Robert's Place
columnist: robertjb

Topic: Health Care
The triumph of ideology over common sense

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Bill Moyers asks the right question. David Frum gives the wrong answer.

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by robertjb
(centrist liberal)
Saturday, September 19, 2009

The triumph of ideology over common sense

Bill Moyers asks the right question. David Frum gives the wrong answer.

Every one of us would like to claim possessing common sense; sound judgment based on practical experience. Where it is absent there can be many reasons; the most obvious being a lack of experience, most often associated with the young.

Is it then possible that well educated, articulate, older and very well informed commentators, can be totally lacking in common sense?

The answer as we observe the American scene is a resounding yes. Commentators, pundits and so called public intellectuals are left unchallenged to run amok abusing the truth, begging the question, making fatuous claims and ever so cleverly avoiding the real issues and refusing to practice anything resembling common sense. To anybody with a modest amount of common sense these intellectual bagmen who populate the television wasteland appear as idiot savants. They are knowledgeable, articulate and charming in their cloying manner, but their arguments are all too often fatuous and deceitful. What is also of concern in these paneled discussions and interviews is that the moderator asks the questions but all too rarely challenges the outlandish comments of the panelists.

Why do they persist in their idiocy and apparent lack of common sense?

The answer is painfully obvious. These are men and women who put ideology ahead of common sense. To advance an ideology requires preset values that must remain unchallenged and beyond scrutiny. To allow them to be challenged would reveal that they are unsound and defy commons sense. The media in turn is all too willing to cooperate in ensuring these deceits remain unchallenged.

The debate over universal Medicare for Americans reveals how common sense has been utterly slaughtered as the debate becomes not based on issues but steeped in ideological partisanship and fear mongering- Obama as Hitler incarnate even though his proposals are paltry.

The concept of "universal" inspires fear and loathing in America's conservatives as it is synonymous with socialism. But as many other countries have proven universal Medicare is the most cost effective way of delivering medical services to their populations.

Conservatives pride themselves on being fiscally responsible but refuse to acknowledge what is fundamental to any group insurance plan- the greater the number of participants the more cost effective the service. It doesn't matter whether it is a dental plan, car insurance or medical services.

America's conservatives while lacking in common sense have no shortage of audacity. Amid the wreckage of the free market economy, the collapse of Wall Street and the near total destruction of the American middle class they are still trying to sell the odious notion that the privatized, deregulated economy is still America's salvation. What is wrong with America's health care system is that it is an integral part of this economy incorporating all of its inequities and corruptions.

Intransigent Republican's have a death wish they are trying to impose on their country and are willing to sacrifice the health care of Americans on the alter of their moribund ideology.

It is a brutal irony that so many Americans, especially conservatives, claim to be devoutly religious while at the same time reviling the notion of socialism as embodied in universal medicare. For a basic tenet of religion is a regard for your fellow man, being your brother's keeper and serving the common good. Socialism is cost effective in both financial and spiritual terms.

Conservatives, especially neoconservatives, would have us believe government is inherently bad. Government, like religion, is good in the hands of good people; but bad in the hands of bad people. Like so may other things in life it is only bad if we make it bad. It is only corrupt if we allow it to be corrupt. Recent times have shown why conservatives loath government- it interferes with their ability to plunder and pillage- thus the deregulated, privatized free market economy; thus the economic disaster we now experience.

Is there a connection between the war in Afghanistan and the Medicare debate?

Of course. Americans are told they cannot afford universal Medicare even though their hodge podge system is grotesquely inefficient compared to Canada's and other countries that have been so bold as to adopt universal medical coverage for their citizens. But the main reason goes unmentioned. Almost half the US budget goes to maintaining the military industrial complex and its compulsion for serial warfare and redundant militarism. Tens of billions of dollars are being squandered on foreign wars urgently needed at home not only to finance better medical care but also a decaying national infrastructure, to say nothing of a looming debt crisis. Thanks to the Wall Street bailouts the country will be running multi-trillion dollar deficits for the foreseeable future.

