The healthcare debate has brought all-time record turnout at the political town hall meetings this summer and dominated both news coverage and parlor talk. Almost daily opinion polling indicates that the "very highly motivated" numbers are at record levels on both sides of the debate--extremely high on the side of those opposing "big government intervention" into what is nearly 20% of America's GDP. Not since the anti-war movement of the 60s have I seen the country so intensely divided about what seems to be an intractable issue. The House plan is over 1000 pages and three months of debate in the Senate has failed to produce any consensus there. Well, do you want to know how life got so complex and our problems so expensive and intractable? Just find an old GP (general practitioner or family doctor) that has lived through the progression from normal to neurotic and ask him.
When I was a kid there wasn't any health insurance as you know it today. We had what was called "major medical plans" that only kicked in if you were in the hospital for a while. When we got sick we went to the local doctor and paid cash. Income tax rates in the 50s and 60s were 75% for doctors so most all of them just put the $5 (about $35 in today's money) fee into their pocket. Most of them remembered America doing fine prior to the advent of income taxes some 40 years earlier and they had their own "people's resistance movement" against ever growing ever consuming big government. I don't recall anyone judging the doctors for that behavior; quite to the contrary, those old local doctors were lauded as the moral icons of the community.
These men were respected for sacrificing their lives for their communities. First of all they kept costs low for their patients. They would buy an old house in town and convert the living room to a waiting room, the kitchen to a medication room, the bedrooms to examination rooms and staff it with a single nurse that maintained the modest records and controlled the flow of patients. But never for a minute did we think "Doc" didn't have sufficient records; his record was vastly superior to what is in your chart today. See, he didn't need you to fill out a 4 page "history and physical"--but he very well may tell you, "You are having the same problem with your feet that your grandpa and your mom's brothers have." He knew that about you not from a computer screen (witch seldom captures sutler family traits) but because he lived in the community and treated or at least knew your family. He knew which (or may ask), "Which one of you boys was it that scored 14 points last night?"
Secondly, many of the doctors were on the school board and knew what was going on in the community. At least they knew who lived in 3 rooms in the country with little to eat and who lived in town where the septic tanks were only feet from the water well--he knew, because he cared, what kind of difficulties to look for in his diverse patients. When sports seasons came around, "Doc" would donate a Saturday to do 250 "football physicals" on every boy the Boosters could drag in to his office. And he had such powerful goodwill in the community that the Boosters would go around and say we need donations for a ball field and we are going to name it in honor of "Doc"--everyone from the poorest to the most greedy gave with a smile. America's heartland is littered with these memorials to those selfless men who gave so much to their communities.
Then third, he was guardian of the civil society. You could be sitting clear outside on the old cracked concrete porch and hear him dress down some parent that he felt was negligent of some aspect of parenting. "Doc" didn't need to call the sheriff, most would rather deal with the sheriff than face him. He may not be a regular at church services but nobody acted crude or used foul language around him. That was disrespectful to the entire community to disrespect the man that encouraged education, health, civic responsibility, personal accountability for and to your family and extended family and a general atmosphere of public virtue and mutual respect of all.
And a fourth thing, he kept life sane and uncomplicated. In those days before the government began pumping money into healthcare, suing the doctor was not the goldmine that modern lawyers have discovered. So "Doc" didn't practice defensive medicine; referrals were virtually nonexistent, there were very few "tests" and even prescriptions were rare. If you needed a shot he would go out to the kitchen and draw it up; if you needed pills he would get one of the huge bottles off the wall and get you out a hand full. If your father carried you in with blood pouring, the nurse would rush you to the front of the line where "Doc" would sew you up and give you a tetanus shot. No matter what, you were normally only there about 5 minutes and payed $5 in cash. But he would take time if necessary, if the couple were unable to plan or have children, he would patiently, thoroughly and clearly explain the reproductive process and when you were successful he would likely even deliver your baby!
