gave that possibility a fair hearing, didn’t you?

Calling it by what the proponents want to call it, “end of life counseling,” does very little to change the meaning after all. Couldn’t the argument be made that “death panels” is more technically accurate, and it is the “counseling” euphemism that changes the emotional tone in a less logical, less intellectually sincere way? What is this product being sold, whose sale depends on the product not being called what it is?

Every time you say something like this… and it happens frequently… I wonder. You ARE being facetious, are you not?

Semi.

I guess I’m rebelling against a modern notion, which is subtly gaining popularity lately, that in order for people to “know” what they’re talking about they have to disclaim any confidence in the idea that they’ll ever know what they’re talking about. That the wise among us are the people who don’t know what’s going on and aren’t trying to find out. If they’re willing to be humble, the rest of us should treat them as wise sages…

It seems to me this philosophy has done a great deal of damage. I blame the existence of the current presidency on this — wasn’t the election decided by those who didn’t know too much about the issues, and weren’t trying to find out? Worked out well, huh.

I don’t mean to make the absurd claim that all useful knowledge has been reached by egotistical boobs. Contrary to that, I’m a big fan of the idea that in order to learn things, one must first understand one is in need of learning something. That’s the essence of humility. But my point is it takes more. Many of the “humble” folks are so humble they seem to think it is above their heads, “over the pay grade” you might say, to ever find out what has to be known in order to make an informed decision. They don’t take pride in their individual decision making…either about what is going on, or what to do about it. And yet, they still want to run everything. They still want to pull rank.

Or in Charles Krauthammer’s case, dictate who is to be asked to leave the room. Then have this dialogue so we can figure out what will work for “everyone.”

Like I said. The mindset struggles with an unworkable, internal contradiction. That’s directly related to why it hasn’t produced any beneficial results so far.
- mkfreeberg | 08/22/2009 @ 15:20
Ah… I’ve read your rejoinder but I’m half-assed drunk at the moment. More to follow. 😉
- bpenni | 08/22/2009 @ 20:04
Charles is a good guy. A very intelligent man. And he’s on our side. He’s fighting the good fight, albiet on a different front. He’s fighting it on the pages of newspapers that people who don’t like Sarah Palin and turn their brains off with rage hormones the minute she enters a room.

He’s basically saying “ok, never mind Sarah Palin, but they’re still death panels” without using the term “death panels”. You even picked up on this.

We had some progressive family members over this weekend… one of them read that article in our local newspaper, and she was incensed … that Krauthammer was saying your living will won’t matter. She couldn’t read the rest of the article. My wife confirmed that she knew of people with living wills whose family decided differently than they specified and the family won. Charles is right. I told this family member that Krauthammer doesn’t make shit up, and left it at that.

These are not the people Krauthammer is talking to. They are unconvincible. It’s that centrist, those people in the middle forty …. that have or had been swayed by the hard left that the hard left is correct.

On the other hand, and Krauthammer surely knows this… from what I understand that language was removed from the bill within a week of Palin calling them “Death Panels”. It got people listening. It woke ’em up. She’s fighting on a different front. This is good cop, bad cop.
- philmon | 08/23/2009 @ 19:39
er… news papers those people read…. guess I didn’t really finish that first paragraph right.
- philmon | 08/23/2009 @ 19:40
Mmm, hmmm. Well, it’s pretty clear a different tactic is being used on the right, contrasted with what’s deployed on the left. No “good cop bad cop” on that side whatsoever. Pretty damn easy to prove…I mean, if the left was reaching for some token bloody flesh to toss to the sharks, their counterpart to the chum that is Sarah Palin, who would it be? Barney Frank, of course. Just for starters. Or any one of a number of other bits of tasty meat to ladle out over the side. Is it happening? No. They’ve opted for the “solid unbroken line” approach.

I saw Sen. McCain being interviewed by George Stephanopolous this morning. The Diminutive One chose to confront The Maverick with the imprudent words of his former running mate, the dimbulb from Alaska about the “death panels.” Ever the dedicated negotiator, McCain demurred from excoriating the Caribou Barbie, but he didn’t back her up either. And then — the dessert: He thinks global warming is a serious problem. Just a bone to throw to the in-crowd, to make sure he’s still invited to parties…like that worked out so well when it was time to get votes last fall.

