READING THE PAPERS

Recently I took a trip back to Megalopolis, where I am "from."  Hard to say I live there, because right now I live in Hotville, where it is going up to 81 today.  On Halloween.  October 31.  I really like that.

Anyway, the only thing I actually like about airports is the little airport news stores.  I like them because when I travel I can justify the high cost of newspapers and magazines, which ordinarily chokes me.  

So I bought an Atlantic and an Economist.  They are the Eternal Optimist's favored travel magazines.  Now, if I could get the NY Times and National Review, together, I would do it every time.  But usually you can't get the National Review when you are in an Airport news store.  To which I say "shame on the little Airport news store."

Shame on them. Shame.

Normally I don't want to read the NYT without also attending to the National Review.  It is too much like carrying a 5 gallon jug in one hand all day.  It gets real painful and messes up your spine. But I got the NYT at the Airport news store anyway, just because I love to read the party line periodically so I know what I am supposed to think.  I spent a lot of years sitting in churches listening to sermons I did not agree with, so I am quite comfortable reading the NYT.

NYT - also known as the "Grey Lady" - had an interesting article on the Obama administration's assault on Fox News.  It seems the Grey Lady is discomfited by the assault.  Apparently the NYT is doing a little internal soul-searching about missing big stories that Fox grabbed and ran with.  Stories that cast the Obama Administration in an unfavorable light.

For instance, the story on Van Jones, Obama's "Green Czar," a Marxist who thinks George Bush planted bombs in the Twin Towers on 9-11 to start a war.  Obama since got rid of the guy, but my goodness, how did HE get past the background check, eh?  And how did the NYT miss this particular story (and others) until Fox ran it to death and the guy had to resign?  Anyway, the article was a good news story - man bites dog - unusual, illuminating and well written. 

The Atlantic had an even more interesting article on the culture war going on in epidemiologist circles over the government's swine flu vaccination program.  It seems a significant number of respected flu experts are complaining about the bad science underlying the government's push to vaccinate everyone against swine flu.  The rebel scientists are pointing out that there have never been rigorous double-blind studies that have proven that flu vaccines of any kind actually prevent illness and death from the flu.  In fact, there have been a number of well done studies that suggest that flu vaccine, unlike other vaccines, such as polio, measles, etc., is completely ineffective.

This dispute has provoked the usual politically correct reaction from the flu establishment, including ostracizing scientists who hold non-establishment views, declaring that opponents are endangering people's lives, and adopting the basic "we all know this is true so anyone who says otherwise is a nut" technique.  All of these reactions are also popular among global warming enthusiasts.  And in the Obama administration when dealing with Fox News.

As you may recall, I have been, in the past, reluctant to support the swine flu group-think frenzy.  I will not bore you with the details, but you can bore yourself.  The Atlantic article was thought provoking and well written. I think the article illustrated how wrong people are to think that the sciences, and scientists, offer us an escape from the squalid facts of our humanity.

Science is manned and womaned by scientists, all of whom are human and all of whom suffer in varying degrees from fear, cowardice, corrupt motives, a desire to be liked and respected, and all the other things that hobble politicians, journalists, lawyers and - yes it's true - even firemen, God bless their crazy heroic souls.

Mad scientist.

If you search for truth you must always carefully weigh the motives, prejudices and fruit of those competing for your attention.  So long as they are human, you have to be very careful evaluating what they say.  The Atlantic article was just reaffirmation of this basic, unfortunate, but very important truth.  It was another fine news story, grappling with current events, but also touching deeper, more lasting themes.

And then there was the Economist.  For those of you who have not read it, you are missing a great magazine that reports in detail on the whole world.  It is one great news story after another.  If you want to read interesting articles about America by non-Americans, this is the place.

Whenever I read the Economist I cannot help thinking about how bad Time magazine is.  It's just People with longer, more boring articles.  Time is the rag that trumpeted the New Ice Age story in June, 1974.  Yikes.  Some things you just can't forget.

For those of you who read and enjoy Time, please carefully consider your decision to read the next two paragraphs.  My wife loves "Copacabana," the Barry Manilow song. 

Copacabana

I love her dearly, but I don't make her listen to my views on Barry Manilow.  That would be wrong.  So if you don't want to read about how bad Time is, skip to the last paragraph.

