However, there have been benevolent dictators, and benevolent kings who ran far better governments than any government the voters of the United States have produced.

In other news, water is wet and the sky is blue.

The argument for democracy isn't that it produces the best possible outcome regardless of the circumstances. The argument is that democracy, on the whole, prevents the worst screwups possible under other systems. To quote Churchill, "democracy is the worst possible system of government, except for all the others."

Even if the US never produced a leader the equal of an Elizabeth or an Augustus (which we have), at least we never produced a John or a Caligula either.

Noel

Posted at January 26, 2008 7:40 AM in response to Stereotyping Muslims

I broke the law.

and

What I believe in now, though, is compassion in every corner of life.

Cry me a river, Raymond. Where was the compassion when

morality was not a luxury to be afforded candidates or their staff.

As it happens, in these troubled times, compassion is not a luxury to be squandered on convicted felons, particularly unrepentant ones such as yourself.

Noel

Posted at January 14, 2008 1:12 PM in response to Morality vs. Politics and My Job as a GOP Operative

Interesting that George Orwell would so conveniently forget the racist, murderous occupation of India by Great Britain. If it proves anything, it's that all people are willing and able to overlook their own history of brutality in the attempt to comfort themselves that the other people are so much worse than they are.

Couldn't let that one go by. Orwell spent his entire adult life advocating for Indian independence from Britain. In fact, some of the most damning portraits of British imperialism in India and Southeast Asia came from Orwell's pen.

But Orwell was able to see what you apparently cannot see, that there is a distinction between bad and worse. The British were bad. The Nazis were worse.

Gandhi's strategy worked, true enough, but it worked because he was fighting the one and not the other.

Noel

Posted at November 4, 2007 7:03 PM in response to Harvard Prof Says All Criticism of Lobby Is Anti-Semitism

I don't believe Gandhi claimed it would work. But then, his idea of winning was keeping our human dignity in the face of all adversity.

Meh. Regarding the Jews, I suppose one could make the argument that dying a martyr's death was somehow morally superior to fighting back against the Nazis. I don't agree with it, but I can understand it.

But, in the exact same sense that Orwell used the word in his essay on Gandhi, such an argument is inhuman. An indiviudal might choose martyrdom, pour encourager les autres, but the suggestion that an entire people should humbly submit to extermination to maintain their "dignity" is insane.

Noel

Posted at November 4, 2007 6:48 PM in response to Harvard Prof Says All Criticism of Lobby Is Anti-Semitism

Ghandi didn't ask the Jewish people to do anything more or less than he was doing himself.

Wherein lies the problem. What worked against British colonial administrators was NOT going to work against the Einsatzgruppen. The success of satyagraha and associated techniques is dependent on having adversary that is not irredeemably evil.

I'd be willing to bet, in fact, that if the Palestinians adopted Gandhian techniques they really would create a moral atmosphere in both Israel and the United States that would force an improvement in their conditions much faster than anything. I'm not holding my breath, though.

Noel

Noel

Posted at November 4, 2007 6:34 AM in response to Harvard Prof Says All Criticism of Lobby Is Anti-Semitism

Well, Frist diagnoses people via video.

Which is what makes Frist a jackass. I'll never understand how a Harvard-educated surgeon could whore himself out to Administration like he did.

Noel

Posted at July 24, 2007 6:52 AM in response to Durbin's Grand Idea: Ordinary People Should Write Legislation

Maybe next Durbin will propose letting the people perform surgery via the Internet. After all, between Wikipedia and some DVDs of ER and Grey's Anatomy surgeons are now essentially unnecessary. Sheesh.

Noel

Posted at July 23, 2007 8:22 PM in response to Durbin's Grand Idea: Ordinary People Should Write Legislation

You have a point, but I think the point Mr. Newman was trying to make is that if these defendants were poor they would have been nailed to the wall, regardless of their innocence. The problem isn't as much anything to do with racism as much as economic diparities in a supposedly impartial system.

Noel

Posted at April 16, 2007 1:20 PM in response to Duke Case Shows Racism in Our Justice System

This was the perfect storm...every single stereotype conflict got exposed in this situation. Black/white, rich/poor, town/gown, athlete/non-athlete, male/female.

I'm not sure that whether Nifong was driving events or if events were driving him. In other words, was Nifong creating a blaze of publicity in order to look good to his voters, or was he pushing the prosecuting for fear of retaliation at the ballot box? Either way, he behaved abominably. But once he committed himself, he couldn't back down. I suspect that without the publicity that this case generated it would have been quietly dismissed within a couple of months at most.

In response to the specific problem that Mr. Newman brings up, a fairly obvious solution would be to require that DAs and PDs get paid the same, and that staffing levels are proportionally equal for criminal cases.
If we're serious about justice regardless of ability to pay, it shouldn't be any other way.

Noel

Posted at April 16, 2007 1:12 PM in response to Duke Case Shows Racism in Our Justice System

Looking at the numbers (very rough, and mostly from Wikipedia):

US GDP = 12.5 trillion

15% of US GDP is spent on healthcare, or $1.9 trillion.

Assuming we can get to around European levels of efficiency by switching to single payer, say we get health care spending as a percentage of GDP down to 10% (EU average is 8%), we'd need $1.25 trillion dollars, total, for health care.

Current Federal spending on health care= $700 billion, leaving the government $550 billion to make up via taxes. That works out to an average tax increase of about $4,000 per taxpayer. (assuming the number of taxpayers is 135 million.)

Of course, the assumption is that the increase in efficiency saves us $650 billion, which works out to an average savings of about $5,000 per taxpayer, since no one would be paying health insurance premiums any more. So it's a net savings of about $1,000 per taxpayer. Add this non-economic benefit that one would get from the peace of mind of not having to worry about being uninsured.

Quibble with the numbers I've used (and again, these are back-of-the-envelope calculations), but I think they give a ballpark estimate of the financial consequences of switching to a single-payer system.

Unfortunately, I think for most people the conversation would end with "average tax increase of $4,000." I think the most practical solution is to let individual states experiment with setting up their own single payer systems. There is a problem in that one of the basic benefits of a single payer system is the economy-of-scale effect, but it's much less likely to pass at the state level than at the national level. Also, starting at a lower level will allow us to work out the kinks is this sort of system as we move towards true universal coverage.

Posted at April 16, 2007 9:46 AM in response to Un-compromising positions