[Oe List ...] What do we mean by a right? To Jim, Dave, et.al. re: Conservativism

Fri Sep 4 19:53:31 CDT 2009

Ed. I'm pleased you raised these questions -- it tells me that you aren't
making assumptions that I often feel people make about conservatives in
general and me in particular.  I'd like to answer them thoughtfully and
don't have time tonight, so I'll find time over the weekend to try to
respond as thoughtfully as you have written and hopefully as cogently.

Susan

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of ed feldmanis
Sent: Friday, September 04, 2009 11:41 AM
To: Order Ecumenical Community
Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] What do we mean by a right? To Jim, Dave,et.al.
re: Conservativism

Susan,

Although we answer and speak to one another we think our ideas have value
for the whole list serve.  So continuing in that spirit, here is the
problem.  It is impossible for me to ask about accontability, responsibility
inside your vision as you stated to me.  It's my problem. Frankly I got lost
in this ladder of philosophy, not because I didn't understand the words but
because I could not relate it to the particular.  I also ask you not to be
too hard on David in trying to unpack the philosophy you wrote.  My thought
was that it was pretty dense.  

I do not remember you well from some decades ago.  Everyone who knows you
says you are a nice person.  Please do not think I am judging you in some
mean way.  However, I have to tell you I am really confused about many of
your ideas about health care and conservativism. 

I woke up in the middle of the night thinking about your words and still,
for myself, had trouble anchoring and grounding them.  By now you have
figured out that my thesis is that conservatives are welcome in my life but
I question whether many of the so-called conservatives referenced in our
discussion actually are.  For example, if you were to tell me that the kid
from my hometown, Mitch McConnell, was really a conservative I would want to
challenge that. 

I think your stance is that you are a Conservative.  At least that is what I
get. So here is the biggest part of what keeps jangling in my mind.  These
are problems that trouble me and that just don't fit for me in all of this
thinking.  So I will ask you.

I.  It is widely acknowledged that corruption, waste and manipulating and
tricking patients is wide-spread in our private health insurance system.
When reports from doctor's, economists, and even prosecutors hit the news
there is large agreement that waste and corruption are huge and abundant.
We are spending twice what anyone else in the modern countries are spending
on health care.

It seems to me that part of the Conservative philosophy is to war on waste
and corruption.  I am outraged by the stealing and squandering of health
care dollars in this private system.  Are you outraged?  I have never seen
you say it. 

II.  I remember your saying: what is wrong with profit?  As a Conservative
are you saying that paying for and getting health care is on a par with
buying a refrigerator?  In your conservative philosophy, or just in your
thinking about your own human values are they really the same? 

(What about the manufacturing adding value with rubber, metal, electricity
and making a fridge.  That's added value. How is that the same as health
care and specifically, if you were to talk about insurance, and the CEOs,
and so on, what is the economic added value?)

III. Then in the area of facts, one of the hallmarks of the Conservatives
(in the more distant past) has been that they apply the best information to
a situation hence they were known for smart governance and state-craft.  You
have said that our health care is the best in the world.  Now being #1 was a
saying pronounced with great feeling after World War II and in the 50s.
Things change.  For example, the World Health Organization says, if I
recall, we are about #37 when all of the health care picture is taken into
account. Is it your personal belief that in spite of what we know, including
the waste and corruption, that we are number 1?  Is it what conservatives
would say, I mean the real ones, would say? What do you say?

It may have been in the heat of making a stand in the debate, but I remember
you saying that our health care has to be good because people from all over
the world come here for their health care.  REALLY?  They do?  Do you mean
that regular people do?  I mean people people, from countries that have good
recognized health care come here in droves because we are so good?

My experience has been that the rich come here to places like Cleveland
Clinic to access the best that is available to the rich.  I recall Arab oil
barons coming here because the medicine was good and because sometimes they
were geographically distant from people who would kill them if they caught
these rich princes and tycoons sick.

IV. You have not said anything about the flood of money going to Congress
and corruption that happens with wink and a nod rather than outright buying
of votes.  Is there any Conservative outrage about this kind sneaky
corruption?

Susan I see your vision and I can't get a strong grip on the particulars.
Maybe I don't know how you feel about this kind of stuff and maybe I don't
know the criteria by which you find yourself to be a conservative.

Ed

2009/9/3 Susan Fertig <susan at gmdtech.com>

My responses in blue next to your points below.