[Pause]

Let me be clear: never, ever defend Time magazine to me.  It is mindless pabulum, and has been for years.  Puree the truth, push it through a liberal steel mesh strainer to remove even minute chunks of common sense, toss in lots of feel good Oprah drivel, and feed it through a straw to your toothless, lobotomized readers.

This is the Time formula.  It moves magazines.  It's also useful in the bathroom, during other movements. That's about all you can say for it.  If it went under we would all be better off, except for the poor souls who work there.  But I digress.

[Resume]

In sum then, I traveled, I read, I enjoyed.  I avoided Time, always a good thing.  I didn't even notice the lousy weather back in Megalopolis, where it was raining and cold, in preparation for more cold, freezing rain, sleet, slush, and snow.

That's early in the winter.  Then it deep freezes in late winter, so cold it can't snow, and the wind howls into your face and kills valuable lung tissue while you walk the block to work in your thermal jammies and gloves and Carhartt.  And all the while the sky is filled for 6 months with a filthy gray slate cloud cover that eventually convinces you the sun has died and God has deserted you.

Did I mention it is getting up to 81 degrees in Hotville?  And that I like it?  Now that's good news.

P.S. My lovely wife, Ms. Optimist, just handed me a letter from the Economist that says "Welcome - your subscription starts now." It was a surprise. What a sweet woman!

PLUCK YOUR EYE OUT

I started writing this blog on the 26th Sunday in Ordinary time, and since this is my blog, I thought I would write about today's gospel reading at Mass.

The gospel reading is drawn from Mark chapter 9. The passage begins with John telling Jesus they met someone casting out demons in Jesus's name and tried to stop him, because "he does not follow us." Jesus tells him not to prevent the man; "whoever is not against us is for us." He then tells the disciples anyone "who causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin, it would be better for him if a great millstone were put around his neck and he were thrown into the sea." Shortly thereafter Jesus says "if your eye causes you to sin, pluck it out."

Obviously Jesus takes sin very seriously. He uses examples that are horrifying in their directness and implications. "Does he really mean for me to start dismembering myself?"

Let's start from a few basic points we can acknowledge as true. First, he does not deceive. Second, he does not speak idly - he does not just say things for the sake of hearing himself talk. He means what he says.

So we are obligated to wrestle with what he says, because he is talking about very difficult things - plucking out your eyes, for instance.

Tell me something; does your eye actually cause you to sin? Your hand? Nope. What actually causes us to sin? Here are some helpful scriptures:

"each person is tempted when he is lured and enticed by his own desire. Then desire conceives and brings forth sin, and when sin reaches maturity it gives birth to death." James 1:14

"God handed them over to impurity through the lusts of their hearts for the mutual degradation of their bodies." Rms 1:24

"By your stubbornness and impenitent heart you are storing up wrath for yourself..." Rms 2:5

"But the things that come out of the mouth come from the heart, and they defile. For from the heart come evil thoughts, murder, adultery, unchastity, theft, false witness, blasphemy. These are what defile a person..." Mt. 15:18-20.

What comes out of man's heart causes him to sin. So what is Christ telling us? He is saying the issue of sin is vital; it is life or death. We sin because of the evil condition of our hearts. And what is at stake is this: there are parts of our inmost being - part of our "heart" - that defile us, and must be torn away. He tells us we are better for the tearing away: better go into heaven with parts missing than into eternal torment with your precious "self" intact.

When people are addicted to something, no matter what it is, a common thread is that they cannot imagine life without their object of desire, whether it is cocaine or porn or food. "I don't know how I could live without [name your addiction]." It is a very powerful thing, being addicted, and giving up an addiction is in part an acceptance of death, if that is what is necessary. Jesus tells us that we are better off with our eye plucked out or an arm lopped off than continuing to embrace our sin.

Following Jesus means accepting the loss of "self." Our problem as fallen humans is that we have not just looked at the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil; we have consumed it, taken it into our innermost beings, and it has entwined itself in and around our "self," such that getting rid of sin, from our vantage point, looks the same as getting rid of our "self." We have never seen our "self" apart from sin; we cannot "see" it; only God can. He knows what he made us to be and can still see it, disfigured as it is by our sin.

When we first come to Jesus his horrible and bizarre words cause a sense of revolt: unless you eat my flesh and drink my blood, you shall not have life within you.

But God means to save you. And saving you means separating you from your sin. And the only way to separate you from your sin is to kill you, and every part of you that is intertwined with sin, then to recreate you.

Most of us think this kind of talk about sin is crazy. So ask yourself, between your judgment on the subject and God's, which do you think has a better chance of being correct?

