Quarantine, Yes Or No?

Classical Liberalism, Ethics, Individual Rights, Individualism Vs. Collectivism, The State

“I’m a very well-educated, successful, intelligent person. This is insane to me that I have an armed guard outside my door when I’ve cooperated with everything other than the whole solitary-confinement-in-Italy thing.”

So said the patient “with a form of tuberculosis so dangerous he is under the first U.S. government-ordered quarantine since 1963,” on returning from a transatlantic trip to celebrate his wedding. The trip took him from Atlanta to Europe—Greece, Italy, the Czech Republic, France—and back to Atlanta via Canada and New York. By the man’s telling, he came back not because he realized he had exposed others to a deadly, highly infectious airborne disease, but because “he was afraid that if he did not get back to the U.S., he would not get the treatment he needed to survive.”
“Health officials said the man had been advised not to fly and knew he could expose others when he boarded the jets from Atlanta to Paris, and later from Prague to Montreal… He knew he had a form of tuberculosis and that it was resistant to first-line drugs.” Apparently he was also told to wear a mask. That too he ignored. If Andrew Speaker—that is the patient’s name—is as smart as he professes, he ought to have known not to expose people without their consent to any TB, much less to a strain associated with a 50 percent mortality rate.

Speaker returned to North America via Canada, driving into the US, a fact that demonstrates consciousness of guilt: He avoided American airlines, as he had been placed on a “no-fly alert,” which, it transpires, was overlooked at the border crossing. I suspect this case is akin, legally, to an individual infected with HIV not informing his sexual partners of his condition.

I’m trying to think of a libertarian argument against coercively confining a man who knowingly and intentionally uses his body as a lethal weapon against unsuspecting innocents. I can’t come up with one. Can you? Another libertarian has expressed a preference for “home confinement with an electronic monitor. This would seem to strike the balance between protecting his liberty interests and the safety of the public.” I like home confinement, only I really do not believe the authorities acted illiberally up until now: they gave the patient the goods (the info), and left it up to him to comply voluntarily. Andrew Speaker, on the other hand, ignored the information and acted recklessly. Should be given a second strike? If he strikes out again, someone could die—especially individuals with a low T cell count (suppressed immunity). Armed and dangerous is how he ought to be regarded. Would an electronic monitor provide ample warning in the event he violated the quarantine? By the time the authorities locate the quarantine violator, he may well have infected a host of people.
In the meantime, Diane Sawyer, who grills her subjects only in the sense Larry King interviews his, has elicited Speaker’s story. It’s a maze of contradictions and dissembling, and is accompanied suspiciously with “sexy” poses of Innocent Andy and a woman with a blond head the shape of Paris Hilton’s, a forlorn look, and big implants. His new wife, presumably. The fact that this is an educated man—a lawyer, no less—doesn’t help his case.

Are Hippie Parents Sending Kids Into The Maw of Death?

America, Crime, Criminal Injustice, Family, Left-Liberalism And Progressivisim, Psychology & Pop-Psychology, The West, The Zeitgeist

Another young girl died overseas on a school trip. I saw the item on CNN, but cannot find the link (help please). The parents allege foul play.
American and European parents are blasé about their kids, be it in the way they discipline or supervise them. They are also stupendously naïve, sending their precious progeny, during their most stupid years—the teens—to dangerous spots around the world. Bermuda, for instance, which “US and British crime advisories have warned of as having a medium-high crime rate.”

Consider the case of Rebecca Middleton. This Canadian 16-year-old was packed off to Bermuda by starry-eyed parents with her friend Jasmine Meens, ready for a “trip of a lifetime.” A left-liberal mindset has these folks believing the world is one big happy place, and that walking the streets of Mogadishu and those of Montreal (lovely city) are one and the same thing.
In any event, Middleton “accepted rides on motorcycles, operated by Mr. Smith and Mr. Mundy.” (Here’s Justis Smith.) the Bermuda Online described what these predators did to the girl as “the most animal sexually-depraved, most violent and inhuman murder of any woman or man anywhere in the world.” (Wild and Wooly English, that’s for sure.) Intriguingly, the appeals in the case—no one was convicted—were argued in the Bermudan courts by Cherie Booth Blair.
The hippie spirit was also alive and well in Natalie Holloway’s family. (Never mind the male predators waiting to prey on trusting North American girls, I would not have entrusted my child to any adult chaperon chosen by a North America schools.)

