Mad As Hell

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One of the most successful films of 1976 was “Network.” The movie featured Howard Beale, a network anchor with declining ratings. In a rage about his impending cancellation, he screams out a window, “I’m mad as hell and not going to take it anymore.” His anger becomes the feature of a new show and his angry man persona garners a large audience by using his rant as his slogan. He finds that his audience is also “mad as hell,” although not really about any common grievance. Beale becomes the face of their anger.

As an amateur political scientist, I have been puzzling over the continued support for Donald Trump. It defies conventional wisdom. At any other time, his personal failings, bombastic behavior, and legal travails would have long ago eliminated him as a candidate. But now is just not any other time.

I think Trump is a modern Howard Beale, but a presidential candidate instead of a news anchor. For quite a while, perhaps more than two decades, a growing segment of the US population has been undergoing a slow boil. Economics, taxes, government regulations, cultural breakdowns, seemingly endless war, and on and on have hit sore nerves and spiked anger. Who used to be called members of the Silent Majority are no longer silent and they are angry about the state of affairs in the nation. As with the followers of Howard Beale, they may be “mad as hell” about a wide variety of things but their anger coalesces around Trump. Trump says things about the establishment that they want to be said and attacks people and institutions they want to see attacked.

There were approximately 75 million citizens who voted for Trump in 2020 and polls suggest he may have similar support now. For how many of them Trump embodies their anger, who knows. I suspect a number that would surprise many. If only 50%, that means we have roughly 40 million Americans who are fed up with the status in the United States and angry enough to support a candidate for President that the intelligentsia cannot understand and dismisses them merely as deplorables. That is a problem.

Howard Beale’s audience grows bored with him and eventually moves on. Trump’s opponents believe the same thing will happen when Trump is defeated. By election day in 2024, however, Trump’s supporters will have been behind him for eight years. Unlike Howard Beale’s audience, they have not moved on even though they have a host of reasons to do so. The pundits believe Trump is the source of their anger rather than merely its face; that he is nothing more than a boil that, once lanced, will lose its force. But what if he is nothing more than the rod for the populist lightning? What if even if he is defeated, he leaves the angry energy behind? What if once Trump leaves the stage 40 million Americans or more remain “mad as hell” and determined to show they will not take “it” anymore? And what if they conclude they have given the ballot box a try and it no longer works fairly, and must try something else?

I have no idea what the answers are to the questions I pose. I know, however, that the anger is real. How broad and deep? I have no measure, but I think it is real enough that it should not be casually dismissed. Something is happening in this country and whatever it is, it strikes me as dangerous. If it was just the Trump supporters that would be bad enough. But I have a sense that many across the line from the Trump supporters are just as mad. How easily our streets filled with angry Hamas supporters may just be another coal mine canary.

The United States has been at such a crossroads many times before. Often, we have found a way to reconcile the competing interests and become a better society. But sometimes those who have been “mad as hell” have resorted to violence, which occasionally has been widespread. I am not a prophet and cannot foresee our future. I know only this: each crossroads presents the choice of a path. Nothing is inevitable until we make the wrong choice, and only history is the judge. But I fear our time at the crossroads is coming.

© 2023, Thomas Trezise

Great or Greek?

Those of us who are Babyboomers were raised in the shadows of our parents. Our parents lived lives of sacrifice. They came of age during the Depression and many struggled to survive. They stood in the path of totalitarianism and defended and preserved freedom in World War II and Korea. They returned from the fight, rolled up their sleeves, and pitched in to re-build the nation. They stymied the expansion of communism and won the Cold War. They made the United States the greatest nation the world has ever known. Tom Brokaw paid tribute to their sacrifices in his book, “The Greatest Generation.” They were great.

The Greatest Generation also transformed American society in ways that now present a challenge to us, their children. Our parents sacrificed in ways great and small to assure that we would never have to do so. In the homes of our youth, most of us lived protected and sheltered lives where we never wanted for food, clothing, entertainment, transportation, education, and security. That we will have our wants and needs fulfilled has become a foundational expectation of our generation. The Greatest Generation not only saved our nation, but also birthed the entitlement society.

Our parents not only attempted to provide security to us in our homes, but also nationally through the construction of a massive “safety net” of entitlements. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, school lunches, education loans, and grants and subsidies of a broad variety became embedded as fixtures in our lives. The Greatest Generation had created such wealth that the nation seemingly could afford anything. Now that Babyboomers have come to leadership they focus on expanding those entitlements and creating new ones such as national health care. We have accepted government as a primary caregiver.

The entitlement society took root in Europe long before the flowering of social programs here. And the consequences of the concept of government as caregiver are bearing evil fruit there first also. Greece, burdened economically by increasing debt necessary to fund rich public jobs and entitlements, is on the verge of financial default. The citizens of Greece, however, addicted to the entitlement narcotic, have taken to the streets to fight any changes that might save them. They will sacrifice their country rather than accept modifications to their benefits. The descendants of the 300 who sacrificed their lives at Thermopylae to preserve Greece from the Persians will not sacrifice a euro to save their country. How sad!

The reality, however, is that the Babyboomer generation in America will face soon the same choice. Entitlements consume a greater portion of the Federal budget and our Gross Domestic Product each year. The entitlements that seemed affordable to our parents now exceed our capabilities. They are already not sustainable and if the health care entitlement passes our debt will be beyond any reasonable bounds. As the Babyboomers pass into senior status and consume more and more of these entitlements, we too will be beggared. Greece is our future unless we choose to change it.

Unlike the Greeks, we Babyboomers do not have to look back thousands of years for models of behaviors to guide us. We only have to look at the preceding generation. Our parents showed us the way. Yes, they laid the foundation of the entitlement society and gave us permission to live self-absorbed lives. But they also showed us that when America is in crisis, Americans have the courage and determination to make whatever sacrifices are necessary to preserve this nation. They showed us the no sacrifice is too great in the cause of liberty.

