Category Archives: Democracy

Update II: Writing In The Age Of The Idiot

Ancient History, Democracy, Education, Ilana Mercer, Intellectualism, Intelligence, Pop-Culture, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The Zeitgeist

Excerpted from “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” this week’s WND.COM column:

“The reasons for addressing readers’ responses to last week’s column, “Paleoconservative Hypocrisy” [not my title], lie not in an exaggerated sense of self-importance, but in a sense of urgency. For some particularly jarring retorts (these have become ubiquitous over the years) are emblematic of the triumph of twiddle dumb and twiddle dumber in American culture and politics. And that’s a problem.

Super smart sorts still predominate in the few professional niches in which advanced skill and aptitude are necessary if bridges are to keep from falling, airplanes to remain airborne, and their human cargo pacified with electronic gadgets. Otherwise, an intellectual underclass has risen to dominate America in almost every field of endeavor.

Once upon-a-time simpletons sought self-improvement. No longer; in the Age of the Idiot they are groomed to be oblivious to their shortcomings—and will proceed loudly and aggressively against those who fail to mirror their mindset. … On encountering someone he might learn from, he unfurls an “untamed Id” and an inflated Ego in all their fury.

So it was that Ivan Poulter wrote to inform me that … although he meant no insult, he nevertheless needed to inform me that I ‘also appear as some kind of dumb-ass in [my] exaggerated intelligence.'”

Believe it or not, but one Founding Founders forewarned of the “Idiocracy,” although not quite in those words. More in the column “Writing In The Age Of The Idiot,” which can be read on the weekends on Taki’s too.

Update I (Oct. 9): George Pal’s comment hereunder about the association between democratic mass society and mass stupidity is an important one. I wanted to include this observation, plus a reference from a “dumb-ass with an exaggerated intelligence”—can’t recall if it was Hoppe or Huntington—but I dropped the idea. Too many ideas in one column might have caused a riot.

Update II: Regarding Clay Shirky (whoever he may be, posted by anon): the man belongs to the postmodern tradition—a “tradition” that has managed to almost completely dismantle one of the greatest achievements of Western Civilization: the intellectual discipline. (Hint: this is why you “study” so-called “social sciences” o “cultural studies” in secondary and tertiary schools and not history.)

“Intellectual disciplines were founded in ancient Greece and gained considerable impetus from the work of Aristotle who identified and organized a range of subjects into orderly bodies of learning. … The history of Western knowledge shows the decisive importance of the structuring of disciplines. This structuring allowed the West to benefit from two key innovations: the systematization of research methods, which produced an accretion of consistent findings; and the organization of effective teaching, which permitted a large and accumulating body of knowledge to be transmitted from one generation to the next.” (The Killing of History, Keith Windschuttle, Encounter, pp. 247-250)

The concept of the intellectual discipline is inseparable from Western canon and curriculum.

Healthcare: Rubes Vs. Rulers

Democracy, Government, Healthcare, Regulation, Socialism

A side-by-side comparison of the leading comprehensive reform proposals from the Kaiser Family Foundation. On offer, in plain English, are the key provisions of the three health-care House bills (“Tri-Committee”), the two Senate bills, and President Obama’s own stated preferences.

Via Robert Bidinotto:

You can also tailor for yourself a document that will compare any or all of the plans – including plans by Republicans and individual congressmen – according to whatever criteria you select, by clicking here.

This site is updated frequently to reflect any changes in the pending legislation.

While rigging the healthcare market for the rubes, here’s what medicine is like for the rulers (or as Bidinotto puts it: “Here is why Congress refuses to participate in the same health-care plan it is about to impose on the rest of us”):

LITTLE KNOWN OFFICE ON CAPITOL HILL PROVIDES QUALITY MEDICAL CARE FOR LOW PRICE
By JAY SHAYLOR and MARK ABDELMALEK

Sept. 30, 2009—

This fall while members of Congress toil in the U.S. Capitol, working to decide how or even whether to reform the country’s health care system, one floor below them an elaborate Navy medical clinic — described by those who have seen it as something akin to a modern community hospital — will be standing by, on-call and ready to provide Congress with some of the country’s best and most efficient government-run health care.