On the issue of war conservatives bring the same specious arguments as they do to the Medicare debate. The media is littered with right wing commentators who the defend the necessity for this war claiming that to "cut and run" is not an acceptable alternative as if to imply the only solution is war when there are clearly other alternatives.

These intellectual nitwits have conveniently short memories. Tens of thousands of American troops were killed in Viet Nam. Estimates of Viet namese casualties range as high a five million. The carpet bombing of Cambodia killed another million or so Cambodians. The much disputed body count in Iraq has to be well over a million dead, mostly civilians.

Now, in Afghanistan, the folly is repeated as the US and its lap dog NATO allies are fighting another losing war killing off civilian populations. This war, like the Vietnam war before it, and the decade-long- Russian occupation of Afghanistan will no doubt end in another ignominious retreat.

Now, once again, an all too acquiescent public is being asked to condone another slaughter, another failure.

Where failure looms large desperation is in the air.

The US Secretary of Defense, Robert Gates, recently chastised American Press for publishing a picture of a fatally wounded American soldier in Afghanistan. The home front cannot be reminded that people actually die in wars! AP broke the cardinal rule of modern warfare journalism; embedded self-censorship.

Then too there is the nutty Canadian officer, Lieutenant- Colonel Douglas Martin, who wants to stage a mock battle in the court yard of Canada's embassy in Washington to demonstrate how people get killed in Afghanistan.

"Unfortunately there are still a lot of Americans who don't know about how great the Canadian commitment is,"

So says Col. Martin. Alas, the Canadian military feels slighted they are not getting full credit for their role in this pitiful fiasco.

Then too, there is the formidable David Frum who fled Canada to become one of Washington's idiot savants. As former speech writer to George Bush he has found a cozy new home in the clique of courtesans who service America's corporate welfare state.

In his article: Afghanistan: A Quagmire Worth Fighting For, Frum states:

Since 2002, the western world has followed a "development first" strategy in Afghanistan, hoping that if the country recovered economically, the remnants of the Taliban would fade away. This year the U.S. is shifting to a new approach, the "security first" strategy that worked in Iraq. And unlike Iraq, there is now hope that the insurgency in Afghanistan will at last be denied a neighboring safe haven in Pakistan.

He makes the claim the western world has followed a "development first" role since 2002. This is wrong. As he should know Canadian troops first went to Afghanistan in a development role. This was quickly abandoned in favor of the "security first" option which is of course open military confrontation with the counter productive effects that a disproportionate number of civilians are killed and the intensified violence (as has been pointed out ad nauseum) acts a recruiting poster for the Taliban resistance and stokes their cause.

One of the great absurdities of the war in Afghanistan is the notion that war and development can be undertaken simultaneously. They cannot, and war has always been the default strategy - an ill-conceived strategy with wanton disregard for civilian casualties.

"This year the U.S. is shifting to a new approach, the "security first" strategy that worked in Iraq." This is no "new approach" as the ongoing failure of the "security first" approach has only resulted in a demand for even more troops.

Frum implies that Iraq has some how been a success when in fact it is now governed by a puppet regime under strict American control both politically and economically and there will be a continued troop presence in that country.

He, and others of his ilk, claim the goal in these conflicts is to establish democracy but as long as the US actively subverts the United Nations and refuses to practice a genuine multilateralism its motives are suspect. Both Afghanistan and Iraq are strategic staging areas for possible wars with Russia and/or China. America's aggressive stance in these two wars has understandably made both countries nervous and precipitated a new arms race.

In an August 14^th PBS interview on health care, Bill Moyers asks the right question. David Frum gives the wrong answer:

BILL MOYERS: I'm reminded that you grew up in Canada.

DAVID FRUM: I did.  

