As the weekend of September 11 draws to a close, it wraps up a week of news coverage reminding us of where we stand as a nation with respect to the enemy that made itself impossible to miss nine years ago.  The results, it seems, have not been pretty.  Aside from the fact that America is still a defender of Israel and the fact that we still exist at all — though, not to worry, the President is working on solving both of those problems as we speak — the terrorists seem to have done pretty well for themselves.  Americans today have fewer liberties than ever, with freedoms taken from us by conservatives and liberals alike, all in the name of national defense.  Our troops are embroiled in a war in Afghanistan, the terrorists’ home turf, under the guidance of a Commander in Chief that says quite strongly by his actions that their fight is little to him but a political distraction.  But the two biggest stories this week tell a story of American weakness and fear which should be music to the ears of the Radical Islamists who seek to do us harm.

The stories of the week about the Muslim world have undoubtedly been the Florida preacher who was for Koran burning before he was against it, and the ongoing saga of the Ground Zero Mosque.  Right from the start, the preacher was attacked by the operatives of the media with story after maligning story about how he shouldn’t be doing what he wanted to do.  A common refrain started by the media was that the act of burning a Koran would be inflammatory to Muslims, and play into the hands of the radicals that seek to do America harm.  This sentiment was picked up by General Petraeus, warning that it might intensify the danger to our troops overseas, which was all that it took to bring the conservative media on-board with the message.  And then, today, I see that the imam who wants to build the Ground Zero Mosque has added not upsetting terrorists to the list of reasons why he can’t possibly build on another location.  If the General says that moving the mosque will hurt our troops, will that make the conservatives upset by the planned location sit down?

At bottom, we know that the imam is only using that excuse because he knows that it works.  Both at home and abroad, Americans are portrayed as being deathly afraid of upsetting anyone in the Muslim world.  We’re warned repeatedly by the President and others that being anything less than respectful Muslims endangers everyone.  After all, we all know that when terrorists get mad, they shoot people, stab people, blow up civilians, or fly planes into buildings; nevermind that they’d be doing those things anyway.  Be afraid, is the message.  Be afraid to fly on airplanes; be afraid that someone might have a bomb in their shoe, be so afraid that we submit ourselves to high tech full body scans just to go from point A to point B.  Be afraid of showing your outrage against the outrageous; don’t call out Islamic haters for being hateful, don’t burn their Koran even as they burn your flag and Bible, don’t question that mosque being built on Ground Zero.  If you do, then they are going to come after you, and your family, and your neighbors, and the country, and the troops, and so on until someone meaningful enough to you turns up, that you’ll be told terrorists will kill, to make you stop doing whatever it is that you wanted to do.

Terrorists fight by instilling fear.  Their goal is to make their enemies so afraid of the consequences of stepping out of line that they will do whatever the terrorists want.

Radical Islam need not conquer us from without; they win when Americans become too afraid to live free.  This week brought us proof that such fear is palpable and strong enough to have a real effect on our behavior.  We are, increasingly, a people at war with ourselves, with our morality, and with our sense of right and wrong.  We’ve allowed ourselves to give up some freedoms, and find ourselves now being asked to surrender even more, all in the hope that the terrorists might calm down.  But they won’t calm down.  Why would they?  They’re winning.

And scoring their biggest victories without even firing a shot.

In the editorial section of the New York Times, the editorial author takes a look at curriculum revisions currently working their way through the school board in Texas.  In describing the curriculum as “politicized,” and in light of the general tenor of the article, it is apparent that the author does not think highly of the changes going on in Texas.  The gut reaction the author intends to solicit, I’m sure, is revulsion at the idea that education in Texas is devolving into yet another political wasteland.  The charge is interesting, and worthy of attention.

Taking for granted that the curriculum in Texas has indeed become politicized, and that this is a bad thing, the obvious question to ask is, “What can be done about it?”  Answering that question depends on properly understanding how education became politicized in the first place.  The author identifies “social conservatives” as the group responsible for the political education that children in Texas may soon receive.  In reaching his answer, the author misses the deeper issue.

To understand how politics gets into the Texas curriculum, the most important factor is the composition of the school board itself.  At present, the Texas school board consists of five Democrats and ten Republicans, with elections every four years.  This makes the composition of the Texas school board identical to almost every public school board in the country: It is 100% composed of politicians.

