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Thursday, December 18, 2008
Obama and the Rev. Rick Warren
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
So Barack Obama asks the Rev. Rick Warren to give the inaugural invocation, and controversy ensues.
On one hand, the outrage is understandable. The gay community has every right to feel offended and to have expected better from Obama, especially given that Warren has spouted some real nonsense about gay marriage and California’s Proposition 8. If you don’t think gay Americans should be able to marry, say so. But don’t fabricate some fantasy about gay marriage being a violation of your free speech or the freedom of religion, as Warren did.
On the other hand, I get the sense that Obama really does intend to try something new. He said as much in his response to the controversy, explaining “that dialogue, I think, is part of what my campaign’s been all about: That we’re not going to agree on every single issue, but what we have to do is to be able to create an atmosphere when we — where we can disagree without being disagreeable and then focus on those things that we hold in common as Americans.”
While that sounds all touchy-feely and kumbaya-ish, it may disguise some hard-headed political calculation.
In many ways, the Republican Party of the last 20 years has been a collection of unrelated interest groups joined in an unholy alliance of necessity. In effect, the gay bashers joined forces with the gun advocates and the low-taxers and the neocons and the free traders and the anti-enviros, and they all agreed to support each other’s issues in lockstep. (That’s true of all political parties, by the way — we’re just talking a difference of degree here).
A lot of the GOP success in the past 20 years — and a lot of the Democrats’ frustration — can be explained by how tightly that alliance has held together. Obama may see a shot at breaking it apart. If he disagrees with Warren on gay rights but they share common ground on global warming or health care, he’ll take Warren’s help to accomplish what they can on those issues.
Conversely, when the topic turns to gay rights, Obama can try to recruit allies in the corporate sector who opposed him on money issues. It’s a very old maxim, divide and conquer. It’s coalition-breaking in the guise of coalition-building.
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Why is Bernie Madoff still a free man?
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
I’m sure the lawyers out there can defend the decision in legal terms, but as a layman I’m appalled that Bernie Madoff, the admitted mastermind of a $50 billion Ponzi scheme that bankrupted charities and left old ladies destitute, is still walking around Manhattan as a free man, living in his fine luxury apartment and otherwise enjoying his ill-gotten gains.
Originally, federal prosecutors agreed to let Madoff stay free only if he got four people to co-sign his bond. But after Madoff failed to meet that condition — not surprisingly, he couldn’t find four rich friends to vouch for him — authorities relaxed the conditions to let him go home.
They should have told him “too bad for you” and ushered him to a prison cell.
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Life-and-death questions dog health-care debate
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
He’s just a dog, you tell yourself. Yet somehow, that utterly rational thought doesn’t fend off the choking sensation in your throat as the vet delivers the news.
Just a dog?
He’s just the dog who was young and playful back when your kids were young and playful, a dog who grew up as the family grew up, and who, in the last few years, began to turn gray just as you have.
He’s just a dog who has always looked more fierce than he really is, which is just what you want in a family pet. He’s just a dog who insists on climbing upstairs every night in pain to sleep at the foot of your bed, loyal even in his arthritic old age.
Just a dog? No, no way.
But in the end, yes.
“We’re pretty sure Jackie has lymphoma —- cancer of the blood,” the vet says. “We’ll run some tests, but that’s how it’s looking.”
A few days later, when the diagnosis is confirmed, you start asking questions: How long does he have, is he in pain, what’s the treatment?
He’s not in pain, the vet says, but left untreated the disease could take him in a matter of weeks. Steroids could improve the situation for a little while, but with “canine chemotherapy” we could probably give Jackie another six to nine months.
So you ask the next question —- “How much would canine chemotherapy cost?” —- even though you know the answer will be “too much.”
And sure enough. It’ll cost up to $2,000, plus another $500 or so for X-rays and more tests. That’s a fraction of what similar treatment would cost for a human being, but for a 12-year-old dog, it’s still too much. So you decline. And right there, with that cold-blooded calculation, is where the free market approach to medical care starts to fall apart.
With a dog’s life at stake, you can think through the problem in terms of cost and benefit. With a human being, it would be inconceivable. And that’s not because an insurance company or other third party would pay most of the bill.
No, you don’t ask the price because with a human life at stake, it wouldn’t matter. You already know that whatever the cost, you’re going to do everything possible to pay it.
And in economic terms, that’s the problem. In theory, a willing seller and willing buyer will work out a fair price, with the potential buyer free to walk away if no deal can be struck. But when you combine a willing seller with a desperate, maybe pain-wracked or hope-starved buyer, the market warps and theory fails. The buyer is in no position to say no, and as a result can’t demand a lower price.
There’s another difference as well. Because of Jackie’s status as “just a dog,” we’ll be able to intervene to make sure he does not suffer needlessly in the days ahead. It’s an assurance that we cannot offer each other as human beings —- the same profound respect for human life that ensures we do not deny medical care to loved ones also makes it taboo to accelerate the process of death.
That taboo is costly. According to studies, an estimated 30 to 50 percent of all health care costs are incurred in a patient’s last six months of life. From a strict cost-benefit analysis, that is often money poorly spent because the odds of success are low. But it’s a price we correctly choose to pay to protect the dignity of human life.
Sometimes, though, the lines between right and wrong aren’t drawn so easily. A few years ago, Congress rushed into emergency session to try to ensure that artificial life supports weren’t removed from Terri Schiavo, a brain-dead Florida woman who had been comatose for years. To those who wanted to keep Schiavo alive, the case was about respect for life, about human dignity. To those who wanted to let her die, the case was about the very same thing.
We’re also still divided about whether health care ought to be a basic human right in this country. Personally, I think the case is settled. Once you accept the innate dignity of human life, then morally you cannot decide to provide basic care to some but deny it to others on grounds of cost.
You can’t, in other words, apply the same value to a human being as to a pet.
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