Were these men supermen? Yes indeed! Did they just appear larger than life to a young man in his impressionable years? No indeed! You only need to drive through rural America to view the memorials that grateful communities gave to men that ALL knew were aspiring to the pinnacle of self sacrifice, service and accountability to their fellow man. The standard that they set called the whole community to a higher level of virtue, civility and self control. But not even these Titan's could stand up to the culture destroying flood of big government money. Yes, the progressives in their tender caring omniscience had a better plan to "fix" our healthcare "problems". I remember walking into the office one fall day and there was a sign that said, "effective November 1 all office visits will be $10." I was highly shocked! That was well over a half days pay for lots of men! It seemed so inconsistent with the character of the man we loved. I was in such shock that I only vaguely remember the sign beside it that said something about not wanting to deal with something called Medicare. Yes, the Great Society of President Johnson had intersected healthcare! Big government had come to help; complete with their oppressive burden of requirements that was going to force more people, taking more time, to provide care that couldn't be better than the personalize, caring and even sacrificial level we had been receiving.
Without going into boring and confusing detail (like the talk we can hear on the news today), let me just say that 8 years later we were hit with the other fist. With the HMO Act of 1973, big secular progressive government brought in their old ally and co-conspirator: big business. Big HMOs then PPOs and other inventions of big business began to take control. Insurance for your car doesn't pay for tire changes and gasoline fill ups, but now health insurance began to cover every routine service right down to filling a prescription. They inflated the costs and included every penny of health expenditure they could find in order to totally control (and thereby profit from every aspect of) healthcare. Insurance and provider working together, with the backing of the congressmen they bought, ran the cost of routine services so high that the option of paying privately became a joke. If you did not pay to play, they just priced you clear out. Soon they had captured virtually everyone in the net of their system and then they went after the doctors.
When I was 4, my mom and dad held me down while one of those great doctors (a young one) removed a foreign object from my nose. They teased me for decades for screaming, "no dokker no". In 1992, I hired that great old (by then) doctor to do some work for a healthcare institution I was operating. My soul wanted to die within me as I watched this Titan lumber about in the chains of governmental and big business regulation not unlike Samson in his prison when his strength had been drained from him. And not him only, doctor after doctor told me the same story, "I am sorry Jim, I can't contract with you because I had to sign up with the big PPO that bought out the local insurers." They just wanted to take care of their patients and friends that they had been seeing for years, but now big business had control and could make those people go to what ever physician would sign up with the "plan." So now doctors were losing control of how, where and for how much they would provide services. They were moved into expensive buildings and supervised by directors only interested in the bottom line. A modern and legal form of enslavement; and the worst kind, where you actually sign the agreement as if you concur or lend it your approval.
Well folks, this old guy that remembers when Titans walked the earth is getting kind of choked up here as he recounts how the secular progressive minions brought down those giants and chained them and enslaved them and make them extract every possible penny from the communities they once so nobly served. It is not good for an old man to let the anger rise up within him when he thinks about how the government wants to fix his healthcare again. To start with I am sure I cannot afford another fix! I know my country cannot afford another fix; those costs would put my grandchildren into virtual slavery trying to pay just the interest on the trillions we would borrow. It isn't bad enough they have taken away my ability to make my own decisions and be accountable for myself and my family, and took away the liberty and dignity of our doctors, but when they want to enslave my grandchildren...that is even against the Constitution. Thomas Jefferson said, "...we shall consider ourselves unauthorized to saddle posterity with our debts, and morally bound to pay them ourselves; and consequently within what may be deemed the period of a generation or the life of the majority." I want the government to take its big business buddy and just get the hell out of my life and let we the people go back to managing our own lives.