Whenever politicians become important in any decision making process, it’s a sure bet that the results will be political. To state that any public school curriculum is politicized is to state the obvious.  Of course, what the author undoubtedly means but is not quite prepared to say outright is not that he minds the Texas school board being politicized, but that he minds it reaching a political result with which he disagrees.  Were the school board to have voted to emphasize Thomas Jefferson’s letter to the Danbury Baptists, the benefits of FDR’s New Deal including Social Security, and the great importance of the United Nations to international peace efforts and human rights, I doubt the editorialist would complain very much about politicization at all.

If I am mistaken and the author is truly concerned about politicization of education whether he agrees with the politics being taught or not, then the only real answer is to get rid of the politicians.  This is an area where private education, possibly supported by school vouchers, would be extremely effective.  I know that I would sooner trust a professional educator over a politician to decide what’s best to teach my children.

If, however, the editorialist’s problem is with the outcome, then the real lesson here is a lesson in democracy.  As the political process creates and builds powers, we all run the risk that those powers might be used in ways we do not approve.

A post today by Michelle Malkin brings to light an interesting provision of Obamacare which will apparently target funding at racial minorities.  As she details with a good deal of clarity, this would seem to be an invitation for generating illegal racial preferences in healthcare.  While this, itself, is not a violation of the Civil Rights Act (which Congress may modify or ignore at will), it may present a legal conundrum within the world of medicine.  It also reminded me of concerns that I expressed privately months ago about healthcare being used as a vehicle for political preferences; concerns which are now certainly credible enough to be worth active discussion.

While I do not recall when it first occurred to me, I have been concerned since sometime last summer about the possibility that the healthcare bill would eventually be used as a tool to leverage votes for Democrats.  The basic scenario works as follows: When healthcare rationing inevitably begins, funds will be directed preferentially toward states, counties, and cities which routinely vote Democrat.  The more insidious scenario looks a little bit different: Medical records will be paired, secretly or explicitly, with rolls of party affiliation, campaign contributions, and political activism, and those individuals who support Democrat candidates and policies will receive care more quickly and completely than individuals who are opposed.  However unlikely those scenarios seem, neither one is impossible, and the first appears to be already happening.

Regardless of which scenario ultimately plays out, the result is that voters will be placed into a voting system built from a framework of oppression.  While politicians are well known to offer money to favored constituencies, this becomes the first time in America’s history that politicians can literally begin to equate votes to matters of life and death.  Most voters would not find it a difficult choice to select between supporting some policy that they don’t like, or a politician that they would otherwise oppose, when the alternative is that they will not be able to receive a life saving cancer treatment in time.

No neutral observer could call trading votes for life anything other than false liberty.

Strangely, though, this potential avenue for abuse has been almost entirely absent from the debate over health care.  Throughout the entire debate, I can only recall having seen the question show up once, in a survey published by the RNC asking if voters were concerned “that the government could use voter registration to determine a person’s political affiliation, prompting fears that GOP voters might be discriminated against for medical treatment in a Democrat-imposed health care rationing system.”  My vote, of course, would have been (and is) quite affirmative, especially as the full blown public option was still alive and well as a possibility in August when that survey was published.  The flash of furor, though, was apparently strong enough that the impotent GOP backpedaled, said that the question was “inartfully worded,” and tried to re-frame it as being about privacy rather than political gamesmanship.  With the GOP’s apology issued, the issue promptly disappeared from the debate.

But as we are already beginning to see, the GOP was right the first time.  Trading healthcare for votes is a serious issue about which Americans need to seriously engage.  Even liberals, who may think they’re safe with Obama in charge, should be scared of the potential for abuse.  Imagine, after all, if George W. Bush had been in charge of making your medical decisions; imagine the future of medicine under President Karl Rove.  Tying political support to medical treatment is far more dangerous than the financial quid pro quo that Americans have, unfortunately, gotten used to.

Perhaps Michelle discovering this first attempt will finally shed some light on a looming problem that should have been discussed months ago.