The unfortunate reality is that our nation simply cannot afford to fund the entitlement society for aging Babyboomers. The debt poses a threat to the existence of our nation as we know it. Yet the fear of the political consequences of confronting that reality trumps the economic reality in the minds of our political leaders.  They simply do not have the courage to keep us from hurtling down the same track as Greece. So it comes to us, the entitled, to make the difference. Unlike the citizens of Greece, rather than demand that we receive our due, no matter what the cost to our country, we must take the lead and concede that the entitlements must be reduced.

I’m not sure of the answer. Perhaps we must accept means testing so that only the truly needy receive the benefits. But I am certain that the time has now come for our generation to sacrifice to save our nation. We have been a generation of privilege that has sacrificed little for our country and taken much. As the primary beneficiaries of the entitlements, unless we are willing to sacrifice our “rights” to the benefits, nothing will happen. Our electoral strength is too great. The sacrifice demanded of us is not of the kind our parents made, but it is to surrender the security that our parents wanted to bequeath to us. The sacrifice that we must make is to take greater responsibility and risk for our lives in order that we might bequeath to our children an America that can be as great as that our parents left to us. Do we love our country enough to make that sacrifice? Are we made of the same stuff as our parents? Can we be Great?

Why I Am a Republican Conservative

 [Adapted from a speech delivered to the Reagan Republican Club, Baltimore County, MD.]

I am a white male. I am an attorney and have practiced law as a trial attorney. I have served as a corporate executive in several major insurance companies. I now am President of a small consulting company. I live in an ex-urb, am married, and have two children and a dog. I attend church on Sunday and am an evangelical Christian. And perhaps my crowning achievement, I play golf and used to belong to a country club. 

If you are a member of the Democrat party, you may need to hear nothing more. You will proclaim, “Of course you are a Republican. You’re the quintessential country-club Republican.” You will draw that conclusion because you are a Democrat. You don’t care what people think. You decide who people are by the groups you can identify with them. You divide society into groups and ascribe importance to the groups, not the people. And you make assumptions by the labels you pin on people. You ironically claim to care about people, but would make no effort to know who I am because I wear the label “country club Republican.” 

But my story, and those of most Republican Conservatives, fit none of the stereotypes that Democrats advance. For I became a Republican before I was any of the things that I mentioned, with the exception of being a white male, an accurate label I unavoidably have carried since birth. So why am I a Republican? 

I was born to a working class family in the mountains of Western Maryland in 1953. My father had an eighth grade education and my mother made it to the ninth grade. Money was always tight in our household. We raised some of our food and I cannot recall a time when I did not have chores and work to do. My father was a World War II veteran, a worker in the local mill, union member, and, significantly, a committed and active Democrat. 

I was raised on politics. Political discourse was part and parcel of our family conversation. I remember clearly our support for John F. Kennedy and his near sainthood status after his death. Franklin Roosevelt was also venerated. In my youth I campaigned for Democrats without question. It was expected as a member of our family. 

But politics took a back seat to something even greater……our country. My father loved this country and taught me to have a deep and abiding respect for this nation. He made me understand what a great privilege it is to be an American and to never take for granted the sacrifices that so many have made so that I could have this privilege to live in this country. And the core of that privilege is that I am free. You hear it stated so frequently that ours is the greatest nation in the world. But all too often they are just words without meaning. In the household of my youth, however, that was doctrine written on our hearts by my father. And it was not sufficient to believe that doctrine. We also accepted that we had responsibility to preserve that freedom and pass it on to our children. That expectation was far greater than any expectation my father may have had with regard to our political affiliation. 

By the 1968 election I was confused politically. The Democrats seemed to embrace to some degree radicals who appeared to support enemies of our country. Yet the Republicans and Dick Nixon remained an anathema in our home. I turned 18 in 1971 during the height of the Vietnam War. I drew #8 in the draft and had to confront what I truly believed, for I had no deferment, but was eligible for a conscientious objector exemption because of the church to which I belonged. I concluded, however, that, as my father had taught me, I had an obligation to serve the cause of freedom. If I was not willing to serve my country when it called, whether or not I agreed with the reason for the call, then all freedom was jeopardized. Our obligation to country and freedom carried no qualifications. 

Concluding that I wanted to serve as an officer, I joined Army ROTC at my college rather than accept status as a conscientious objector, which was easily available to me without consequence. Doing so was not a popular thing. Only a small number of students were in ROTC. Some of the supposedly “tolerant” liberal students found it acceptable to throw food and spit at me when I wore the uniform. I will not pretend that I was not relieved when the draft ended and I did not have to go to Vietnam. Few rational people actually seek out war, but I had no expectation that I would not have to serve there when I joined. Through that experience, however, I gained a deeper respect for those who do serve and the sacrifices that they make so that others may be free to throw food and spit. 

By the election of 1972, I was in college by a combination of some support from my parents, scholarships, loans, and money I could earn. I was the first person in my family ever to go away to college. Those questions formed in 1968 about the commitments of Democrats to American values and individual freedoms were now in full bloom. I was now an historian and a political scientist and firmly entrenched in the reality that our freedoms are found not in the institutions of government, but rather in the Constitution and statutes that limit those institutions. So when it came time to register to vote, I became the first person in my family not only to go away to college, but also to register to vote as a Republican. I became a Republican, because I had become a Conservative….a Republican Conservative. Conservative by ideology; Republican by political necessity. 

I was not of the country club set. I was not a corporate executive. I was none of the labels. What I was, however, was a blue collar kid working my way through school with a profound love for my country and a deep appreciation for my freedom. I became a Republican because the Republican Party was the party of freedom — the freedom of the individual from intrusive government, the freedom to earn my way in the world wherever my talent and ambition could take me, and most important, the freedom of our values and democracy protected by our strength and extended wherever people sought to be free. 