Presidential Politics: Immigration Vs. War

Politics, War

Citing a “National Academy of Sciences study,” Patrick Buchanan notes that “The average immigrant comes to this country much poorer and far less educated than Americans and consumes far more per capita in public services…each immigrant who comes with less than a high school education costs taxpayers $90,000 net over his or her lifetime.” Considering that immigration policy has been predicated mostly on family unification and on allowing millions upon millions of unskilled illegals to enter the country undisturbed, the assessment sounds about right.

When thousands of non-voting illegal aliens poured into the streets to demand their positive “rights,” their elected officials and El Presidente (Bush) came up with a bill that will grant the protesters their wish.

Adding to the “union” each year the equivalent of one New Jersey, powered by identity-politics, and consisting predominantly of tax consumers seeking to indenture taxpayers —how better to accelerate wealth distribution and the death of the republic?

As a libertarian who wrote her first op-ed in opposition to the invasion of Iraq in September 2002, I do not mean to diminish the centrality of this war in the presidential race. However, the neoconservative “idea” of preemptive wars or wars for democracy is as dead as a doornail. Can you imagine a candidate running on that plank? I didn’t think so. However, the notion of dissolving the people and electing another, to paraphrase Bertold Brecht—that’s very much alive in the minds of the political caste.

I’d say, then, that immigration is the central issue in the next elections.

Updated: If Americans Were More Like Israelis…

Bush, Israel, War

If Americans were more like Israelis, Bush’s popularity at the polls would be at…0 percent. That’s where Ehud Olmert’s approval rate is among Israelis, said CNN today. Olmert’s position at the polls had hovered between 2 and 3 percent, before bottoming out.

The anger is over the Second Lebanon War last year. Israelis are furious not only over the execution of the war, but over the fact that it had been prosecuted at all. Whereas large segments of the fantasy-based community in the US see great benefits to the destabilization of Iraq, or at least so they say—Israelis in overwhelming numbers believe leveling Lebanon was a horrible thing to do. Oddly enough, here at home, harpies for Bush continue to talk up the Second Lebanon War, even though Israelis have long since disowned it and the president who prosecuted it. “You’ve failed; go home” is the rallying cry across Israel.

The Winograd Report on that war, unparalleled in the US, has placed “the primary responsibility for these failures on the Prime Minister, the minister of defense and the (outgoing) Chief of Staff. All three made a decisive personal contribution to these decisions and the way in which they were made.” What simple, clear truths, the kind that evade us in the US.

The preamble to the Winograd Report states:

“We believe Israeli society has great strength and resilience, with a robust sense of the justice of its being and of its achievements.”

I have to agree—all the more so given that four years hence and most Americans still refuse to process what Bush wrought by invading Iraq and how corrupt that endeavor was.

Update: Bush vetoed the Iraq War Supplemental today. I think it’s his first veto in office. He blamed “members of the House and the Senate” for passing “a bill that substitutes the opinions of politicians for the judgment of our military commanders. Contrast that with the Israeli Winograd Report which accused Olmert of “acting in effect as a rubber stamp for the army.” Funny that. In Israel they think the people, represented (allegedly) by the government and parliament, ought to make decisions; in the US we think it’s the generals (who, face it, give dumb a new meaning, if to judge by their acumen thus far).

Update II: The footage of 100,000 Israelis—of the left, right and center; religious and irreligious—gathered at Rabin Square to call on the government to resign warms the cockles. Author Meir Shalev derided the government thus:

“We do not seek compensation, not even remorse for your sins of lack of judgment, your arrogance. You ran headfirst into battle with the gaiety of fresh recruits, without a plan or an objective. You squandered Israel’s power of deterrence, you squandered our chances of bringing back the captives and worst of all – you squandered the lives of soldiers and civilians.”

They mention civilians! What will it take for conservative in this country to mention the poor, dying people of Iraq, upon which we’ve unleashed death and destruction, and who will probably never know peace again.

Anyone who has lived in, or visited, Israel knows that it is a country of independent-minded, anti-authoritarian, critical and demanding people. What can I say? Jews! Anyone who conflates the common American neocon with the regular Israeli has never encountered that odd creature, the Sabra, that prickly pair.

The assorted Hebrew signs read: “Failures, Go Home!”, “Elections Now!” These are all very tame, but things are sure to heat up…if I know Israel.