Formally called the Office of the Attending Physician, the clinic — and at least six satellite offices it supports — bills its mission as one of emergency preparedness and public health. Each day, it stands ready to handle medical emergencies, biological attacks and the occasional fainting tourist visiting Capitol Hill.

Officially, the office acknowledges these types of services, including providing physicals to Capitol police officers and offering flu shots to congressional staffers. But what is rarely discussed outside the halls of Congress is the office’s other role — providing a wealth of primary care medical services to senators, representatives and Supreme Court justices.

Through interviews with former employees and members of Congress, as well as extensive document searches, ABC News has learned new details about the services offered by the Office of Attending Physician to members of Congress over the past few years, from regular visits by a consulting chiropractor to on-site physical therapy.

“A member walked in and was generally walked right back into a physician’s office. They get good care. They are not rushed. They are examined thoroughly,” said Eduardo Balbona, an internist in Jacksonville, Fla., who worked as a staff physician in the OAP from 1993 to 1995.

“You have time to spend to get to know your patients and think about them and really think about how you preserve their health going forward,” Balbona said. “We’re not there to put on Band-Aids. We were there to make sure that everything possible that could be done [is done] to preserve that member of Congress.”

Office of the Attending Physician Services

Services offered by the Office of the Attending Physician include physicals and routine examinations, on-site X-rays and lab work, physical therapy and referrals to medical specialists from military hospitals and private medical practices. According to congressional budget records, the office is staffed by at least four Navy doctors as well as at least a dozen medical and X-ray technicians, nurses and a pharmacist.

Sources said when specialists are needed, they are brought to the Capitol, often at no charge to members of Congress.

“If you had, for example, prostate cancer, you would go to one of the centers of excellence for the country, which would be Johns Hopkins. If you had coronary artery disease, we would engage specialists at the Cleveland Clinic. You would go to the best care in the country. And, for the most part, nobody asked what your insurance was,” Balbona said.

In addition to Balbona, several former staff members and private physicians who have consulted at the OAP as recently as last year agreed to talk to ABC News on background. They described a culture centered on meeting the needs and whims of members of Congress, with almost no concern for cost.

Members of Congress do not pay for the individual services they receive at the OAP, nor do they submit claims through their federal employee health insurance policies. Instead, members pay a flat, annual fee of $503 for all the care they receive. The rest of the cost of their care, sources said, is subsidized by taxpayers.

Last year, Congress appropriated more than $3 million to reimburse the Navy for staff salaries at the office. Next year’s budget allocates $3.8 million for the office, including more than half a million dollars to upgrade the Office’s radiology suite. Sources said additional money to operate the office is included in the Navy’s annual budget.

In 2008, 240 members paid the annual fee, though some sources say congressmen who didn’t pay the fee were rarely prevented from using OAP services.

Office of the Attending Physician Would Not Comment

The OAP refused to comment in detail for this story, and Rear Adm. Brian Monahan, the Attending Physician to Congress, did not return phone calls requesting an interview. When ABC News chief medical editor Dr. Timothy Johnson visited the office in person in September to speak with Monahan, he was asked to leave.

After Johnson’s visit, Kyle Anderson, a spokesman for the House Committee on Administration, which partially oversees the OAP, called ABC News and agreed to answer some general questions via e-mail. He refused to discuss the number of staff members who work at the OAP or the type of facilities the OAP makes available to members of Congress.

Requests by ABC News to tour the facility were also denied due to “security sensitivities.”

Anderson said members of Congress are treated by specialists from military hospitals who visit the OAP at no charge. Congressmen are also eligible for free out-patient care at military facilities in the Washington, D.C., area, including Walter Reed Army Medical Center and Bethesda Naval Medical Center.

However, Anderson said, “individual health insurance is required for members to see local health professionals.”

Rep. Kagen Refused Health Care Benefits

Rep. Steve Kagen of Wisconsin — one of 15 medical doctors in Congress — is the only member of either the House or Senate who has no health insurance coverage. Kagen, a Democrat and advocate for health care reform, said he turned down the plan he was offered through the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program.