Although there was little doubt in my choice, if there was any it vanished with the election of Ronald Reagan. Reagan essentially embodied my conception of what a President should be and articulated my feelings for our country and my conservative beliefs in the limited role of the federal government. So in explaining why I am a Republican Conservative, I shall use the words of President Reagan as my guide. 

“Concentrated power has always been the enemy of liberty.”

“Our natural, inalienable rights are now considered to be a dispensation from government, and freedom has never been so close to slipping from our grasp as it is at this moment.”

Reagan could have spoken those words today. The initiatives of Barack Obama, Harry Reid, and Nancy Pelosi are studded with efforts to arrogate greater power and control over our lives to the federal government, either by coercion or by forced dependence. I could cite example upon example, and I truly believe that the sum of it all demonstrates that our freedom is slipping from our grasp as Reagan predicted. But looking at a few examples rather than just a laundry list might be more helpful. 

Obama’s health plan is illustrative. In Orwellian fashion, he suggests that he is just expanding our choices. But what he actually proposes is a detailed government run health care system. Yes, theoretically choice will remain, but when employers must provide benefits that match the government plan or be fined, or when individuals must buy insurance or be fined, then as a practical matter we all are being forced to accept federally mandated health care and the choice is illusory. The simple fact is that if Barack Obama prevails he will force us all into a government-run, government-mandated health insurance program where a government bureaucrat decides what we need and when we get it. The power over our health care choices will have been concentrated in the hands of government. That concentration of power is, as Reagan said, an enemy of our liberty. 

Take then the so-called Obama tax cuts. In another wonderful example of Orwellian rhetoric, he asserts that he gave a tax cut for 95% of the country when only approximately 50% of those people pay taxes. Simply put, Obama takes money from some and baldly gives it to someone else. He candidly admitted during the campaign that his goal is “to spread the wealth around.” There is nothing clearer than when I ask the government to take from you to give to me, we both are made slaves of the government; you because the government has taken what is rightfully yours, and me because the government has replaced responsibility, accountability, and motivation with dependence. And I will become an addict ready to give the government anything for my next fix. I can think of nothing more invidious to our freedoms than to allow government to treat us as victims needing government services rather than citizens capable of managing our affairs and the affairs of our republic. What I want from government is to do that which we must do to protect and develop the country, within the structure of the Constitution, in ways that can only be accomplished by the combined citizenry. I want nothing from government for me as an individual. And I certainly want nothing that enhances me at the expense of your liberty. For if I agree to the compromise of your liberty, I most assuredly agree to the compromise of mine at the same time. 

My last example is a seemingly small one.  But liberty is rarely seized by broad sweeping revolutionary strokes. It frequently vanishes as leaves blown away before the wind. Each leaf makes little impact as it disappears, but when the tree is bare we will notice. Barack Obama, Harry Reid, Nancy Pelosi, and a host of Democrats are behind efforts to eliminate the secret ballot in union elections. Think about that for a moment. There is little more critical to the machinery of our freedoms than the secret ballot. And they want to take it away. What possible good can come from that? How can eliminating election freedoms be consistent with the core values of our republic? And this is brought to us by the same people who have funded, supported, and, in the case of Obama, represented ACORN as it pursues a never ending campaign of electoral fraud that it admits and will not stop. If that is not, as Reagan said, our natural, inalienable rights being now considered as a dispensation from government, then I cannot imagine what could be. 

“We cannot play innocents abroad in a world that is not innocent.”

“History teaches us that wars begin when governments believe the price of aggression is cheap.”

There is no greater responsibility of government than to protect our freedom and values from destruction or infringement by enemies foreign or domestic. The commissioning oath of every military officer is “I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States against all enemies, foreign or domestic, that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the same; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservations or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties of the office upon which I am about to enter; So help me God.” The enlisted oath is similar. These young men and women pledge their lives in the cause of freedom. Our government has the concomitant responsibility to assure that those pledges are honored; that those lives are sent into harm’s way with a seriousness of purpose and a commitment to the preservation of freedom, either directly the freedoms of the citizens of the United States or others for whom we have the capability to extend freedom. 

I am a Republican Conservative because I see no seriousness of purpose regarding the protection or extension of freedom in the Democrats. They consider our soldiers, sailors, and Marines as victims and exalt those who complain. They seemingly have as great a concern for our enemies as our military, producing bizarrely restricted rules of engagement. They send them into overflights and missile drops, or into ground force policing actions, as symbolic demonstrations of will, but they loudly proclaim against using our military actually to fight in ways that they have been trained to serve and against actual enemies of our country. And President Obama naively believes that talk is a substitute for strength. He has reduced our military capabilities, and will do so in even more significant ways, proposes to eliminate our nuclear defense capabilities, and rarely speaks of how the military is a force for good. We live in a time where as Reagan said, governments from Russia to Iran to Venezuela perceive that the cost of aggression is cheap. I fear that the price is becoming even cheaper as they realize that President Obama is not a threat. Talk loudly but throw away our stick seems to be his plan. That will assure only that our military will get thrown into situations when they are long past desirable for the use of force and pay the price for such foolishness. 

My concern here is not academic or theoretical. My daughter is an ensign in the Navy and is now at flight school and will soon have her wings. When she joined ROTC, I asked her if she was prepared to sacrifice her life not in the cause of freedom, but for the folly of some politician. She told me that she recognized that risk, but she would follow her orders. She explained to me that some have to be prepared to fight, no matter the reason or cost, or there would be none to fight when freedom needed defense. As a father I am terrified that she may have to pay that price. I cannot control that. The folly of unfocused and ill-prepared military excursions certainly is bi-partisan. But it far more often flourishes in liberal weakness than the commitment to national defense that is bedrock conservatism. President Obama and liberal progressives encourage our enemies to regard the cost of aggression as cheap and make it more likely that our military will have to fight, but on far less favorable terms. That reason, even if I had no other, causes me to stand as a Republican Conservative. 