If these omniscient progressive masterminds feel so compelled to fix something, why do they not start by repealing the laws giving big lawyers and big business the power to ravage us? For instance, look at Missouri, Mississippi and Texas that have passed tort reform laws and cut some premium costs up to 40%. Why do they not take away regulations that allow only half a dozen insurers (out of near 600) sell insurance in a given area? Wow, strike that, that would be capitalism. Folks, capitalism has not failed America...America has failed capitalism. We have choked capitalism and blamed it for coughing, all the while putting a chain of slavery around our own neck. Again Jefferson, "the government big enough to give you all you want is also big enough to take away all you have." Is the promise of the Nannystate to take care of your every need, worth the surrender of you liberty, dignity and the right for people to control their own lives? Can't we "just say no" to healthcare reform?
Wednesday, September 23, 2009
Thursday, September 17, 2009
Joshua's sword changed a land filled with the oppressive tyranny of pedophiles, perjurers, prostitutes, partying, greedy, gluttonous, thieving, extorting, hating, blaming, defiling and abusing into a land of the responsible, kind, accountable, generous and reverent. This society of free association, speech and religion where social needs were worked out at the community center rather than dictated by national government was the model that the great thinkers of Christian Civilization (principally John Locke) determined to be God's ideal. This social system that challenged men to rise to their God given level of responsibility is described in the last verse of the book of Judges as: "...everyone did what was right in his own eyes." When Thomas Paine wrote about the logical, spiritual and moral imperative of establishing such a social system on the American Continent, the Founding Fathers pledged their lives, fortunes and SACRED honors to accomplish this fulfilment of Gods purpose. Twenty first century social science completely obscures the spiritual motivation and replaces it with the secular; however, a careful observation of the founding documents reveals that every action was to fulfil what the Founders believed to be God's purpose for mankind. Subsequently, Adams wrote, "Our constitution is only for a religious and moral people, it is wholly inadequate to the governance of any other." After long (4 years) hoping it wouldn't be necessary, the Founders had grafted a republican government onto the civil society they had established, hoping it would not suffocate the personal accountability and responsibility of the citizens--knowing full well that if the civil society atrophied that the government would become oppressive. Foreseeing that inevitability, Jefferson wrote, "it is necessary for the tree of liberty to be periodically refreshed with the blood of patriots." Therefore it is the goal of the Sword of Joshua to "shed the blood" to purify the land and restore the civil society upon which our freedoms, prosperity and very form of government depend.
Tuesday, September 15, 2009
From Heritage Foundation, March 2, 1999.
Address by EDWIN J. FEULNER, JR., Ph.D., President, The Heritage Foundation
Delivered to the Heritage Foundation 25th Anniversary, Los Angeles Regional Meeting, Los Angeles, California, March 2, 1999
Today's program is devoted to the theme "Restoring Civil Society." To prepare the ground for this, I would like step back and ask you to think with me about a broader question: Just what is civil society?
Consider it this way: If someone stopped you on the street and asked you what civil society is, could you give them an answer that would set their hair on fire?
As people who are serious about building an America where freedom, opportunity and civil society flourish, we owe it to ourselves to think carefully about what those words mean. So let me take a few minutes to say how I would answer the question about civil society.
I think it is crucial to begin with the Founding Fathers, with the blueprint they drew for this nation. The Founders conceived of self-government as a thing to be carried out in two spheres: In one are the formal institutions of government, such as legislatures and courts. And in the other is a vast web of voluntary, informal associations such as families, neighborhoods, churches, civic groups, local schools, and a variety of cultural and charitable organizations. All of these associations in this second sphere, taken together, are what we mean by civil society.
So, if we're going to restore civil society, there are two things we need to get clear about.
The first is: How does civil society work when it works well? What principles account for its working well?
And the second is: What has gone wrong with civil society? What principles have had the effect of monkey wrenches thrown into its gears"?
I hope you were with us last night when we heard Professor James Q. Wilson deliver an insightful lecture on human nature. Today, in thinking about civil society, we can see that the Founders also possessed great insight into human nature.