God made it possible for Christ to intertwine his life with yours. We become intertwined with Christ - that part of us that believes in him, trusts him, loves him - and when the blinding nuclear flash of death comes, only that which is sin and death is destroyed by the fire, because Christ is God of all. His life is indestructible, and as we are in him and he in us, we live in him.

So death, instead of a horrible end, becomes instead a portal to a new life. He has not just endured death, he has converted it from the summation of all our agonies, the final great curse, to the greatest blessing we can have in all eternity. Death has become for us a birthplace into a new and perfect life. We shall be "changed," it says in Revelation, "when the trumpet shall sound."

That is why we as Christians embrace a cross, a symbol of torture and death. It is not an empty image for us, but full of meaning, because we embrace the torture and death of Christ - we accept that we eat his flesh and drink his blood, in order to have life ourselves. And we accept the torture and death of our "selves," that we may live in Christ. "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ lives within me. And the life I now live I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Gal. 2:20.

God asks us to give up our sins - our addictions - each day. Self absorption, selfishness, anger, resentment, bitterness, cursing, fighting, slander, lust, gossip, envy. You name it; like crack, heroin, and meth. He asks us to fill the wrenching void that comes from this heavenly surgery with Christ. Christ is the one who makes it possible to tear our heart away and yet still live.

All this is why we pray today, just as St. Patrick did, 16 centuries ago,

Christ with me, Christ before me, Christ behind me,

Christ in me, Christ beneath me, Christ above me,

Christ on my right, Christ on my left,

Christ when I lie down, Christ when I sit down, Christ when I arise,

Christ in the heart of every man who thinks of me,

Christ in the mouth of everyone who speaks of me,

Christ in every eye that sees me,

Christ in every ear that hears me.

Christ with you, my friend.

NO, WE CAN'T

The correct answer to a lot of questions is "no, we can't."

For instance, say your car gets totaled. You get maybe $3,000 when the insurance is all done. You say to yourself "I'd like a new car." And you are feeling good about your own personal economic stimulus, in the form of a $3,000 check. You say to yourself

"YES WE CAN!"


You find out new cars are way more than $3,000. You find out with $3,000, you can put a down payment on a new car, and spend $4,000 a year for 5 years paying it off.

Every American has a moral right to a new car.

The next morning your wife says "we can't afford a new car." You say

"YES, WE CAN!"

You say "I need a new car because they are so reliable and safe and environmentally friendly! I should get a new car because it is better stewardship of my money, of the lives of the people who ride with me, and of the earth itself!" You feel even better about yourself now, because not only are you going to get a new car, but you are going to be a much better person!

Maybe a moral right to a cheaper car.

On morning number three you wake up and it is raining outside. Your head hurts a little. You say to yourself, "NO WE CAN'T."

Just like that, without the comma or exclamation point.


Because you support 5 people, you have to pay a $1,900 mortgage every month, and buy food, clothes, electric, heat, telephone, water, sewer, car insurance, gasoline, health insurance,

and

pay social security taxes, medicare taxes, federal income taxes, state income taxes, real estate taxes, personal property taxes, city wage taxes, state sales taxes.

I work until May 10 for the government. Then I support my family.

It would be great to have a new car, and maybe there are superb justifications for it. But see, you don't have the money right now. So you say "no we can't."

And your wife just looks at you and says "d'uh." Silently, to herself, because she loves you.

I'm sorry, but right now we are going to have to pass on the vast new government run universal health care system. We just can't afford it, what with the recession and all. The existing government health care system (Medicare/Medicaid) has had a four decade history of mammoth cost overruns, and is teetering on the edge of not only bankrupting itself, but our entire economy. It would be good to fix it, but that means stopping the bleeding, not slitting new arteries.


So I say tripling or quintupling or googleplexing this system is a bad idea. And the explanations for how the new system is going to control and reduce expenses while simultaneously covering 47 million more people are unconvincing.

Every time Obama or Nancy Pelosi get around to the nettlesome detail of cost control - which is not very often - it gives me cold sweats. It reminds me that this part of the grand equation is pure afterthought, something for the accountants, not for the "big picture people."

Any time you subsidize something, you increase demand for it. If I give you a $200 gift certificate for a cell phone, you will go spend $200 on a cell phone. The $200 is found money, and what else can you spend the gift card on, anyway? Doesn't matter if a cell phone is a good idea, or if it is worth it. Put out enough cell phone gift certificates and the price of cell phones goes up, because the supply of money for cell phones has ballooned.