“Freedom is never more than one generation away from extinction. We didn’t pass it to our children in the bloodstream. It must be fought for, protected, and handed on for them to do the same.”

We live in a time of fear. Our economy is more fragile than we have ever known it to be in our lifetimes. Islamic totalitarianism and its terrorist handmaidens threaten us. Our society weakens from within by selfishness, by tolerance and acceptance of immorality, and by the fraying of the religious faith that once bound us tightly together. In such circumstances, the fearful all too frequently will mortgage their freedom for certainty, even if the certainty is metaphorically a cell, just as long as it is comfortable. History has taught that lesson time and time again. And it will teach us again if we do not stop it now. 

As I prepared this commentary, I researched quotes from Reagan on freedom. They were easy to find. Choosing those to use was the problem. I then I decided to use a few quotes from Barack Obama on freedom as a contrast. Perhaps the most disconcerting thing for me in this entire exercise was the result of my effort. I followed the same Google search with Obama that I did for Reagan: “Barack Obama freedom quotations.” Do your own search. I could find none of significance. Freedom comes up with his name in a meaningful way with regard to his support for the Freedom of Choice Act, which nullifies all restrictions of any type on abortion. Otherwise, he just has not discussed individual freedoms and liberties and the role of government in relation to liberty. 

When President Obama uses the word “freedom” it is incidental to another point rather than his focus. But he did say at a graduation address in the Spring of 2008 at Wesleyan University, “our individual salvation depends on collective salvation.”  That is chilling. Barack Obama makes no defense of individual liberty, but espouses subordinating the individual to the collective.  Can you imagine someone rising to the presidency of the United States without having made any worthwhile statement regarding individual liberty? America is not the shining city on the hill described by Reagan because it presents an opportunity for you to serve the state, but because of the individual liberties that it cherishes and protects. I am sorry, but President Obama is no friend of individual freedom.

I am not blinded to the fact that Republicans also have expanded the role of the government and limited our freedom in doing so. That is why I emphasize that I am a Conservative first. But I remain a Republican because in our electoral framework there simply is not a practical alternative. We must work to hold Republicans to conservative goals for government. For Conservatives to pursue ideological purity in another party may be intellectually admirable, but ineffective for the defense of liberty. The Republican Party certainly has been inadequate, but there are Republican Conservatives who need support and are growing in strength. For that reason, if you are a Conservative I encourage you to be a Republican Conservative. If you are not, as a practical matter you empower liberal progressives such as Obama, who unquestionably do not champion individual liberty. You must understand that risk. 

In closing, I again cannot do any better than to return to Ronald Reagan: 

“Let us be sure that those who come after us will say of us in our time, that in our time we did everything that could be done. We finished the race; we kept them free; we kept the faith.”

The advocates of government are in power, nationally and in the State of Maryland. The threats to freedom continue not only in the massive and obvious actions and proposals of Obama, Pelosi, and Reid, but also in all those small ways that are barely visible but nonetheless steal our liberty. We Conservatives must join and fight against the never ending encroachments of government. We cannot let tests for 100% purity in conservative thought to split us and diminish our electoral impact. As Marco Rubio, Florida Senate candidate said before Conservative Political Action Conference on February 18, the election of 2010 is “not a simple choice between liberals and conservatives. It will be a referendum on our nation’s very identity.” We must succeed now at the ballot box to defend and preserve freedom. Successful defense of liberty will come only in a long series of small victories on legislation, regulations, and elections at the local, state, and federal levels. It will come through a great deal of thankless work with little glory. But it is our obligation to those who sacrificed to hand us the freedom we have. If we do, we can say, as Reagan, that to those who come after us, “we kept them free; we kept the faith.”

Space, The Lost Frontier

For those of us of a certain age, we have lived our lives in tune with America in space. We assembled in small elementary school gymansiums and watched the early space launches on small, grainy, black and white televisions and also lauched our own dreams as the rockets ascended. We heard President John F. Kennedy proclaim that “We choose to go to the moon!”, grieved as fire consumed Apollo heroes, held our breath and prayed for the salvation of Apollo 13, and watched in awe from our living rooms as Neil Armstrong took his “giant leap for mankind” as he achieved the impossible: he stepped on the moon.

Armstrong also took the flag of the United States to the moon. The exploration of space and landing on the moon symbolized American greatness. As Americans, we could accomplish that which others could barely imagine. Americans do the impossible.

“Space, The Final Frontier” were the first words at the opening of the 60s television show “Star Trek” that has become iconic. Many of us who measured our lives with the US space program embraced the Star Trek series passionately. It envisioned a day when all humans were engaged in the common mission of space exploration. It gave life to those dreams that took flight with the rockets. But the series also clearly grasped the pioneering spirit that made America great and just extended it into space. Captain James T. Kirk embodied the spirit of America. Kirk let nothing stand in his way. He was a conquerer and pioneer and brought liberty in his path. In the American space program, that unique spirit that brought the first travelers to our shores and carried the leather-clad adventurers over mountain after mountain until Americans stood on the shores of the Pacific, continued on.

President Obama now plans to terminate our exploration of space. He does not state it in those terms, but in ending the Constellation program, he will have eliminated our ability to put Americans in space. The Constellation program has been developing the next generation of space vehicles to replace the Space Shuttle, which will be retired by the end of this year. Without the vehicles to carry Americans into space, we will become dependent upon Russians, Chinese, or perhaps Indians to provide space transportation for American astronauts. Moreover, the mission of NASA will be redirected from exploration of space to the substantiation of climate change theories on Earth.

