Great re-post from a friend

Its hard to think of something original to write when Richard Cohen nails it....

Time to Act Like a President




By Richard Cohen

Tuesday, September 29, 2009



Sooner or later it is going to occur to Barack Obama that he is the president of the United States. As of yet, though, he does not act that way, appearing promiscuously on television and granting interviews like the presidential candidate he no longer is. The election has been held, but the campaign goes on and on. The candidate has yet to become commander in chief.



Take last week's Group of 20 meeting in Pittsburgh. There, the candidate-in-full commandeered the television networks and the leaders of Britain and France to give the Iranians a dramatic warning. Yet another of their secret nuclear facilities had been revealed and Obama, as anyone could see, was determined to do something about it -- just don't ask what.



The entire episode had a faux Cuban missile crisis quality to it. Something menacing had been discovered -- not Soviet missiles a mere 100 miles or so off Florida but an Iranian nuclear installation about 100 miles from Tehran. As befitting the occasion, various publications supplied us with nearly minute-by-minute descriptions of the crisis atmosphere earlier in the week at the U.N. session -- the rushing from room to room, presidential aides conferring, undoubtedly aware that they were in the middle of a book they had yet to write. I scanned the accounts looking for familiar names. Where was McNamara? Where was Bundy? Where, in fact, was the crisis?



In fact, there was none. The supposedly secret installation had been known to Western intelligence agencies -- Britain, France, the United States and undoubtedly Israel -- for several years. Its existence had been deduced by intelligence analysts from Iranian purchases abroad, and it was pinpointed sometime afterward. What had changed was that news of it had gone public. This happened not because Obama announced it but because the Iranians beat him to it after discovering that their cover was blown. They then turned themselves in to the International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna and, as usual, said the site was intended for the peaceful use of nuclear energy. These Persians lie like a rug.



No one should believe Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. Iran seems intent on developing a nuclear weapons program and the missiles capable of delivering them. This -- not the public revelations of a known installation -- is the real crisis, possibly one that can only end in war. It is entirely possible that Israel, faced with that chilling cliche -- an existential threat -- will bomb Iran's nuclear facilities. What would happen next is anyone's guess -- retaliation by Hamas and Hezbollah, an unprecedented spike in oil prices and then, after a few years or less, a resumption of Iran's nuclear program. Only the United States has the capability to obliterate Tehran's underground facilities. Washington may have to act.



For a crisis such as this, the immense prestige of the American presidency ought to be held in reserve. Let the secretary of state issue grave warnings. When Obama said in Pittsburgh that Iran is "going to have to come clean and they are going to have to make a choice," it had the sound of an ultimatum. But what if the Iranians don't? What then? A president has to be careful with such language. He better mean what he says.



The trouble with Obama is that he gets into the moment and means what he says for that moment only. He meant what he said when he called Afghanistan a "war of necessity" -- and now is not necessarily so sure. He meant what he said about the public option in his health-care plan -- and then again maybe not. He would not prosecute CIA agents for getting rough with detainees -- and then again maybe he would.



Most tellingly, he gave Congress an August deadline for passage of health-care legislation -- "Now, if there are no deadlines, nothing gets done in this town . . . " -- and then let it pass. It seemed not to occur to Obama that a deadline comes with a consequence -- meet it or else.



Obama lost credibility with his deadline-that-never-was, and now he threatens to lose some more with his posturing toward Iran. He has gotten into a demeaning dialogue with Ahmadinejad, an accomplished liar. (The next day, the Iranian used a news conference to counter Obama and, days later, Iran tested some intermediate-range missiles.) Obama is our version of a Supreme Leader, not given to making idle threats, setting idle deadlines, reversing course on momentous issues, creating a TV crisis where none existed or, unbelievably, pitching Chicago for the 2016 Olympics. Obama's the president. Time he understood that.



cohenr@washpost.com

What exactly is Freedom?