All of the major news outlets have been filled with reports of President Obama’s new promise to provide loan guarantees for the creation of new nuclear plants.  The promise comes amid efforts by Obama and Democrats to make forward progress on their effort to impose cap and trade legislation on the energy sector.  Obama’s bid, clearly targeted at Republicans who he feels may be willing to compromise on cap and trade in exchange for nuclear energy, appears to be little more than yet another empty promise by him and his administration.  Republicans should ignore the President’s meaningless promise and continue to oppose cap and trade.

Nuclear power is a source of energy which has been advocated by conservatives and energy producers for years.  Nuclear power offers an opportunity to significantly increase energy production in America, reduce dependence of foreign resources, and meet the politically expedient desire to avoid increasing carbon production.  The economics of nuclear energy are relatively straightforward, involving a significant upfront investment with significant payout over the life of the power station.  This is something that power companies have been ready to jump at for decades, and for which they would have no problem securing funding from the usual private sector debt markets.

Far from economics, the primary problem with nuclear energy has been from the environmental arena.  By citing concerns about the potential danger from nuclear facilities, environmentalists have managed to build a strong NIMBY sentiment in the areas where nuclear power has been considered.  Additional concerns over the disposal of reactor waste have further complicated the issue, primarily because of political resistance to building a properly designed disposal facility.  The regulatory system has further compounded the political issues by developing a process which borders on impenetrable for the approval of permits to construct new nuclear facilities.

By guaranteeing loans for the construction of nuclear facilities, Obama proposes to extend government investment to solve a non-problem.  His position allows him to portray himself as supporting nuclear power to Republicans in hope of winning their support on cap and trade legislation, all without running any risk that new nuclear power plants will actually be permitted.  Obama’s promise is, in short, a ruse to win support from gullible conservatives with no downside for his liberal base.

Republicans should see through and reject Obama’s empty promise.

Over in the Guardian, Sasha Abramsky invites us to consider the resurgence of apathy in a post-Obama America.  His central thesis is the idea that just a year after the high level of political engagement Americans exhibited during the 2008 election, the electorate has once again disengaged from the political process.  In truth, for Mr. Abramsky’s fellow liberals, such a charge may be the truth.  However, the American electorate as a whole has done precisely the opposite, becoming demonstrably more engaged in the political conversation than anyone was likely prepared for.

Mr. Abramsky is correct in noting the resurgence of political engagement shown by the American people during the election cycle in 2008.  Heading into the election, many things were up for grabs.  America was in the grip of what may be called two wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, both aspects of the larger war against terrorism and Radical Islam.  The country in general, and border states in particular, faced challenges from a broken immigration system and the pressing question — never resolved — of how to deal with people crossing onto US soil illegally.  The nation’s deficit had grown, putting a strain on the national economy even before the bubble burst.

Americans had a lot to be engaged about.

Where Mr. Abramsky’s argument comes off the rails is obvious in what happened next.  Democrats won the White House and the House of Representatives, and for a time held a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate.  The stimulus, cap and trade, health care, invasive bank and industry regulation, and all manner of Democrat projects which had been held in check for years or decades suddenly became possible.  Riding their “mandate from the American people,” Democrats could literally not be defeated in the political  branches.

Democrats, however, have been defeated.  When the American people realized that the destruction of personal liberty and freedom, the destruction of the private sector, the destruction of the Constitution and any pretense that the government would not be in control of every aspect of their lives, the American people responded.  No disengaged populous could have defeated the unstoppable Democrat government.

Clearly, the American people have not returned to apathy by way of hope and change.  Americans saw the hope and change that awaited them and ran pointedly in the opposite direction.

Americans, I’m sure, still care about the environment, about health car reform, about jobs, and about the economy.  But Americans also care about liberty and freedom.  They care about personal rights, personal responsibilities, and “the right to be left alone.”  We care about having a limited government run by people who do not lie to us, who do not shut us out from the debate, and who do not act to secure their own power against/over the American people and contrary to our clearly expressed will.

But please, Mr. Abramsky, continue to encourage the American people to become even more engaged.  American apathy very well could lead to the revival of the Democrat agenda.  A disengaged populous is a very unfortunate thing.

Michelle Malkin suggests that Republicans should avoid the open-camera discussion with Obama about health care.  She suggests that they’re just opening themselves up to being cast as the villains in an Obama-run theatrical event.

