The Young and the Productive

David Brooks’ article is very helpful in seeing what is at stake in the current healthcare debate. Obamacare promises to reconcile two apparent opposites:

1) Cover 31 million Americans who are currently uninsured.
2) Bend the cost curve

Now these two claims are incompatible since it should increase costs to cover people who were previously not covered. Brooks explains how these incompatible claims will be made compatible:

1) Cut Medicare payments
2) Raise taxes in the future (the present Congress requests future Congresses to do this.)

Lets look at the first one. Who will decide what Medicare payments are cut and what criterion will they use? A technocrat, a government bureaucrat with scientific expertise, will do so on the basis of “productivity.” In other words, the person’s medical costs will be covered if he is deemed productive member of society. This tips the scales in favor of the young and industrious in society.

This doesn’t mean the young have it made because there is still number two: Raise taxes in the future. Remember, taxes will be raised later, not now. It will be the young and productive who get stuck with the bill.

Lexus And/Or the Olive Tree

The PoMo Con argument, or hope, is that we can separate modern institutions (Democracy, Capitalism, Science) from modern values (individualism, moral relativism, atheism). If this separation can occur, then these values can be replaced with a more robust understanding of who we are and our place in the cosmos. Harvey Mansfield succinctly summarizes the argument, “John Stuart Mill in the public sphere and Aristotle in private.”

Front Porcher Patrick Deneen’s counter to this argument is that modern values are wedded to modern institutions so one must either accept or reject the project in toto.

One way to test this question is to look at globalization and immigration issues. Easterners make a distinction similar to the one made by PoMo Cons above. They say yes to modernization (institutions) but no to Westernization (values). Have they been able to do so? Has India, which is a rising economic power, been able to maintain its traditional culture? Have Easterners who have moved to the U.S. been able to instill their values in their children? The early returns do not look good: Bollywood and ABCD’s.

Political Science versus Political Philosophy

Today is rather commonplace that Government professors refer to their disciplines as political science. The belief is that politics (and economics for that matter) should be modeled after the natural sciences. In order to achieve this, the study of human affairs will be reduced only to the quantifiable. Students should study charts and graphs which are black and white and thus non-debatable. If a fact cannot be assigned a numerical value, then it is not a fact or at least not matter for the political scientist to consider.

This method replaced the older view which studied the words and deeds of statesmen and the works of political philosophers i.e. the study of arguments. Arguments cannot be quantified, yet they are the lifeblood of politics. What sustains the interest of students (and citizens) is not polling data, but the give and take of debate. The more thought provoking question is not whether health care reform will pass this year, but whether it should pass.

Harvard’s Harvey Mansfield has argued for a return to the more traditional model. In an essay titled “How to Understand Politics”, he argues that the Humanities gives us a more complete picture of human nature.

One theory that political scientists adhere to is ‘rational choice’ which reduces human beings to calculators. Mansfield points to characters like Achilles in Homer’s Iliad as a counterexample to this assumption. Achilles does not calculate every move. Instead, he disregards his material self-interest in favor of glory and honor. The Humanities reveals the complex motivation of human beings which the more scientific theories fail to account for.

Elsewhere, Mansfield discusses that this scientific reduction of human motivation is part of a larger project of modern political thought to implement ‘rational control.’ One consequence of this view is the ability to predict future events, say elections. Yet the inability of political scientists to accurately predict such things calls into question the possibility of such control.

While unable to guarantee any of its answers, a humanistic approach towards the study of politics might yield a truer account of public affairs.

Euripides on Elvis

I have never understood The Bacchae by Euripides and the various interpretations of it have rung hollow. With that in mind, I was surprised to find myself nodding in agreement over Robert Reilly's take on the play:

Euripides and the Classical Greeks, from whom our Founders learned, knew that Eros is not a plaything. In The Bacchae, Euripides showed exactly how unsafe sex is when disconnected from the moral order. When Dionysus visits Thebes, he entices King Penthius to view secretly the women dancing naked on the mountainside in Dionysian revelries. Because Penthius succumbs to his desire to see "their wild obscenities," the political order is toppled, and the queen mother, Agave, one of the bacchants, ends up with the severed head of her son Penthius in her lap -- an eerie premonition of abortion.

The lesson is clear: Once Eros is released from the bonds of family, Dionysian passions can possess the soul. Giving in to them is a form of madness because erotic desire is not directed toward any end that can satisfy it. It is insatiable.

Reilly then applies this reading to an indictment on pornography.
I would link Reilly’s argument to Carson Holloway’s critique of pop music. The logic behind such music, e.g. Rock N’Roll & Rap, can traced back to Rousseau and Nietzsche who argued IN FAVOR OF Dionysian 'madness' i.e. music should indulge and even inflame one’s passions. What was criticized by Euripides and Plato is encouraged by the late Modern thinkers and is accepted as a matter of course by us today.
Elvis, a symbol of the Sex, Drugs, and Rock N’Roll since the 60’s, might vindicate Euripides on this point. Like King Penthius, his desire for the Bacchic frenzy led to him to a bad end. While it might not qualify as Tragedy, it was rather pitiable finish.

Why would a Democracy support a Dictator?

An argument that opponents make against post WWII U.S. Foreign Policy is that the U.S. was hypocritical in its support of Freedom. One of the examples given is the U.S. overthrew Mohammed Mossadeq, who was the democratically elected leader Iran in 1953. The U.S. then installed the Shah of Iran, who ruled the regime as a despot. His despotic rule caused a backlash and in 1979 the Islamic Radicals revolted in the Iranian Revolution. Thus the rise of the Islamic Radicalism can be laid at the footsteps of the U.S. Foreign Policy or so the argument goes.

Dinesh D’Souza discusses this example in a debate with Ward Churchill. He points out that Mossadeq was appointed, not elected. And to top it off, he was appointed and ratified by the SHAH himself. Afterwards, a power struggle ensued between Mossadeq and the Shah and the latter lost. At that point, the doctrine of the lesser evil comes into play. Who is the lesser evil at the moment? On one side, you have Mossadeq, a Secular Socialist who would certainly ally with the Soviet Union and allow its influence to spread throughout the Middle East. (His nationalization of an oil company two years before confirms his Socialism.) And on the other side you have the Shah, a bad guy for sure, but one whose evils would be limited to a particular place. Given these options, the U.S. decision to support the Shah does not seem that sinister (I’m assuming here that the Reagan’s characterization of the Soviet Union as the Evil Empire is on the mark.)

In regards to Islamic Radicalism, D’Souza points out the Khomeini actually supported the Shah against Mossadeq in 1953. Given the options, it makes sense that a religious fundamentalist would support a king over a secular socialist. In that case, it is plausible the Revolution would have occurred regardless of what the U.S. did.

The issue comes up at the following points in the video:

104:30-106:30; 107:10-108:10
109:00-111:30