I promise not to do this too often, but every once in a while I see another post, and have to "re post" it because I am so impressed with the logic and approach of the piece. Appeals to logic, and reason, seem to be in scarcity in this political environment. Sloppy definitions hurt all of us, and seemingly allow all sides to claim the mantle of our sacred cows. I thought this piece, from the "Voices of Reason" blog put out by the Ayn Rand Center for Individual Rights, was brilliant....

Freedom is not slavery
September 18, 2009 by Don Watkins
One of the great dangers today is that political concepts such as “freedom” and “liberty” have been virtually emptied of meaning, save for some positive emotional residue left over from this country’s founding. This allows them to be co-opted by those seeking to use their positive connotations to push an anti-freedom agenda.
Exhibit A: Thomas Frank, the Wall Street Journal opinion section’s token liberal, penned a column this week urging the left to reclaim the word “freedom” from the opponents of government intervention. This is no mere academic issue, Frank assures us: the unpopularity of Obama’s health care plan, he suggests, is at least partially the result of allowing critics to portray ObamaCare as an attack on freedom (which it is).
Curiously, in a column about the proper meaning of the word “freedom,” Frank never deigns to define it. Instead, he presents in pretty vague terms two different conceptions of “freedom.” One, which he attributes to the right, regards freedom as “the absence of the state.” The other, which he urges the left to trumpet, is hazily alluded to as follows:
That our ancestors could ever have understood freedom as something greater than the absence of the state would probably strike protesters as inconceivable. But they did. You can see it in that famous Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving painting from 1943: “Freedom from Want,” an illustration of one of Franklin Roosevelt’s “Four Freedoms.” Strange though it might sound, this is a form of freedom that pretty much requires government to get involved in the economy in order to “secure to every nation,” as Roosevelt put it, “a healthy peacetime life for its inhabitants.” The idea is still enshrined today in the United Nations’ Universal Declaration of Human Rights.
So that’s our choice, according to Frank: freedom means “anti-government,” or it means government “involvement” in the economy in the name of “freeing” us from want.
But while taking such great pains to invoke our ancestors’ understanding of freedom, Frank neglects to mention some earlier ancestors who had definite views on the meaning of freedom: the Founding Fathers.
“[A] wise and frugal government,” wrote Jefferson, is one which “shall restrain men from injuring one another, which shall leave them otherwise free to regulate their own pursuits of industry and improvement, and shall not take from the mouth of labor the bread it has earned. This is the sum of good government…”
Freedom, to the Founding Fathers, meant the ability of the individual to live his own life, to enjoy his own liberty, to acquire and use private property, to pursue his own happiness–without interference by others. It did not mean the absence of government, but a limited government whose sole purpose was to protect individual rights. (The absence of government, the Founders recognized, left man’s rights just as unguarded as under a tyranny.)
What Frank–like FDR before him–calls “freedom” is totally at odds with freedom as the Founders understood it. Freedom from “want” means that some men are to be forced to provide for the “wants” of others. The “freedom” to have health care without paying for it means that some people will be forced to pay for the health care needs of others.
The only thing that makes it possible to equate government intervention with “freedom” is widespread unclarity about what freedom actually is. But as the Founders understood, freedom does have a definite meaning. As Ayn Rand would later formulate it:
[W]hen I say “freedom,” I do not mean poetic sloppiness, such as “freedom from want” or “freedom from fear” or “freedom from the necessity of earning a living.” I mean “freedom from compulsion–freedom from rule by physical force.” Which means: political freedom.

Primetime -- "But I Want It To Be True"

In the middle of the Country watching BHO deliver his primetime healthcare pitch. Three things that really standout.