President Obama’s withdrawal of America from independent space exploration is emblematic of everything wrong with this administration. He reduces us from the nation held in awe by the rest of the world as we conquered the moon to a hitchhiker metaphorically at the corner with our thumb out begging for a ride. He decries our exceptionalism and seems to be doing all that he can to establish that we are no longer great. He apologizes, bows, and constantly diminshes our country. Throughout my entire life I have believed that, as Americans, we could accomplish everything. I held to that faith because, no matter what we faced, I knew that we could conquer it because we conquered space. In so many ways, Barack Obama, the “Hope President”, has been instead a president of disillusion. But in canceling the Constellation, he has done the unforgivable. He has lost the Final Frontier.  In so doing, he cuts from our national soul a significant part of that spirit that defines America. He truly has gone where no president has gone before. He makes us common and small.

A Mandate to Control Your Life

The health care legislation pushing through the Congress mandates that all citizens must purchase health insurance. The mandate is essential to enable the reduction of insurance costs for higher risk persons, such as those with chronic conditions or the elderly, by forcing the young and healthy, who otherwise might not purchase insurance because they view it as an unnecessary cost, to purchase insurance or face fines and possible imprisonment if they do not pay the fines.

The mandate raises a critical question: Where does the federal government have the authority to force anyone to purchase a good or service? Ruth Marcus of the Washington Post today casually dismisses this constitutional liberty grounded in limited government. She relies upon the Commerce Clause and the government’s ancillary authority to tax. If she is correct, the health care legislation will not only stand as the Waterloo for the fiscal integrity of the United States, but also the death knell for the last threads of limited government and individual liberty.

I confess to being a strict constructionist  insofar as constitutional interpretation is concerned. There is no doubt in my mind that the Commerce Clause was intended for the limited purpose of preventing one state from erecting barriers to trade originating in another state. Unfortunately, that has become little more than an interesting historical discussion. Marcus is correct that Supreme Court precedent, especially since the Depression, has expanded federal regulatory authority in many ways utilizing the Commerce Clause as the door. Where she is wrong, however, is extrapolating from these precedents addressing the authority of government to regulate  commercial behavior the new authority to force commercial behavior.

Marcus pays lip service to this distinction. She writes:

Granted, there is a difference between regulating an activity that an individual chooses to engage in and requiring an individual to purchase a good or service. Granted, too, there is a difference between making automobile insurance compulsory, as a condition of the privilege to drive a car, and making health insurance compulsory, whether an individual wants it or not.

But she justs goes on to presume that the distinction is meaningless and encompassed within current precedent.

There is a maxim in judicial interpretation that the law follows the facts. The truth is that the Supreme Court has never been presented with a case under either the Commerce Clause or authority to tax that involves the government forcing an individual to purchase a good or service rather than restricting commercial behavior that can be considered detrimental to interstate commerce. If Marcus is nevertheless correct, there is no limit to what we can be forced to do. Would it not be in the interest of a healthy interstate economy to prevent the demise of General Motors? Force us to buy GM cars! Isn’t AIG too big to fail? Force us to buy AIG insurance! Want to promote the beef industry? Force vegetarians to eat meat! And on and on it will go.

The health legislation is a cornucopia of progressive usurpation of our rights. I consider the mandate, however, to be the most pernicious. So much of the discussion and attacks by conservatives have focused on the public option. I’m concerned, however, that when the public option dies the mandate will ride in on the tide.

UPDATE: Looks Like the Heritage Foundation Agrees….

A mandate requiring all individuals to purchase health insurance would be an unprecedented form of federal action. The government has never required people to buy any good or service as a condition of lawful residence in the United States. An individual mandate would have two features that, in combination, would make it unique. First, it would impose a duty on individuals as members of society. Second, it would require people to purchase a specific service that would be heavily regulated by the federal government.

Read the entire analysis

Political Attention Deficit Disorder

I have not written in a while and have received some inquiries as to why. A partial reason is that life just gets in the way sometimes. But the most significant reason is that I have come down with a bad case of what I call “political attention deficit disorder.”

Much has been written about how much the Obama administration is trying to do and the multitude of ways in which the President is transforming our society. As a political junkie, I try to read as much as I can and follow closely what is happening. But I’m on overload!

Just trying to understand what is going on with the thousands of pages of proposed health care legislation in the House and Senate is more than I can handle. So, I decide to write about that. But when I do, I find out that the proposed Copenhagen climate change treaty will include a wholesale sell-out of national sovereignty. Well, that’s important, so perhaps I should write about that instead. But wait, The Obama administration reversed long standing policy and joined the ironically-named UN Human Rights Council and immediately supported free speech restrictions. Wow! That’s very singificant! I’ll write about that. But the Senate has just confirmed David Michaels to lead OSHA and he has stated that he intends to use OSHA to implement broad gun control regulations. He’s going to be a real problem, so that’s where I’ll focus.

So do you see my problem? I feel like I’m trying to watch ten tennis matches at once. I just cannot keep track of them and feel overwhelmed. Do you feel the same? What really troubles me is that I’m afraid that we are living in a giant game of Three card Monte. While we’re trying to follow the health care money card we cannot follow  how we are really losing our freedoms in so many other ways. I hope I’m the only one overcome with political attention deficit disorder, but I fear that we are eventually going to find that the government has built walls around us while we were not paying attention.

Sacrifices

[I was asked to deliver the Memorial Day address at a local United Methodist Church on May 21, 2006. I just happened to re-read my text today. My daughter referenced  below is now an ensign in Navy aviation training. In light of the fact that soldiers, sailors, and Marines continue to die in the face of the dithering that the administration is doing with regard to General McChrystal’s recommendations in Afghanistan, I find them still appropriate. I hope you do also.]

Another Memorial Day weekend will soon be upon us. A three day weekend. Time to relax; maybe have a cookout; perhaps catch the first summer movie releases. I’m planning to play golf. Unfortunately, for too many of us, Memorial Day has become just another three day holiday for fun and games. But it used to be different. 