Meanwhile, it’s settled in as a concrete-hard, “bipartisan” talking point that Palin was talking out her butt about the death panels. Even tough she was a hundred percent right. Ah, nevermind about that…”smart politics” says she makes a great sacrificial lamb. Meanwhile, Barney Frank gets to spout his nonsense, unchallenged, even honored as some kind of a hero.

This is the kind of treachery that makes me sick.
- mkfreeberg | 08/23/2009 @ 20:40
What bugs the hell out of me is that there are still people whining about how they’re being “confronted” by “misinformation” perpetuated by folks who opposed this monstrosity. The ‘death panels’ are being called some kind of lie simply because the bill doesn’t explicitly say who lives and who dies.

I’ve spent a lot of time at RWN over the past few years and I’m familiar with CavalierX, the poster mentioned. He’s a regular on that site…a thoughtful fellow who has nailed it yet again.
- cylarz | 08/23/2009 @ 21:59
The truth is, they object to the term “Death Panel” because they’ve got their heads in the sand about where this leads. That is the most misleading thing about this whole “debate”. We’re debating the effects with respect to human nature, sociology, and the nature of government power, and the philosophies of the people who want to implement this so badly.

They, as progressives believe, are trying to craft a bill to legislate responsibility, and human nature/sociology and the nature of government power are going to be dictated by what’s in the bill. Therefore, they debate only what’s in this bill.

If it doesn’t say “death panels” … if it doesn’t say there will be a body deciding who will get treatment or who won’t. Therefore, it’s “misinformation” (according to them) to say that it does.

But it’s completely disingenuous of them to point just to the language in the bill UNLESS there is language specifically stating that rationing and quality-quantity of life “triage” won’t be done as a part of it, ever, by law. And that’s not in there because they know it can’t be in there. They know it would restrict the government’s power to control every aspect of health care. And they wanna tinker.

See, Progressives — the leaders of the ideology, anyway, are academics at heart. They have these theories they want to try, and tinker with and somewhere deep down they really do believe they can make everything better for everyone. But academics in the “soft sciences” is theories built upon theories built upon theories and rife with circular arguments and incestuous self-reference …. and none of those theories can ever be proven in an ethical manner because they involve just the kind of experimenting … that Roosevelt and Obama and lots of other people wanted/want to do ON REAL LIVE PEOPLE’S LIVES AND LIVELIHOODS.

So they get around this little problem by focusing only on their intentions. And anyone who argues with them must, by definition in their pointy little heads, must have BAD intentions. Greed, power, whatever. Anything but a recognition that humans have their flaws and it’s best to let us all work things out for ourselves while having laws keeping us from killing or forcefully coercing each other to one or the other’s advantage. And if they failed, it’s because the Evil Ones foiled their plans, and anyway, their intentions were good so it doesn’t matter how many people were treated unfairly, or died, or had to be killed in order to get everybody with the program for The Greater Good™.

Of course, all of this was thought about and discussed extensively around 240, 250 years ago by some very bright men who happened to be male and white — which unfortunately means they’re on the outs right now and that’s no accident, either. We are not to “worship” their work … the work that founded the country that we all supposedly love (but some of us want to Change™ very badly, apparently) … after all, they are Old Dead White Men™.

But … I digress. As I often do. But at least Morgan can’t complain about that 😉 The deal is, the language clearly laid the foundation for a group of coercers, and Palin seized on it and used it to make the larger point that this is where single-payer health care will ultimately lead. I applaud her for it.

That language is now gone, now, thanks to her, but as I’ve said before… they’ll strike whatever language they need to from it to get enough popular support to pass it, and it will be a foot in the door to single-payer health care. And as I’ve said over and over and over again … EVERYBODY knows it. Everybody. The people pushing it will obfuscate and even deny it in public, but in private they’re rubbing their hands together in anticipation. The people fighting it will be called “___-mongers” and every name in the book in an attempt to dismiss them to short circuit any rational debate. In a debate, they lose. And they know it.
- philmon | 08/24/2009 @ 08:23
[…] ‘DEATH PANEL’ is as Good a Name as Any …. […]
- Steynian 376 « Free Canuckistan! | 08/24/2009 @ 12:08
[…] they do that — without exception! — they prove beyond the shadow of any doubt that they simply don’t know what they’re talking about. That, or they’re talking to other people who don’t know what they’re talking […]
- House of Eratosthenes | 09/09/2009 @ 18:56

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“Death Panel” is as Good a Name as AnySaturday, August 22nd, 2009

“Death Panel” is as Good a Name as Any
Saturday, August 22nd, 2009