If I give a one trillion dollar gift certificate to America to buy health care, the price of health care is going way up.

Medicare and Medicaid have been pumping huge tax subsidies into health care "gift cards" for 40 years. During those 40 years, the price of health care has been spiraling up faster than the rate of inflation. This is not a coincidence.

We have not coped with this hyper-inflationary aspect of Medicare/Medicaid in 40 years. The system will be insolvent in just a few years if we don't change it. Insolvent means upside down - we are paying more money in claims than we are receiving in taxes.

Bankruptcy leaves us all with an empty feeling.

This insolvency problem, by the way, is not something newly discovered by Obama or Bill Clinton. Before Clinton-care, in the early 1990s, conservatives were routinely demonized as selfish, cynical pigs for saying things like "Medicare/Medicaid will bankrupt us." The Democratic party line was that Medicare/Medicaid was fine, all it needed was the occasional tweak. Now, the insolvency thought has become stylish, and the rhetoric apocalyptic on the left. That is progress, of a sort.

To say that you can push a trillion more in health care subsidies through the system and also bring down costs is magical thinking. If the levees are cracking under the current storm surge, what happens if you triple the load? Right.


If the chosen instrument for bringing down costs - government control - has not brought them down these last 40 years, why is it selfish and unpatriotic to disbelieve that it will suddenly acquire the fiscal discipline and political pain threshold to do it now?

Some liberals frankly acknowledge that this legislation will not control, but will worsen, health care inflation. The hope is that by bankrupting the system, "fundamental change," i.e., a government controlled health care system a la the UK, will simply have to emerge. There will be no other choice. This is viewed as a good thing. Interesting perspective. At least this argument is honest. At least it does not lie and say the system as proposed will control costs.

I am not ready to say it is impossible to construct a system that takes care of very basic health care needs for the entire society without bankrupting us. I am, after all, Eternally Optimistic.

But I have complete faith, of a very special kind, in the present health care thingie wending its way through Washington. I am sure that it will not work and it will bankrupt the government.

HOT AS BLAZES AND LOVING IT

Dear Readers,

My wife mentioned casually last night it has been two months since I posted a blog entry. So sorry for my slovenly attitude. When the wife makes mention of things like that, casual like, without explanation, it is usually a sign from God that means I had better shape up and fly right. So here I am at the keyboard.

By way of excuse - actually, more by way of explanation than excuse - we just moved to a new, far more southern and far more conservative state. It is also a much hotter state. Many of my liberal friends say that it is hotter than hell because it is in fact worse than hell. I say they are distorting the facts, much as they do with health care statistics, but I am not here to quibble about the weather or the health care debate. In any event, the combination of heat and respite from reading the papers, plus landing in a new job, generally knocked the idea of a blog right out of my head.

It is in fact very hot here. But, I like hot, so me and the weather are getting along famously. Nevertheless, I am only here for a year, on detail by my employer to help train new employees in the intricate realities of what it is we do here at the Department of Ginormousness (DOG). Soon I will return to the more liberal, more arrogant and much colder region I have inhabited for a decade. I am sure to miss the heat and the general politeness here in Hotville like nobody's business, so there is nothing to do but enjoy it while it lasts. And speaking of enjoying things, one of the benefits of being in a lower-stress job in Hotville is that I get to read more for pleasure and less for work.

In consequence of this new found liberty, during the move I picked up and read, while sweating like a pig and taking lots of extra Advil to deal with my aching back, a terrific book, titled "What's So Great About Christianity?" by Dinesh D'Souza. I've read a number of public policy articles by D'Souza, who is an excellent writer, but never a book. I was not disappointed. He writes crisp and facile prose, stays away from ad hominem attacks, and thinks clearly. He has taken on a wonderfully interesting subject. The result is an intensely readable book, and sorely needed: an energetic, intelligent and entertaining defense of Christianity. Since there are right now probably a dozen virulent anti-Christian rants floating about in the stagnant pond we call the New York Times best seller list, D'Souza's book is a welcome counter-weight.

So, come visit us in Hotville, but before you do, please read D'Souza's book so we can talk about it.

Regards,
Eternal Optimist

SURVIVOR: APOLOGY!