Memorial Day originally was called Decoration Day.  It always has been a day of remembrance for those who have died in our nation’s military service. Over two dozen cities and towns lay claim to being the birthplace of Memorial Day to remember those who died in the Civil War. There is also evidence that organized women’s groups in the South were decorating graves even before the end of the Civil War. Wherever it started, Memorial Day was officially proclaimed on May 5, 1868 by General John Logan, national commander of the Grand Army of the Republic. It was first officially observed by the country on May 30, 1868, when flowers were placed on the graves of Union and Confederate soldiers at Arlington National Cemetery. 

When I was growing up in a small town in Western Maryland, the focus was still essentially that: honoring those who sacrificed their lives for the country. Memorial Day occurred on May 30 then. No matter what day of the week that was. In the days leading up to the holiday, I used to work in the local cemetery carrying water for flowers and helping families decorate the graves of loved ones. The day was a school holiday, but it involved a parade to the cemetery where speeches of remembrance were given.  The turn-out from the community was usually pretty good. I also remember that buying paper poppies to demonstrate respect for the veterans, living and dead, was something that was very important to my father, a World War II Navy veteran. So we all wore poppies on Memorial Day. 

My guess is that many of you here remember similar Memorial Day ceremonies and observances.  But you know, it struck me the other day that I cannot recall the last time I saw anyone selling poppies. Perhaps the tradition lives on, but if it has somewhere along the way it has lost its prominence.  It seems to have just slipped away, at least from me. 

And, like the poppies,  sometime along the way since my earlier years, perhaps when Congress made the day part of a three day weekend, the remembrance and honoring of those lost in our wars seems to have become an ancillary part of just another weekend of recreation, shopping, and eating. In a sense I hope that is the explanation, which is bad enough, but I fear there may be even more at work than that. I fear that we are becoming a society that takes for granted the sacrifices that are the heart of Memorial Day.  Moreover, I fear even more that many Christians have come to regard that the only proper service for Christians is in opposition to war, rather than the sacrifice of military service. But when we no longer see the goals of military service as honorable, it is difficult to honor those who sacrifice themselves in that service. 

As I speak, my wife and I are awaiting confirmation that our 19-year-old daughter has arrived safely in the Persian Gulf on board the newest aircraft carrier in the fleet, the USS Ronald Reagan. She is a second class ROTC Navy midshipman and has been assigned to the Reagan for her summer cruise. She hopes to be a naval aviator, so her first tailhook landing will be a great thrill for her and a great anxiety for me and her mother. Even though the Reagan is on duty supporting war operations in Iraq, our daughter is not exactly an active duty warrior in harm’s way, but her mother and I will feel better when she returns home.

Although our daughter and the other midshipmen in her unit are just normal college kids, you can sense in them that they understand and have accepted the sacrifices that they may have to make for our country. When they put on their uniforms they also put on a seriousness of purpose that you don’t see in others their age. They seem to instantly mature. They understand sacrifice. Indeed, one grasped it so well, that he left school this year to join Marines going to Iraq. He did not feel that he should remain behind when men he knew were going into harm’s way. 

What is interesting is the perspective some people have had about our daughter’s service. She is openly and unabashedly Christian. Yet she wants to fly and, if required, is perfectly at peace with dropping ordnance on terrorists. Some have directly questioned, however, how she could be a Christian, yet want to be a warrior. One of our neighbors, for example, who is a person of faith, questioned me one evening as to how we could support her service. She indicated that she did not see how a person could be a Christian and in the military. I cannot grasp that position though, for to me it seems the consummate expression of devotion to God and country. 

I know that in some circles it has become politically incorrect to make such a statement. To such people the concept of “for God and country” has become an anachronism. I cannot accept, however, that a Christian willing to sacrifice his or her life to preserve our freedom, or bring freedom to others, is a contradiction with our faith. 

Sacrifice is, indeed, the touchstone of our faith. Our very salvation rests on the sacrifice of Christ for our sin. And he calls us to service and sacrifice. Christians have answered calls to serve by bringing fundamental needs of food, medical care, and education to those in need around the world, and have put their lives at risk to do so. Such service unquestionably stands as honorable Christian service. Freedom and security are no less fundamental needs. To fight those who kill, imprison, and oppress is no less honorable. And those who give their lives doing so must never be taken for granted and must be remembered and honored by us. 

Paul charges us in Galatians 5: 1:

For freedom Christ has set us free. Stand firm, therefore, and do not submit again to a yoke of slavery.

Christ purchased our freedom from sin with his life and Paul challenges us to never turn our backs on that sacrifice. Those we honor today purchased our freedom from tyranny and oppression with their lives. We also must never turn our backs on them nor the cause of freedom for which they paid that price. 

Unfortunately, we again live in a time when people want to deprive us of our lives, freedom, and faith. Just this week I read that Iran may make Jews wear yellow cloth patches just as in Nazi Germany. They also may make Christians wear red patches. Our freedom and security are being threatened in ways we have not seen before and could not have imagined just five years ago. And today men and women are again paying freedom’s price in Iraq, in Afghanistan, and in unknown engagements with terrorists around the world. Honoring those sacrifices with our words today is not enough. As Paul charges us, we must “stand firm” in the cause of freedom. We must assure that those who have sacrificed themselves will not have done so in vain. 

So we gather here today. As the Israelites crossed the Jordan, they built their monument of stones to help them remember God’s gift to them as they entered into the Promised Land. So let us commit to build monuments in our hearts that will help us remember the gift of freedom that men and women have given to us, and are still giving to us, at the price of their lives. Let us never forget that each moment of freedom we enjoy was purchased for us by the sacrifices of our military men, women, and families. Let us never forget.

© 2006, Thomas M. Trezise

 

Are We All “Racists” Now?

One of the most toxic charges that can be leveled against an individual in our society, whether in the realm of politics, business, entertainment, religion, or otherwise, is that he or she is a racist. The most recent and celebrated is that of former President Carter asserting that opponents of Barack Obama are racists:

I am reminded, however, of the fairy tale learned as a child of the young boy who accompanied the woodcutter into the forest. The woodcutter reassured him that he need only shout “wolf” and the woodcutter would come to his rescue if a wolf threatened. After repeated false alarms, the woodcutter failed to respond when the wolf actually appeared. The boy unfortunately learned the hard way that some alarms are best used judiciously.