For they understood that if we as citizens were not generally inclined to behave ourselves, there could never be enough legislators, laws, regulations, cops, courts, fines and jails to make us behave ourselves. If self-government is to work, the primary regulator of our behavior cannot be the external commands of law. It must come from the internal commands of conscience, informed by commonly accepted moral norms. And as the Founders plainly recognized, those norms are embedded in our Judeo-Christian heritage.
This is the twofold genius of the American experiment. The Founders knew that a properly constituted government was necessary for a free, self-governing people. But they also knew that it was not sufficient. And this raises an obvious but critically important question: Why are the formal institutions of government not sufficient to sustain freedom and self-government?
I think there are two answers to this question. First, although our Constitution provides a framework that gives us great latitude for making choices democratically, that framework doesn't tell us what to choose. For example, the framework permits taxation. But it doesn't tell us whom we should tax, how much we should tax, or what we should spend the revenues on.
Those "should" questions are ultimately moral questions. So the upshot is that formal institutions of government alone, no matter how ingeniously designed, cannot sustain freedom and self-government. Those institutions work only if we - the people - have adopted the right moral principles to guide the choices we make democratically. So that's one reason our constitutional framework is insufficient to sustain freedom and self-government.
But, as I said, it is insufficient for a second reason: Even when we have the right moral principles to keep our formal institutions of government working properly, those institutions cannot solve all problems or guide all choices. There some things - a great many things, in fact - that are simply beyond the power of government to accomplish. And it is those things that a healthy, functioning civil society will carry out - quite spontaneously - without any guidance or assistance from government.
Just think for a moment about the variety of perfectly routine activities that go on among average families in average neighborhoods - activities that, unfortunately, are far less common in the 1990s than they were in the 1950s.
Children, for instance, are given household chores to do - cut grass, wash dishes, take out the garbage - which nurtures in them a sense of responsibility to a community. And this begins in that smallest and most fundamental community, the family.
Parents make sure their kids do their homework - "No TV until the homework is finished!" Before children can develop a taste for hard mental effort, they must first develop a tolerance for it.
A teenage girl gets pregnant, and in homes throughout her neighborhood, other children are taught that a sense of shame attaches to such a gravely serious error of judgment. Dr. Samuel Johnson understood the importance of this: "Where there is yet shame," he wrote, "there may in time be virtue."
A father down the block is laid off from his job, and his family is going through rough times. Quietly, with respect and dignity, neighbors lend a hand in whatever ways they can, until he gets back on his feet.
A husband and wife are having marital problems, perhaps their children are getting in trouble at school or around the neighborhood. Neighbors invite the family to attend church, where they find a spiritual lift and a larger moral purpose that puts their problems into a more manageable perspective.
We could list thousands of activities like these that are performed routinely in good families and good neighborhoods. Each is motivated by an internal moral impulse, done in obedience to an external command of law.
Put in simplest terms: Law and morality are not interchangeable.
This is what the Founders understood when they conceived a limited government. They understood that there are limits to what government can do, and if it exceeds those limits, it will do harm rather than good. This, in a nutshell, is how growth of the liberal welfare state has eroded civil society.
Not content with public policies that compensate for the frailties of human nature, liberals thought they could eliminate those frailties. They believed that if the charitable and neighborly functions of civil society were not achieving complete and perfect results, those functions must be placed under the coercive mechanisms of government. They believed that law could replace morality. And on that mistaken premise, the liberal welfare state was born.
Millions of character-shaping activities formerly done from personal moral motives - within families, neighborhoods, churches and philanthropic organizations - were increasingly commanded by law. Consequently, the fellow down the street who lost his job didn't experience the dignity and moral support that comes from caring neighbors. Instead, he got a check from the government, paid by nameless, faceless taxpayers he never knew. They helped him not because their conscience commanded it, but because the IRS did.
Neighborhood schools once reflected the moral and educational values of parents. But they gradually came to reflect the narrow interests of school bureaucrats and the so-called "progressive" fashions of educational theorists.