1. "Just say it -- even if it ain't true." When the debate is not a debate, but a monologue, then the president (and the last president, and many presidents) choose to prey upon this format to make conclusions that just don't exist. Out of deep respect for the process, those in disagreement sit quietly, but cannot really challenge. Therefore, those behind the pulpit are prone to making wide sweeping pronouncements that simply are not true. Case in point is BHO saying tonight that the "members of the chamber are in 80% agreement on healthcare reform." Really? Since when? Explain please? From where I sit I see two fundamentally opposite points of view -- one that says government is the answer and one that says government is the problem. Tell me where is the 80%? Perhaps he meant "gettable" votes?

2. What is he really doing with this address? The bill is out of its component committees and drafted, so isn't this really about "bucking up" the legislature with pomp and rah to give them the 'courage' to defy their constituencies and vote this ugly thing into being? Isn't that what this is about?

3. The complete lack of substance and all the standing and cheering loudly reminds me of a high school pep rally where the ones with loudest contingent win the title of ASB president. No time for logic or real policy or real points -- just a world of shifting emotion with lots and lots of cheering. That seems to be the main job of the VP and Speaker in these situations -- to properly control and contort their facial expressions and then lead the congregation in cheers of glee (for the cameras) to "whip up support." I think it is an ugly way to proceed with the debate, and shameful. This behavior happens with either party in charge, but it does seem the democrats have raised the art of appearance to a new level of superficiality.

Logic Applied to Healthcare

I thought the following post from ex Duke Review Editor Alex Epstein on the healthcare debate captured the essence of the premises involved in the debate. As I comment upon these issues in online circles I have become fascinated by the number of large, crucial premises that are unconsciously and inexplicitly smuggled into the healthcare debate. The different positions one may hold on these assumptions largely determines what your position on public healthcare. Alex Epstein, using his philosophical training, uncovers what I believe to be the most important healthcare premise that often goes undetected, undiscussed, and unchallenged. Whatever your stance on the issues, Alex's piece is worthwhile...

How to eliminate health care injustices (part 2)
August 28, 2009 by Alex Epstein

In Part 1, I raised the common argument that “We as a society must make ‘tough choices’ about who gets health care and who doesn’t…. Since ‘we’ have finite medical resources, we inevitably have to sacrifice some people’s care to others, whether young to old or old to young.”

No “we” don’t.

Medical care is not something that “we” collectively own, that “we” collectively have a right to receive, and therefore that “we” collectively must ration. Medical care is something that is created by individual medical professionals, who have a right to decide what to offer, how to do so, and how much to charge. And the money to pay for medical care (whether directly or via insurance) is something that must be earned by productive individuals—just as individuals must earn the money to pay for food, clothing, shelter, and everything else life requires. (Of course, medical professionals can and do give away their time and products to those who cannot afford it, just as millions in other professions generously give charity. Nevertheless, a person is responsible for his own life and health—and those of his children.)

Because health care is created by individuals, it is wrong to look at it as a finite, zero-sum pie in which one person’s kidney dialysis is necessarily another person’s untreated diabetes or uninsured child or higher tax bill; human beings can produce as much health care as people are willing to earn and pay for. Because health care is created by individuals, it is wrong to look at it as some collective good that the state has the right to control. The government has no right to dictate what services medical professionals can produce or how patients spend their money; it cannot properly force a young couple to pay for the scooter or Viagra or an MRI of an 85-year-old at the expense of their child, nor can it restrict an 85 year-old from saving his money and buying as much end-of-life health care as he can.

We can bring an end to the sacrifice and injustice in health care by recognizing that health and health care are not collective rights, but values that each individual has the right and responsibility to pursue freely. We are responsible for taking care of our bodies (and our children’s bodies) and we have a right only to the health care we can obtain in a free market—which, when it was genuinely free, included ultra-cheap, high-deductible health insurance and ample private charity.

In a free society, no one would need to sacrifice; there would be no collective health care costs that we all (resentfully) bore together as tax payers, there would only be costs that we would be responsible for as individuals. That would be real health care reform. Anything else is health care, deformed.

Credit to Alex Expstein http://blog.aynrandcenter.org/author/aepstein/