I disagree.

I think there’s no good that would come from rebuffing Obama’s overtures, regardless of how insincere we believe them to be.  For one thing, that will just get the Republicans branded as blind obstructionists, with no way to counter that opinion.

More importantly, though, where Obama goes, so go the cameras.  The Republicans have submitted, over the past year, at least three health care bills that have gotten no exposure.  Congressional Democrats have buried them, and the media hasn’t even had the courtesy to attend the funeral.  To run an obituary for non-Obama health care reform would be to acknowledge that the deceased existed at all.

Beyond that, however, it allows the Republicans to make their case and force the Democrats to defend mandates, union favors, and denying mammograms to women.  Republicans can push the issue and show America that there is a clear reason Republicans have been opposing Obamacare for so long and that not only do we have the answers, but the Democrats do not.

Did I mention that it would give us a chance to show that we have the answers?  Good, just making sure.

We have the initiative in this debate; it would be folly not to pursue it.

That being said, the Republicans are going to have to do two things in order to pull this off.

First, they’re going to have to find someone in that gaggle of politicians who understands the issues and the issues behind the issues, and who can step up and be the voice of the party.  He should be someone who is unashamed of the free-market concept of health care, an advocate of liberty, and eloquent.  Unfortunately, Dr. Thomas Sowell doesn’t hold elected office, so we’ll have to find someone else.

Second, the Republicans will need to find a stage manager – someone who can take on Rahm Emanuel, head-to-head, and keep the Republicans from being hamstrung by absurd rules that give Obama all the stage time, and relegate the Republicans to ten seconds of rebuttal following a ten-hour Obama speech (with or without teleprompter – by the sixth hour, does its presence even matter anymore?).  This someone’s sole job is to make sure it’s a fair fight for a change.  Karl Rove, are you out there?

You would think by now that the speed with which Congress switches back and forth on whether or not to include a “public option” would have the media thoroughly tired of finding ways to spin either outcome as a win for Democrats.  Despite having made more switchbacks than a car on an highway through the mountains, the Washington Post has not slowed down in their ability to churn out nonsense aimed at making anything the Democrats do look intelligent.  A new article discusses what the senate health care deal would mean to consumers which paints a, predictably, much more rosy image of the story than is likely.

Included in the article was an interesting statement from a man named Paul Starr from Princeton:

“It’s good to have the federal government in there negotiating with plans because of the possibility that states will do a very bad job of regulating insurers and managing insurers,” said Paul Starr, a Princeton professor of public affairs. “This is a very important protection against poor implementation by states.”

Though this is not the first time I’ve heard this sentiment, it is the first time I’ve heard it so plainly applied to health care.  It is an interesting concept that seems to flow from the general notion that the federal government can do no wrong.  It is a quaint, if irrational, argument that seems to flow mostly from the 1960s civil rights era when the federal government, under orders from the Supreme Court and over the objections of Democrats, federalized the race industry and eliminated the Jim Crow policies of the states.  This gave the federal government instnat credibility as a nearly independent body of government which could craft policies without needing to worry too deeply about what the electorate might have to say.

Their policies, most of which are abject failures in terms of meeting their stated goals, sustainability, or both, are now the gold standard which folks like Mr. Starr want health care reform to compare.  The one thing that these programs — which include Medicare, civil rights reforms, and the radical expansion of the regulatory state — have actually succeeded in doing is removing power from the people and placing it in the hands of government.

A noteworthy example of the hollowness of federal “protection” is the FDA.  For drug manufacturers, the patent period is commonly viewed as the time during which they are able to recover the costs of the drugs they invent.  In order to recover their costs, they set their prices artificially high once the drugs are allowed to be sold.  A longer period of sales would allow drug prices to be lowered, because there would be a greater period of time over which they could spread out recovery of their up front costs.  But into this process comes the FDA, with its lengthy and expensive approval process which can take away as much as half of the patented life of a drug.  In, too, is the FDA, which has the power to pull from the market any drug, even ones the FDA has approved, for not being safe.  Thanks to the FDA, drugs cost more than they need to and have no particular guarantee of safety.  This is the sort of “protection against poor implementation” that we can expect from our federal government.