There is this strange, angry priest who writes in the local Catholic paper in my diocese. I will call him "angry priest," or AP. About every 28 days AP comes out with a bitter, sarcastic diatribe against some conservative or another, mostly George Bush or one of his peeps, like Dick Cheney or Scooter Libby. In his latest article AP is demanding apologies for the Iraq war.

The angry priest was very satisfied about Robert MacNamara apologizing for Vietnam. Apparently, though, AP has an extremely long list of people who need to apologize for being on the wrong side of social issues from AP, and cannot rest easy on the MacNamara apology. MacNamara only whetted AP's contrition appetite.

Robert MacNamara apologizing.

Eternal Optimist wanted to write the angry priest and apologize to him, so AP could quit obsessing about Bush and Cheney and Scooter Libby (which by the way, why does a grown man keep that nickname?), and maybe write happy articles about baseball or Obama something. My wife told me it probably wouldn't do any good.

Scooter Libby.

Then I thought we could do something hip and oh so 'now', a TV show called

"Survivior: Apology!"

where everyone sits around in Speedos and string bikinis and apologizes for important stuff like global warming, or the $50 bazillion of taxpayer money we just gave GM so they could put off bankruptcy for an extra week and a half.

"Wait, let me put $50 bazillion on board before you sink!"

Each side would be given one horrible result of their ideology to apologize for. The other side could criticize their horrible result, and then criticize their lame apology.

You could have audience participation by web-voting, which would drive ratings way up. Participants could get voted off the show for being insincere or irrelevant. Or people like AP could organize campaigns to get contestants thrown off just because they hate them so much.

If you could get Dick Cheney or Don Rumsfeld on the show



with maybe Alec Baldwin and Sean Penn, you would get a huge audience.

"I detest George Bush more than any other human being."

"Ditto. Except for Madonna. It's like a tie."

You know the vindictiveness would be completely real and heartfelt. Have Simon Cowell and Paula Abdul be the moderators.

You could do Bill Clinton vs. Ann Coulter during sweeps week. That would be a huge ratings smash.

(Just look at the way Clinton is looking at her.)

(And she is TOTALLY IGNORING HIM!)

Once you get it rolling, everyone will want to be on the show!

The History Channel could run a special with Lenin, Stalin, Hitler and Mao (maybe Pol Pot, too) lined up to apologize for big government excesses (like killing and enslaving hundreds of millions) versus Ken Lay, Charles Keating and Bernie Madoff apologizing for stealing people's pensions.

Captain, Team Socialism.

Captain, Team Kleptocracy.

Jack Kennedy could apologize for Vietnam.

"My fellow Americans, I am sorry about Vietnam.
Jackie, I am sorry about all that other stuff.
You know what I mean."

Reagan and Al Franken could apologize for being mediocre actors turned successful politicians.



Jimmy Carter could apologize for, well, for just being Jimmy Carter.

And Al Gore . . .




Well, the possibilities are almost limitless.

I think "Survivor: Apology!" would be a HUGE hit. Plus, it would employ a lot of people, which would be good for the economy right now.

Give it some thought and have your people get back to me.

EUPHORIA

Gosh I had a wonderful day Friday, the 19th of June.

I am coming home from work, traveling south on a suburban road, thinking what a beautiful day it is,

(This is how I felt before)

when someone traveling north decides to make a sudden left turn and dart in front of me.

Apparently he did not see me, but I saw his car just for an instant, long enough to swerve right. I avoided "T-boning" the errant traveler, but he did not avoid me, smashing into the midsection of my car on the driver's side.

This precipitated a high speed spill in my small "toaster" (Scion XB, 4-door, for those taking notes on survivalist cars). I was both spinning and rolling over, and wound up hitting the concrete curb twice before winding up passenger side down, hanging from my safety belt.

As the car was spinning and rolling over (very, very slowly - a very strange internal effect) I thought "well God, maybe this is it." I wondered if the roof would hold up as the car was flopping over. I felt really peaceful, although I was totally disoriented as the the car spun and flipped. I thought I was in the oncoming lane of traffic, hitting other cars, but it turned out I was just in a losing battle with the high concrete curb by the side of the road. Eventually the curb gave in and the car flipped again onto the grass, passenger side down.

(This is how I felt after toaster came to rest.)

As I hung by my safety belt, looking out my twisted, shattered windshield, I started taking inventory. I could move my toes and my fingers. My legs felt fine. My back and neck felt fine. I could not see any blood. I did not hit my head. After a second or so I came to the conclusion that I was probably fine.