BILL MOYERS: Couldn't the conservative, a calm conservative[ as Frum defined himself earlier in the interview] make a case for that kind of national insurance plan in this country?

DAVID FRUM: Look, where those plans have grown up, as in Britain, for example, you've seen conservatives make their peace with them, as the British conservatives have done. And once something is integrated into the status quo of your country, it gets conservative. There are I think a lot of reasons not to regard it as a preferable system.

It stifles the possibility of innovation and diversity. It means that ideas that get into the minds of people in Washington are very difficult to get out. And it creates a -- it also creates this tremendous problem where every malfunction in the system becomes the fault of the politicians.

Frum can only muster a weak and fatuous reply revealing that he is just one more blinkered Washington ideologue. He appears to have given up on social change. Yes, in both Canada and Britain universal Medicare is now the status quo but in Canada this change only came about through conflict and controversy as social change most often does.

In Canada it was conceived by the Tommy Douglas government in Saskatchewan. Doctors went on strike, many threatened to leave and did. There were public rallies and boycotts, threats and counter threats. But once it was established in one province it quickly spread across the country. Any sane politician could see it was the most cost effective and egalitarian way of delivering health care to the country.

Frum can think of no good reason it is a "preferable system" ! So this means he is condoning the present American system where 44000 Americans die every year because medical care is not available to them. Almost fifty million Americans have no health coverage and millions more have only partial coverage or very expensive coverage. He blissfully ignores the fact that unexpected medical expenses are the leading cause for personal bankruptcy in the country, and on a per capita basis Americans are paying three times what Canadians pay!

"It stifles the possibility of innovation and diversity." Frum it seems is capable of the outrageous lie. If this is the case why has Canada got one of the most progressive cost effective Medicare systems in the world? Why then has the US got one of the most iniquitous, corrupt and least cost effective?

He rattles on, it also creates this tremendous problem where every malfunction in the system becomes the fault of the politicians.' Here Frum needs a lesson in civics as this is what government is supposed to be all about-leadership, being accountable and responsible to the population it serves.

Frum might be interested to know that in spite of efforts to destroy it and turn it into a corrupted and inefficient imitation of the American system Canada's Medicare system is running well and our politicians are getting too much sleep on this and other issues.

As to the "minds of people in Washington," Frum shrinks from addressing the single greatest impediment to Americans achieving univsersal health care: The politicians in Washington have been bought off by the very powerful corporations who are the so called health care providers. In other words politicians have abdicated their obligation to serve the public good. Instead they have become courtesans to the corporate welfare state where the corporate good prevails over the common good.

Barack Obama, a capable and talented president, is unfortunately hostage to an unyielding and malicious status quo. His own Democratic party is part of the problem. His presidency may well be the last best chance for Americans to achieve a fair and equitable universal health care system. It appears now that the opportunity has been squandered.

Nobel Prize winning economist Paul Krugman, easily one of America's most talented economists, has for years used his New York Times column to advocate a Canadian style universal Medicare system for Americans. Where as Frum is the carpetbagging expatriate, Krugman is indeed the calm voice dealing in cold hard numbers. His arguments are compelling. His insight is incisive and he does not shrink before the momentous task at hand.

Tragically, modern day America is a country where ideology is triumphant over common sense; where ideologues and nihilists reign supreme deconstructing self evident truths, negating established moral and democratic values, and fabricating their specious truths.

Where a corrupted ideology reigns supreme outcomes are entirely predictable and profoundly lamentable.

The full text of the Moyers/Frum interview is available at:

[link edited for length]

Robert Billyard 2009

Robert Billyard is an artist and writer living in the bucolic hinterlands of British Columbia Canada. He reads widely on history, politics and social issues, and has at various times been politically active. He is married with children and grandchildren and has a deep concern for the legacy we leave them.

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©2009 robertjb, all rights reserved. You must have written permission from the author in order to republish this work.
Published: Saturday, September 19, 2009
Last modified: Wednesday, September 23, 2009

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