The injudicious cry of “wolf” clogging our current affairs is “racist.” The charge of “racism” has become almost ubiquitous. Just about anything said or done in opposition to the progessive agenda may tag you with the scarlet “R”. By marketing the charge so indiscriminately in an effort to suppress dissent and liberty, the progressives have denigrated what should be a serious criticism. Racism has too long been a cancer on our society. We have made substantial advances and only months ago were celebrating the greatest of those advances, the election of Barack Obama as our first black President. But in the short interim since that celebration charges of racism abound more than at any time in my memory.

When we all are “racists” because of our political opposition, true racists are able to hide among the multitude. If we are to continue to progress as a society where race continues to become less and less a factor in our actions and relationships, we must shine a strong light on those who are truly racist. But when that light becomes fuzzy and diffused for political expediency, pernicious racists will hide in the shadows. Free and civil political discourse requires that this casual libel of racism cease. Otherwise, we actually will enable real racism to grow again, rather than continue the slow course to impotence. President Obama is uniquely positioned to wield the moral authority to stop it. Will he, or is he also given to the politically expedient?

Health Insurance Misdiagnosis and the Destruction of Medical Wealth

President Obama has repeatedly asserted that no alternatives to his health care/health insurance plan have been offered by his opponents. As recently as Monday, in his Labor Day speech to the AFL-CIO, he stated, “I’ve got a question for all those folks:  What are you going to do? What’s your answer?  What’s your solution? And you know what?  They don’t have one.”  The White House, September 7, 2009.

The President’s assertion easily may be proven as false as numerous proposals have been advanced. The Competitive Enterprise Institute, for example, recently released a thorough analysis of the problems in the health care and health insurance sectors and have recommended solutions to those problems. The report is titled “Health Insurance Misdiagnosis and the Destruction of Medical Wealth.” They also develop in much more exacting detail the threads in my last post. I highly commend the entire report and you may find it here. Be prepared for a large dollop of clear information, sound analysis, common sense, and very thoughtful recommendations.

For those just interested in the Executive Summary by Gregory Conko, it states:

President Barack Obama and congressional Democrats have proposed a major restructuring of the American health care system. They argue that Americans spend too much for health care of often dubious quality and that tens of millions of Americans lack meaningful access to health insurance. In turn, they have proposed structural reforms to the existing private and public health care financing systems that are intended to increase coverage, lower costs, and improve health care quality.

Most Americans agree that our health care system is broken and must be fixed. But it is increasingly clear that what ails health care is not too little, but too much government intervention. Federal and state tax preferences for employer-sponsored health insurance distort the market in a way that limits choices for individuals, reduces competition among insurers, and artificially inflates costs for health care services. For most working Americans, switching jobs often entails switching health plans and doctors or losing coverage altogether, while many others find non-employer-sponsored insurance unaffordable or difficult to obtain.

Efforts by federal and state governments over the past few decades to solve these problems have generated additional burdens and distortions, leading to increasingly bigger problems. To ensure affordable coverage for those in poor health or with potentially expensive medical conditions, governments have implemented guaranteed renewability, guaranteed issue, and community rating laws that force healthy individuals to subsidize those with higher health care costs. Many states require insurance policies to pay for niche specialists, including acupuncturists, pastoral counselors, and massage therapists, or to cover alcoholism and substance abuse treatment, smoking cessation, and in vitro fertilization. But these regulations further raise the price of insurance coverage, leading many healthy individuals to forgo insurance altogether.

Similarly, numerous state and federal restrictions on who may provide medical services and how they must be delivered have hindered the development of innovative ways for medical professionals to offer more convenient and lower-cost health services to consumers. A combination of government and medical professional lobbying has restricted the supply of new doctors, creating an artificial scarcity and contributing to rising prices. And medical products regulation substantially raises the cost of producing new drugs and medical devices, often without increasing their safety.

Instead of reducing these burdens, Democratic health reform proposals would impose more regulations on insurers, place mandates on individuals and employers to purchase health insurance, provide subsidies for individuals to pay for health care coverage, expand Medicaid, and create a new government-run “exchange” through which individuals and businesses could purchase strictly defined coverage from private insurers. But more government intervention will only add cost and complexity to the health care system; without solving the underlying problems.

As an alternative, policy makers should eliminate the many layers of market-distorting government regulation that have produced our current crisis. To truly reform America’s health care system, policy makers should:

1. Modify tax policy to eliminate the disincentives for individual purchase of health insurance and health care.
2. Eliminate regulatory barriers that prevent small businesses from cooperatively pooling and self-insuring their health risks by liberalizing the rules that govern voluntary health care purchasing cooperatives.
3. Eliminate laws that prevent interstate purchase of health insurance by individuals and businesses.
4. Eliminate rules that prevent individuals and group purchasers from tailoring health insurance plans to their needs, including federal and state benefit mandates and community rating requirements.
5. Eliminate artificial restrictions on the supply of health care services and products, such as the overregulation of drugs and medical devices, as well as state and federal restrictions on who may provide medical services and how they must be delivered.
6. Improve the availability of provider and procedure-specific cost and quality data for use by individual health consumers.
7. Reform the jackpot malpractice liability system that delivers windfall punitive damage awards to small numbers of injured patients while it raises malpractice insurance costs for doctors and incentivizes the practice of defensive medicine.

Each of these changes would help to fix our broken health care system by reducing costs and enabling better informed, cost-conscious decision making. By themselves, they will not guarantee access to health insurance among those with chronic preexisting conditions. But if we reform the existing maze of federal and state regulation, we will then be able to address the problem of the truly chronically uninsured. Because they are a fraction of the 46 million individuals who now lack insurance or government health coverage, it would then be possible to create targeted programs to help subsidize their health insurance costs without breaking the bank and without distorting the rest of the health care and health insurance markets.