“I said, ‘I’ll tell you what. I respectfully decline. Until you can make the same offer to everyone that I have the honor of representing, I just don’t think it’s fair,” Kagen said he told the congressional staffer who reviewed the plan with him in 2006.

But while Kagen has touted in campaign advertisements and news interviews that he has no health insurance coverage, he has openly admitted he used OAP services. In January, for example, he paid more than $4,000 out of pocket for outpatient arthroscopic knee surgery. After the procedure, he said, he used the attending physician’s office and staff to assist him with physical therapy.

“It’s one of the, quote, benefits of being in Congress,” Kagen said. “They have physicians and nurses that will see you on the spot, on the beck and call.”

Kagen said he believed the office was no different than the on-site medical clinics at major corporations. “It’s kind of like being at a very large employer, where you have an on-site nurse or an on-site doctor, an on-site capability to get your immunizations or your blood pressure checked.”

Those who have worked at the OAP, however, said the services are far more advanced than what is available at most companies. One former staff member, who asked not to be named, described the OAP as “the best health care on the planet.”

Primary Care

Members of Congress interviewed for this story say they believe the model of ready primary care services offered by the OAP should be expanded nationwide, though few discussed the logistics of how those services could be offered.

Republican Rep. Lee Terry of Nebraska says he does not use the OAP and was unaware of the types of services it offers. “I don’t participate,” Terry said. “But I know there’s an option that you could use them as your, in essence, family practitioner while you’re here.”

Terry is introducing a bill to expand another health care model used by Congress — the Federal Employee Health Benefits Program — to all Americans. The FEHBP is an insurance exchange that allows federal employees to choose health insurance from several options.

Asked if the model of primary care services provided by the OAP should also be included in his legislation, Terry said, “I think that’s a fair question. … [All Americans] should have that, because, frankly, having a physician you can call or contact actually helps drive down costs.”

Yearly Fee

One aspect of the office’s operations which remains unclear is just how the annual $503 fee is determined.

Until 1992, OAP services were free to members of Congress. But after former Sen. Harris Wofford of Pennsylvania angered members by introducing a bill to make Congress members pay market rate prices for using the OAP, a compromise was reached.

Instead of charging for each service, Wofford said, members of the House and Senate agreed to hire independent consultants to determine the average value of the services offered and to use that amount to determine an annual fee.

“We thought of the pricing much like an HMO,” Wofford said of the compromise pricing model. “The attending physician at the time told me he had no interest in handling insurance or billing for each service available.”

But Wofford said the House and Senate committees tasked with determining the fee each insisted on hiring their own consultants, leading to a split pricing system. According to press accounts from 1992, the Senate set the fee at $520; the House fee was set at $263 for the same care. At some point, sources say, the separate rates were scrapped and replaced with the single fee, now set at $503.

The Office of the Attending Physician refused to comment on the fee or why it has not changed significantly in 17 years, despite rampant inflation in all other areas of health care costs.

Anderson refused repeated requests for the Committee on House Administration to provide details of how the rate is determined or who determines it. “Members pay an annual fee determined by an independent actuary for use of the OAP services,” Anderson responded each time he was asked about the pricing model.

Defending the Office

While many former staff members told ABC News they believe the services of the Office of the Attending Physician were often abused by some members of Congress, others, including Balbona, said the office serves a necessary role protecting the legislative branch of the federal government. Balbona said he agreed to talk to ABC News to defend the O.A.P.

“They provide members an accessible, professional place to get services. The alternative would be members going throughout Washington, DC, interrupting their service to our country,” Balbona said. “It’s not a political perk. Much like a medic who’s in combat, it’s not a perk for those soldiers. It’s part of the mission.”

Updated: White South African Granted Asylum In Canada

Canada, Conservatism, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Democracy, IMMIGRATION, Republicans, South-Africa

He was called a “white dog” and a “settler” by his black countrymen, and was attacked seven times by said people, including three stabbings inflicted during muggings and robberies. Then he moved to Canada, which has granted him refugee status. Now “Brandon Huntley, 31, originally from Cape Town, South Africa” gets to live where his life will not be imperiled daily.