And what was weird was the sense of euphoria that came over me, like I had just been through a ride at an amusement park. Only, for the first time in my life, I was not ready to puke!

(How I felt after euphoria set in.)

The rest of the evening was interesting but pretty tame, as they pulled me from the wreck, put an ungainly collar on my neck that made it difficult to talk, tied me to a board and hauled me off to the trauma center in an ambulance. There they took about 30 X-rays and a CT scan.

My new ride.
(By loupiote (Old Skool))

At about 10:30 the doctor gave me a prescription for Tylenol III and sent me home. My only visible injury was a slight scrape and bruise on my left collar bone, where the safety harness saved my life.

I got to keep the neck brace as a souvenier. It probably cost $250. Some day I will check the insurance bill and see. I am pretty sure my brother could make one for $7.00 in materials. My wife has already tossed it out, as it is ugly, bright yellow and just takes up space.

All evening long at the hospital everyone kept asking me what kind of car I was driving. I would tell them a Scion and they would look puzzled. Then I would say "a toaster" and they would say "Oh, yeah!"

Thanks, God. Thanks, Scion. Thanks, safety belt.

The truly miraculous thing is that when I checked the car Monday morning I found that my newly acquired bottle of Russian vodka, given to me by a fellow worker for covering some event here in 'Merica while fellow worker was in Russia testifying before the Duma, was intact.

Basically everything else in the car was in tiny smashed pieces or bigger smashed pieces. Except the vodka bottle.

The Russians know how to make vodka and, apparently, vodka bottles, too. So I got that going for me.

CONSERVATIVES AND LIBERALS

(A reader chimed in on "I Had a Dream, Like Wow!" After acknowledging some of the positive contributions of capitalism and rich people, the reader had some unhappy comments):

Reader: However. Let's get some things clear.

Would EO actually like to state that the past eight years of conservative republican business loving government bears no responsibility for the stinking hellhole that we find ourselves in?

EO: "Stinking hellhole?" America is not Mogadishu. Yet. The Bush Administration certainly bears responsibility for what happened on its watch.

Now THAT'S a hell-hole.
by Chogra

Reader: EO strikes me as a man who sells a broken down house and laughs at the new owner for spending money to fix it.

EO: If you are arguing that all the money we are now spending by quadrupling the Bush deficits is necessary to fix the economy, that is clearly false.

The Obama administration is trying to do much more than repair plumbing leaks left over from the Bush Administration. It is taking out a whopping jumbo loan to build a shiny new 12,000 square foot mansion with 7 1/2 baths. That's the import of Rahm Emanuel's wry line about not letting a crisis go to waste.

Reader: But I digress. The "Democrats and liberals want to screw the rich" argument is crap.

EO: There are plenty of democrats and liberals who genuinely or cynically seek to gain power through generating class envy. Take, for instance, Franklin Roosevelt, who even infuriated fellow Democrats with his class warfare demagoguery.

FDR: Liberal, Episcopalian, Class Warrior

Reader: Here's what I think is the basic difference between "Conservative" and "Liberal". When liberals think about government by the people, for the people, they don't forget that second part.

EO: Liberals tend to forget that "the people" are also the ones paying the taxes.

The basic differences between liberals and conservatives don't revolve around conservatives forgetting people and liberals remembering them.

Some examples. When confronted by a social problem, liberals tend to assume that more government is the solution. This is because having government compel a change is conceptually much more direct and simple than trying to convince people to change by other means, including free market incentives.

Conservatives tend to be concerned about expanding government, since the expansion is very difficult to reverse, and often has long-term ill effects on people. Bush undercut his popularity among Conservatives by serving up big deficits and increasing government spending.

Liberals often assume that proposed governmental policies will work as intended. Conservatives tend to be concerned about unintended consequences. For instance, data suggest that well-intended welfare spending can actually harm poor people by creating economic disincentives to healthy behavior, like seeking employment or having a two-parent household.

Liberals frequently assert that conservatives who question the benefit of a proposed government program are acting from mere selfishness. But social conservatives generally give far more of their income and time to charity than liberals. This contradicts the simplistic "conservatives are selfish" theory.

Governance, for liberals, demands taking everyone into account. And I think this is why 'liberal' implies 'change'. When everyone in the jurisdiction is pretty much the same (white farmers in the 18th century, let's say), government is fairly simple. Everyone pretty much agrees about the basics. Same morals, same outlook, same religion. But when you start getting some plurality things start to get messy.