Will A Federal Health Insurance Exchange Set Us Free?

The essential purpose of a competitive free market is to match a willing  seller of a good or service with a willing purchaser. President Barack Obama maintains that the market for health insurance is not competitive and that the creation of a health insurance exchange accessible by individuals and employers will increase competition. Obama has stated, “If you don’t have health insurance, or are a small business looking to cover your employees, you’ll be able to choose a quality, affordable health plan through a health insurance exchange – a marketplace that promotes choice and competition.” White House Press Office, July 22, 2009.  He further asserts that the Federal government will not take over the market for health insurance: “This is not about putting the government in charge of your health insurance…” Fox News, August 11, 2009.

President Obama declares that the market for health insurance is not competitive and that the Health Insurance Exchange proposed in the major House Bill, HR 3200, will increase competition in the market. (Review HR3200 here.) If the President is correct, HR3200, at least insofar as the Health Insurance Exchange is concerned, would be a positive development for liberty as it will release the market from anti-competitive shackles. But is he right?

Whether or not the health insurance market is competitive is worth examination.  Even if it is not as competitive as it could or should be, however, the Federal Health Insurance Exchange contemplated by HR3200 just adds fuel to the anti-competitive fire rather than extinguish it.

To increase competition in a market for any product or service, it seems axiomatic that the market must either have new competitors enter the market or new products offered by existing competitors. Approximately 1300 insurers compete in the health insurance market. Think about that. If a market has 1300 competitors, we should expect fierce competition for consumers. The market should become more and more specialized with competitors seeking out more and more specialized niches, providing a broad variety of products at competitive prices. Just look at the cereal aisle in your supermarket. The cereal market has fewer competitors than the health insurance market. Yet there is a broad variety of products across an incredible range of prices. So why don’t we see the same thing in the health insurance market?

This may surprise many, but I agree with President Obama that the health insurance market is not competitive. I just disagree with him as to the cause. The President lays the blame at the feet of the insurers, always an easy target for a demagogue, but does not ever really explain how the insurers have managed to corral the market in what would have to be the most effective cartel ever conceived by the mind of man. I am not an economic historian (I leave that to my daughter!), but I feel reasonably confident in opining that a 1300 member cartel is not, and never has been, possible!

A full exposition of the competitive issues in the health insurance marketplace is beyond the scope of this discussion. Nevertheless, I offer one salient factor. Government. The health insurance market is already heavily dominated by government regulations and mandates. The insurance industry is heavily regulated in all respects by state governments and some of those regulations are essential to assure the financial health and integrity of insurers. The government involvement in health insurance, however, goes far beyond standard insurance regulations. States have taken significant steps to dictate precisely what must be covered under health insurance policies sold in the state, effectively eliminating the diversity of products that a free market would produce, raising the costs and prices associated with the products, and reducing the competitors willing to assume those costs in the market.

The Council for Affordable Health Insurance produced a review at the end of 2008 of the various state mandates for health insurance and their impact on health insurance costs. According to its study, Health Insurance Mandates in the States 2008, the mandated coverages required range from 64 and 63 specific requirements in Minnesota and my own “Free” State of Maryland, to 15 in Indiana. The Council analyzed the impact of these mandates on the market for health insurance at page 2 of its report as follows:

Because mandates require insurers to pay for care consumers previously funded out of their own pockets. We estimate that mandated benefits currently increase the cost of basic health coverage from a little less than 20% to more than 50% depending on the state and its mandates. Mandating benefits is like saying to someone in the market for a new car, if you can’t afford a Cadillac loaded with options, you have to walk. Having that Cadillac would be nice, as would having a health insurance policy that covers everything you might want. But drivers with less money can find many other affordable car options; whereas when the price of health insurance soars, few other options exist. 

Although President Obama may have undercut the Cadillac analogy somewhat by his seizure of General Motors, the reality is that state governments have already driven competition from the health insurance market by reducing product variety, reducing competitors on a state-by-state basis, and increasing costs. The results have been to reduce the supply and increase the prices; the goal of most cartels, but here they have been created by government at the state level.

If the Federal Health Insurance Exchange would break the anti-competitive effect of state mandates and regulations, I would applaud loudly. Unfortunately, HR3200 fails to deliver. Starting with §102, the Bill requires that after certain grace periods, effectively all health benefit plans have to be qualified health benefit plans within the Exchange. For a plan or insurer to be able to participate in the Exchange, and  they effectively cannot sell their policies if they do not, §204 requires that they must contract with the Orwellian-named Health Choices Commissioner.  This “contract” is not a contract in the usual sense of the term, as the terms are dictated by the Commissioner. The Commissioner holds all of the leverage.

We probably could stop there, because if the government effectively requires participation in the Exchange in order to do business, and decides who can be in the Exchange, I submit that contrary to what the President has said, HR3200 is “about putting the government in charge of your health insurance.” The government controls the market and decides who can participate. That really ends the question.

But the anti-competitive aspects continue. §203 mandates that participating insurers may offer only four levels of benefit coverages. A compilation of the benefits that must be provided under the mandated levels is not easily accomplished as they are sprinkled throughout the Bill. It is sufficent to note that the requirements incorporate the state mandates mentioned above and go further. For a good discussion on the requirements, go to the Foundation for Economic Education.  §131 further gives the Commissioner control over marketing by the plans.

I could go on and on. For example, I have not even touched the implication of adding a public option in the Exchange. (Read an interesting take on that here.) But I think you get the picture. Unlike the phantom health insurance cartel decried by the President, the Health Insurance Exchange is a real cartel, with the government controlling the participants, the virtually uniform products they can offer, how they market their products, and what they can charge for them. For the President to assert that this represents freedom and competition, he must be either completely disingenuous, or ignorant about the concepts of freedom and competition. Sadly, I fear that he is both of those.