The British Telegraph reports on this landmark case: “It is thought to be the first time a white South African man has been granted refugee status in Canada claiming he was the victim of black aggression.”

“‘I find that the claimant would stand out like a ‘sore thumb’ due to his colour in any part of the country,’ tribunal panel chair William Davis was quoted as saying.”

The Ottawa Sun reveals more than the British paper is prepared to:

The decision also took into account testimony by Laura Kaplan, 41, the sister of Huntley’s lawyer, who immigrated to Canada last year from her native South Africa.

Laura Kaplan testified about being threatened by armed black South Africans and the torture of her brother Robert in 1997 when a gang of black men broke into his house, tortured him for eight hours, shot him three times and left him for dead.

Davis said the evidence of Huntley and Laura Kaplan “show a picture of indifference and inability or unwillingness” of the South African government to protect “White South Africans from persecution by African South Africans.”

Reuters is quick to second the “The African National Congress’ response: “The ANC views the granting by Canada of a refugee status to South African citizen Brandon Huntley on the grounds that Africans would ‘persecute’ him, as racist,’ the party said in a statement.”

That’s rich. The sadistic atrocities described in this article could not possibly be a manifestation of seething racial hatred, now could they?

On the status of mercy in America I quote the American Renaissance: “there has been a trickle of South Africans applying for asylum in the United States on the grounds of racial persecution. Almost all have been deported.”

Update (Sept. 2): The Republicans, the Party of Lincoln, are least likely to feel sympathy for the plight of South African whites.

Here’s a relevant excerpt from my book, © Into the Cannibals’ Pot: Lessons For America From Post-Apartheid South Africa:

Ronald Reagan favored ‘constructive engagement’ with South Africa, together with a tough resistance to communist advances in the Third World. But political pressure, not least from the Republican majority, mounted for an increasingly punitive stance toward Pretoria. This entailed an ‘elaborate sanctions structure,’ disinvestment, and a prohibition on sharing intelligence with the South Africans.

For advocating ‘constructive engagement,’ members of his Republican party issued a coruscating attack on Reagan. Senator Lowell P. Weicker Jr., in particular, stated: ‘For this moment, at least, the President has become an irrelevancy to the ideals, heartfelt and spoken, of America.’ Republicans had slipped between the sheets with the fashionable left.

The radical Republicans like to forget how completely conservative Reagan was about forcing change in South Africa. Conservative and wise. There is not one Republican, bar Ron Paul, who is as weary of democracy and mass society as was Reagan.

Update II: The Dilemma Of The Dhimmi

Britain, Democracy, EU, Europe, Feminism, Islam, Jihad, Multiculturalism, Neoconservatism, The West

To condemn or not to condemn a “man [who is] behaving … just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married the six-year-old girl Aisha”—that is the question. An NIS News Bulletin, Via Jihad Watch, reports that the heroic Dutchman Geert Wilders—one of the few political leaders in the West to reject dhimmitude— “has compared the Islamic prophet Mohammed to a pig.” What prompted the fearless leader of the ascendant Party for Freedom (PVV) to pipe up recently?

Over to NIS News:

Geert Wilders has seized on a news report from Saudi Arabia for peppery [sic] written questions to the cabinet. In these, he compares the Islamic prophet Mohammed to a pig.

Wilders has requested clarification from Foreign Minister Maxime Verhagen on a marriage in Saudi Arabia between an 80-year-old man and a 10-year-old child. The child had run away from her elderly husband, but was brought back to him by her father, the English-language website Arab News reports based on a Saudi newspaper.

Wilders asks the minister if he shares the view that “this man is behaving like a pig, just like the barbarous Prophet Mohammed, who married the six year old girl Aisha.” The PVV leader wants Verhagen to summon the Saudi Arabian ambassador to express his repugnance.