As one of many consequences, children have been taught that if sexual activity at their age raises any problems at all, those problems concern not morality but hygiene.
This has been reinforced by one government program after another offering services, support, counsel and comfort to pregnant teens and teenage moms. These comforting responses were not compatible with the old lesson that teen pregnancy is a shameful and gravely serious mistake. One or the other had to go - and it was the old lesson that went.
The principle behind these examples of cultural breakdown is not new. Pliny the Elder, a Roman scholar who lived nearly 2,000 years ago stated it precisely: "What we do to our children, they will do to our society."
A wide variety of moral responsibilities were once nurtured and transmitted through families, friends, neighbors, school teachers, religious congregations and local charities. During the last half of the 20th century, we have seen these responsibilities replaced in wholesale lots by a single legal duty: Pay your taxes, and government will take over the responsibilities.
Our good friend George Will writes, "If you want to understand your government, don't begin by reading the Constitution. It conveys precious little of the flavor of today's statecraft. Instead, read selected portions of the Washington telephone directory containing listings for all the organizations with titles beginning with the word National."
Well, I did that, and how many such organizations do you suppose I found? Two hundred? Three hundred? Five hundred? You might not believe this, but the number of organizations in Washington that have titles beginning with the word National exceeds 1,600.
That is a very rough indication of how widely the federal government has spread into the functioning of American culture - and how widely we have accepted the liberals' mistaken premise that the moral responsibilities of family and community can be nationalized and administered through law. As the scope and powers of government have expanded, the robust morality of civil society has atrophied. And the result of that atrophy is the colossal, multifarious mess we see around us today.
A self-governing society is a like a living organism. Civil society is its moral immune system, protecting the organism from a wide range of social ills that threaten its integrity. The only way to clean up the mess we are in today is to revive that immune system by restoring to civil society the moral functions that are essential for self-government.
That is an enormous task, but it is one that must be done. The very survival of American culture depends on it - and I am convinced that it can be done. Everyone at The Heritage Foundation is convinced of it. That is why we made a commitment to roll back the liberal welfare state and build an America where freedom, opportunity and civil society flourish.
Today's focus is on how we can gain some ground on the civil society part of that commitment. One segment of civil society where it is crucial to gain ground is education, because the quality of education a child receives will largely determine the quality of his adult life. Remember that ancient Roman's observation: "What we do to our children, they will do to our society."
That problem will be addressed specifically in today's panel on "Rebuilding schools and communities." So as a backdrop to that discussion, let me describe one approach we're having great success with at Heritage.
I wrote to you about it last year, in a letter about a remarkable man named Thaddeus Lott. From 1975 to 1995, Mr. Lott was principal of Mabel B. Wesley Elementary School in Houston, Texas. The school's profile is the sort that too many teachers have confronted as a mission impossible. The student body is 99 percent minority; 82 percent qualify for free or reduced-cost lunches; in 1975, every student in grades three through six was reading below grade level, and Wesley's teachers were the least experienced in the district. They still are today, with 65 percent having taught five years or less.
Facing these long odds, Mr. Lott did not despair. He led. He announced to his teachers that, henceforth, there would be no excuses for failure at Wesley Elementary. Poverty would not be an excuse. Lack of parental involvement at school would not be an excuse. Even parental drug abuse would not be an excuse. There would be no excuses - period.
Four years after Mr. Lott took over at Wesley, 85 percent of his students were reading above grade level. Last year the first-graders at Wesley tested 12th among the 182 schools in Houston's Independent School District, and their reading scores were in the 82nd percentile nationally. Mr. Lott now directs four charter schools in Houston.
We featured him last January in a Policy Review cover story, appropriately titled No Excuses. Later we brought him to Washington as our first Frank Walton Fellow and arranged for him to testify before Congress about his teaching methods. We held a conference at Heritage and brought in educators and education policy analysts to hear him speak. We later invited Mr. Lott to our Resource Bank meeting in Chicago, where he spoke to hundreds of representatives of think tanks from around America, and received our Salvatori Award for American Citizenship.