For liberals, though, the trouble reflected in the FDA doesn’t matter.  It only means that those programs need more money, need to be more invasive, and need to accumulate even more power.  But, that power comes with a price.  I found it notable that during the Bush years, the general cry that the federal government can do no wrong tended to fade into the background, if it was even made at all.  It was California, not Washington DC that was the champion of environmental policy.  It was state courts, not the FDA, that championed patients’ rights.  It seemed that the federal government under Bush could suddenly do nothing right.

We have, right now, a chance to have health care run by President Obama.  But he will not be President forever.  I can already hear the commotion now, come 2012 or 2016, when the White House again changes hands.  Just imagine what life will be like under our next President…

Doctor in Chief Sarah Palin.

I wonder if it is unfair to use the rules of evolution against the left.  For all the confusion the claims say conservatives have about how species change over time, nowhere is ignorance of the forces which drive population changes more on display than in today’s opinion section of the New York Times.  Thomas Friedman invites us to believe that conservatives “believe the world is going to face a mass plague, like the Black Death, that will wipe out 2.5 billion people sometime between now and 2050.”  He apparently feels that conservatives “believe all these things because that is the only way their arguments make any sense.”  His proof, however, entirely ignores the way population change works.

But there are two other huge trends barreling down on us with energy implications that you simply can’t deny…

The first is that the world is getting crowded. According to the 2006 U.N. population report, “The world population will likely increase by 2.5 billion … passing from the current 6.7 billion to 9.2 billion in 2050. This increase is equivalent to the total size of the world population in 1950, and it will be absorbed mostly by the less developed regions, whose population is projected to rise from 5.4 billion in 2007 to 7.9 billion in 2050.”

From this quote right here we get to see where the 2.5 billion person figure comes from.  It’s based on a UN projection of population growth and the apparent belief that the world cannot support any more people than are currently occupying it today.  As I see it, this has two major problems.  The first is that there is no indication that the Earth cannot support any more humans even under our current technology.  The second is that Mr. Friedman counts as dead about 2.5 billion people who do not exist and may never exist.

But be those problems as they may, there is nothing so terribly sinister at work as some deep belief in a mass kill-off of a significant chunk of the human population.  The forces underlying evolution apply a downward force on the growth rate of every species.  As the population of a species increases, the odds of survival for any individual member tend to decline.  Natural predators are attracted to dense concentrations of prey, competition for mates intensifies, and resources become harder to find.   These downward forces gradually eliminate the less adapted members of the species until the population reaches an equilibrium state.  The result is not a mass killing, but a gradual pruning of the family tree.

This process, of course, occurs in nature every day and nobody thinks much about it.

Mr. Friedman is hardly the first to have brought overpopulation fallacies to bear for political ends, nor is he likely to be the last one to make such an error.  To the extent that green technologies require burning our own food as gasoline, the net increase in hunger will serve not to prevent the 2.5 billion “deaths,” but to accelerate them.  What’s more, even the greenest of technologies will serve only to kick the can down the road; the human population will eventually reach its capacity for growth.

As the international hyperventilation over swine flu continues, it appears that the disease is now a national emergency.  As absurd as the declaration, and its associated language, are, the stated reason for the declaration now is fairly revealing of different issues with the US government.

According to Jennifer Nuzzo of the University of Pittsburgh’s Center for Biosecurity, the national emergency declaration is “just a precautionary move so if need be we can focus on the care of patients rather than focus on administrative hurdles. In disasters, you often don’t have the time or luxury to keep the paperwork in order. You want hospitals focusing on patients.”  White House spokesman Reid Cherlin echoed this sentiment, stating that “If granted a waiver [under the declaration], hospitals would be freed from some regulations that guide their behavior during normal day-to-day operations.”

To phrase all of that somewhat differently, it sounds as if normal government regulations are getting in the way of doctors and hospitals providing effective medical treatment by default, and the state of emergency is needed to allow patients to be cared for in ways more in line with how medical professionals, rather than government bureaucrats, feel is most appropriate.

If a state of emergency is considered necessary for the management of such a benign illness, that fact alone should raise serious questions about the impact of government regulation during times of normal operation.