ROBERT SPENCER ponders the dhimmi’s dilemma:

[T]his puts those who will condemn Wilders in a peculiar position. If they take issue with his characterization of Muhammad, they will either be excusing the Muslim prophet’s marriage to a six-year-old and declining to condemn those Muslims who imitate their prophet by taking child brides, or, if they say that Muhammad didn’t actually marry a child, they’re in the position of denying evidence that is in the sources Muslims consider most reliable. Yet as this incident with the 80-year-old and his 10-year-old bride demonstrates ( “my marriage is not against Shariah,” said the codger), many Muslims take that evidence quite seriously.

Update I (August 31): JP writes: Jamie, you cannot try an Arab in his homeland based on Western Laws.

This is a point well taken and worth making. It is clear to me that unlike, say, an America leader, whose admonitions to the Arab world may carry the threat of an invasion, Wilders is merely being provocative. His intention and consistent modus operandi are to expose the West’s self-immolating left-liberalism. I believe the same is the case here. Where are the Hildebeest-type feminists on this?

My mention of Daniel Hannan, the new-found darling of American conservatives and libertarians, in this context, is only tangentially related. Nevertheless, I’ve been meaning to bring Hanna up. Here’s what he had to say about Wilders:

It’s true that Geert Wilders is a controversialist, who takes pleasure in causing offence. He needs 24-hour protection, so serious are the death-threats he has attracted from jihadis. He revels in offending liberals as well as Muslims: his call for the Koran to be banned struck me as rather inconsistent with his stated commitment to civic freedoms. I wouldn’t vote for him if I were Dutch.

My Netherlands-based family are proud supporters of the heroic Wilders, the only man to understand the stakes. Hannan here is very much in the sneering mode of Mark Steyn, who lauds the manner in which America has dealt with fractious immigrant populations, and distinguishes between the American and European melting pots. I don’t know if he is one, but neoconservatives of the deepest dye do not allow for the questioning of immigration policy with respect to the future of western liberal societies.

In “Get With The Global Program, Gaul” I noted:

“When America’s news cartel woke up to one of 2005’s biggest stories—Muslims running riot across France—the response from many a neoconservative was to gloat.

The Schadenfreude was tinged with a sense of American superiority. It’s not happening here because we’re better. And why are we superior? To listen to their accounts, it’s because we’ve submerged or erased aspects of the American identity. …

Perhaps the threat to both homelands is overplayed. I sincerely hope so—for the French and for us. But even if France isn’t the proverbial canary in the coal mine, shouldn’t Americans be rooting for this once-magnificent European country?

Not according to some prominent neoconservatives, for whom the destruction of 8,400 vehicles, dozens of buildings, and at least one life by the Muslim community of France has served to focus attentions on… the ‘bigoted’ French.” …

[SNIP]

Hannan has generally condemned the hard-right parties of Europe and the UK as “fascist,” which is vintage neoconservatism. (It is possible that this “turn” in Hannan’s politics came about after the savaging he endured for citing “Powell, the Conservative minister who was cast into the political wilderness after warning that open immigration would lead to ‘rivers of blood,” as a major political influence.”) And although I too dislike the protectionism and economic socialism of said parties, they do address the indispensable immigration issue.

Undeniably “exceptionally intelligent,” the man speaks a superb English, something that seduced me initially too. However, I soon discerned that even Hannan’s pronunciations about American liberties sundered under Obama were somewhat shallow, or strategically tailored to his role as a star among Republican TV hosts.
Yes, he knows well and repeats often the principles of dispersion and decentralization of power inherent in the American system. But, like so many neocons, he conveys the false idea that up until recently those principles had been respected. Hogwash. Obama is continuing on the path of his predecessor, and Bush built on the wrecking Clinton did. And before that… well you know the story.

Update II: Via Jamie. It would appear that Hannan does subscribe to the neoconservative concept of a propositional nation. Accordingly, and to quote from my upcoming book, a nation is nothing but a notion (the last is Buchanan’s turn of phrase), “a community of disparate peoples coalescing around an abstract, highly manipulable, state-sanctioned ideology. Democracy, for one.”