At the U.S. Supreme Court, Mr. Lott received the Jefferson Award for Greatest Public Service Benefiting the Disadvantaged. He was awarded by the National School Public Relations Association. The Board of Education for the Houston Independent School District gave him a commendation for Outstanding Achievement.
Nationally syndicated columnists picked up the story. William Raspberry, Thomas Sowell and Walter Williams all wrote columns about Thaddeus Lott. Education Week, the leading educational news weekly, ran a story on him. Mr. Lott appeared as a guest on Oprah Winfrey. The New York Times cited him in framing a story about education policy. Investor's Business Daily profiled him in their "Leaders and Success" column. National Review profiled his school and its curriculum.
After Mr. Lott spoke in Jacksonville, Florida, his curriculum was introduced in 11 of that city's schools. An interfaith group of black ministers in Louisville, Kentucky, made it their top priority to get his curriculum introduced into their city's schools. The Houston Chronicle ran a series on Mr. Lott, prompting that city to introduce major school reforms.
Soon Mr. Lott was besieged with invitations to speak at education conferences around the nation: The Apple Tree Institute. Empower America's "Nation at Risk." CEO America's "Liberating America's Children through School Choice." The Arkansas Policy Foundation. Headway magazine's conference on education. The "Reading Summit Conference" of the Education Leaders Council. The Texas Charter Schools Conference. The Claremont Institute's "California Leadership Forum."
I even got a call from Representative Bill Archer, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, asking how he could help showcase the work of Thaddeus Lott.
What I want to emphasize is that we generated all this by spreading the story of just one man - one local hero who was convinced that children in the worst of circumstances are capable of getting a decent education and rising above those circumstances.
Well, this set one of our executives, Adam Meyerson to thinking: Are there not more Thaddeus Lotts in this great land of ours? And if we found them, could we not multiply their successes many times over, just as we did with Thaddeus Lott?
So Adam proposed a project to Casey Carter, one of our Bradley Fellows at Heritage: He challenged Casey to find 25 more Thaddeus Lotts. But don't look for them in the suburban schools. Look in urban school districts, those with profiles every bit as challenging as the one Mr. Lott faced in Houston.
So Casey began looking. He studied the profiles of 400 urban schools and interviewed 118 principals. And he found 25 more educators who are as innovative and successful as Thaddeus Lott. One of them is here today. She is Nancy Ichinaga, principal of the Bennett-Kew School in Inglewood, California.
You will hear from her in just a few minutes. What I want to emphasize is that in helping local heroes like Nancy Ichinaga and Thaddeus Lott spread their success to other schools, we are marking real progress in building an America where civil society can flourish. We are enlarging and re-energizing the sphere of self-government that the Founders understood to be vital for a free nation, the sphere in which moral impulses and individual initiative - not commands of law - provide the motivating forces.
Having said all this, I cannot allow Heritage to claim the primary credit for this progress. You, the people of Heritage, are the ones whose foresight and generosity enable us to carry out our work. It is because of you that we can spread the success of these local heroes to every corner of this nation. So it is you who deserve the primary credit as we make progress in building an America where freedom, opportunity and civil society flourish.
For your unfailing loyalty and support, I salute you, and I sincerely thank you.
Monday, September 14, 2009
still testing
give me a few days to figure out how a blog works and get things sorted around. I'll try to let you know when we are open for business
George Will
"The [Obama] administration's central activity - the political allocation of wealth and opportunity - is not merely susceptible to corruption, it is corruption." I saw this George Will quote in "Verdict" vol. 15, Issue 8, on the back cover. I thought for a minute as to the validity of such a comment, then common sense took over and I realized that government passing out wealth and opportunity is the definition of corruption. What does the government touch that doesn't become tainted? Every time we get a pound of the "bacon" we need to remember how many more pounds we have bought...much of that going to people who are not even vested in the system.
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