Susan

  _____  

From: oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net [mailto:oe-bounces at wedgeblade.net] On Behalf
Of David Dunn
Sent: Wednesday, September 02, 2009 10:11 PM
To: Order Ecumenical Community 

Subject: Re: [Oe List ...] What do we mean by a right? To Jim, Dave,et.al.
re: Conservativism

On Sep 2, 2009, at 6:22 PM, Susan Fertig wrote:

Ed, Something in what you said below triggered a memory of a recent exchange
I had with a young cousin of mine.  He is more right wing than I am -- Yah,
I know, most of you can't imagine what that would even look like.  He is
very against abortion, but he said he didn't want it made illegal, because
he wanted people to want not to get abortions rather than being prohibited
by law from it. I guess thats the way I feel about a lot of things.  I want
the human spirit to triumph -- somehow I thought that was what we were all
about back in the day, not creating a stronger government to force people to
do or not do things.  Some of it is necessary of course, just for physical
safety and for things like infrastructure (roads and the like), but the
things that have to do with caring about people should be connected to civil
society.

Colleagues:

This is the sort of interchange that drives me a little crazy. I believe
that I read the above to suggest that:

. the rule of law contravenes freedom of choice  Not at all what I meant.  I
was merely fascinated by the wisdom of my young cousin discerning that even
though he was a right-to-life advocate, he could see that was not something
that government should be dictating.  I am a strong rule of law proponent.
But we need to be careful about what should be within the framework of law
and what should not. 

. a society based on wanting people to hold important human values is an
adequate substitute for public policies that institutionalize important
human values  I don't think you need to paraphrase what I said in my message
responding to Ed. I said what I said.  I didn't say what you read into what
I said. 

. the triumph of the human spirit and a strong government are antithetical
Not at all.  I seriously believe in a strong defense capability. :-) 

. what we (OE community?) were about in the past is not what we're about now
Again, don't work it so hard, David.  What I said is what I said. No
particular need to paraphrase and thereby distort.  Many of things we were
always about, we are still about.  But we used to consider it important to
build community more than to build government, I think.  That does not say,
as you have suggested here, that what we were about in the past is not what
we're about now.  That is a distortion of what I said. 

. strong government is synonymous with coercion (health care reform
threatens coercion?)  Not synonomous.  One version of a strong government
could be a government that has built in appropriate restraints on it's power
over its own people -- that is exactly what our founders intended.  Somehow,
I think that has been perverted. But strong government is not (necessarily)
synonomous with coercion. What I was saying is that "we" seem now to be in
favor of creating a powerful government that controls so many aspects of
life that it must by necessity control its normal, law abiding citizens, and
(a) I don't think that is how government should function, and (b) I don't
think that was not how we envisioned building community back in the day -- I
may have completely misunderstood what I was doing back in the 70s with the
EI/ICA, but I thought we were trying to empower people to solve their own
problems and not expect everything to come from the government.  If you rely
on the government for everything, it has power over you. 

. caring about people is the purview of civil society and not of the public
sector  Yes, but not entirely.  Certainly I think the government has a role
in caring for its citizens, but not as the grand public teat that eliminates
all motivation to provide for yourself because everything is taken care of. 

I freely admit that I may be totally misunderstanding your points, Susan.
And I strenuously declare that I am no apologist for either political party,
for the current administration, for liberalism or conservatism, or for this
or that proposal for health care reform.

If we agree that our context and vision is the triumph of the human spirit,
my question is what is the social strategy that assures that "all the goods,
all the decisions and all the gifts belong to all" vis-a-vis health care?

All the earth belongs to all remains a powerful mantra that holds out a
vision of effective participation, free expression, inclusive polity, equal
access, and equal rights. Universal health care seems to be a logical
expression of that kind of value. 

The means to this end is legitimately a matter of debate, but the debate
ought to proceed on the basis of experience, facts, goals and objectives,
and consensus problem solving rather than shouting, misinformation, and
actions calculated to cause one's political or ideological opponents to
fail. 

I grant that your weren't engaging in any of the above, Susan, but the
discussion that we need is a discussion that unpacks all of the assumptions,
values, premises, etc. of both sides in the present public debate. I read
George Will and David Brooks with every bit the attention and interest as I
do David Ignatius and Maureen Dowd. There's truth within that broader
constellation somewhere.

David

---

David Dunn
dmdunn1 at gmail.com

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