Governance was not "fairly simple" in the 18th century. Things were very messy during the Revolutionary War. We fought a Civil War in the 19th century - things were even messier, as in 500,000 dead messy. Disagreements abounded.

Civil War Dead, by tomsaint11

Human society is normally messy. One of the drivers behind liberal social philosophy is an effort to smooth the "messiness" of plurality and freedom. The chosen method is to increase government involvement in the affairs of citizens for the purpose of ordering the "messes."

This can be a noble goal, but it often makes the messes worse, not better. Think Mao's "Great Leap Forward" or Johnson's Great Society, neither of which came close to their intended goals, but cost hundreds of billions. In Mao's case, it also cost tens of millions of lives. Liberals often ignore or deny these consequences and simply move on to bigger "fixes."

Chairman Mao, by Andy Warhol.
Big Killer Liberal.

I think the current administration's fixes are well intended. I also think they will have a variety of rotten, unintended but perfectly foreseeable outcomes that will overwhelm the good intentions.

A liberal insists, annoyingly, on trying to take everybody into account; a conservative says let's keep the way we've been doing it.

Liberals didn't lose power in the 1990s because they were "annoying." They lost power because they had a long history of taking "everybody into account" by pouring taxpayer money into hugely expensive and well-intended programs that were failing. This was harmful, especially to poor and middle class people.

Reagan was popular because he sought to change the liberal status quo, not preserve it.

Ron Reagan, annoying conservative.

Liberals will now have 8 years or more to demonstrate to America that their policies are effective. If the policies fail, liberals will be voted out of office, not because Americans are "annoyed" but because liberal policies failed.

Right now I am alarmed at the "mortgage payments" on the new 12,000 s.f. mansion Obama proposes to build. I am concerned the country will wind up like Argentina. I don't think running up ruinous debt takes "everybody into account," and especially not the poor people in whose name this mansion is being built.

The liberal message is hard to get across because doing liberal things (that is, trying to take everyone into account, not just the ones with the money) is complicated. Liberalism guarantees complexity.

The liberal message is actually very easy to get across, because it is fundamentally simplistic: everyone should be taken care of, and the best way to do it is have government do it directly. Liberalism as currently practiced is actually an effort to simplify society, which is painfully complex when left on its own. Obama got the message across very well. Al Gore and John Kerry were just lousy communicators.

John Kerry and America:
"What we have here is a failure to communicate."

Conservatism is simple. If it ain't broke don't fix it! Except, oops, we're talking about the economy, which is.. umm... broken. And was broken by, yes, conservatives.

Umm, broken? Nah. The Obama White House recently said the economy is in fundamentally good condition. Doesn't sound broken.

If you are talking about the sub-prime mortgage crisis, that is an excellent example of well-intended social programming gone very wrong.

Sub-prime lending had its genesis in the 1990s as a liberal social policy that sought to enlist private lenders in supplying money to people who couldn't afford standard mortgages. Bill Clinton and other democrats pushed the program through a combination of carrots - like Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae buying up sub-prime loans, and the Federal Reserve loosening lending standards - and sticks, like the Justice Department opening investigations on banks that didn't make sub-prime loans.

The fact that the Bush Administration grew fond of this particular pet alligator because it stimulated growth in the housing sector does them no credit.

Pet Alligator, by Judy Goreland

By 2005 Bush was trying to put more stringent controls on the program because of concerns about the viability of Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae. He was harangued by the likes of Barnie Frank and Chris Dodd, among other liberals, as a heartless bum out to hurt poor people, and Democrats managed to defeat the effort to cage the alligator.

Barney Frank, annoying liberal.
Guardian of sub-prime lending.

Bottom line: lots of poor people are now being crushed by the consequences of a program originally intended to benefit them.

Now we are going to "fix" the problem by quadrupling the annual federal deficit, and along the way the government will buy up a big chunk of the car industry and the health care industry.

The Bush deficits were a bad idea. Quadrupling the Bush deficits is also a bad idea, however nobly the money will be spent.

So EO, I envy you your simplicity. But if you don't have any ideas about how to fix things,

I have lots of ideas. No one listens. Ah me.

please stand aside and let the work begin.

The baton is in your hand, sir. Go forth and do good.

Now it is time to listen to "Trouble," from the Music Man, about a charming and eloquent huckster who convinces people to engage in massive social spending.

Everything works out well in the end, which is what EO hopes for America.