The impending Supreme Court consideration of the Universal Health Care legislation is certain to generate great debate in legal and ideological circles. The technicalities of the law will be a minor part of the popular discussion. But, we can be assured that the most caustic battles will occur on that field where the most paradoxical cognition and/or vacuous dogmatism will be ineluctable - the ideological front. Many have or will initiate their attack or defense of the program from an ideological set-point, but for me a synoptic understanding of the particulars of the issue necessitate a different process.
My secular mentality never allowed me to divinize the primacy of the free market and separate it from the working of common sense. The conceptualized new legislation was predicated on the fact that health care in this country is unaffordable for many and is on a trajectory to be out of reach for most, with little evidence that the unfettered free market will offer any special dispensation to meliorate this trend in the foreseeable future. So, the question then becomes what can or should be done about health care. Can it be an “industry” whose underlining raison d’être is the care of the corporeal body and relieving of physical suffering wrought by the thousand natural shocks that flesh is heir to, which should legislatively be abandoned to fickle and uncaring winds of the marketplace, at the same time all manner of tax exemptions, perks, and privileges are granted to religious organizations whose mandates are the disposition of the intangible soul.
It is not my intent to attack religion, but I believe all the complexities of the debate ultimately boil down to the dichotomy of how we resolve our dealings with the same inheritances from the natural world and human awareness that teach us to esteem our bodies as well as our souls. If we include special indulgence for religion in the fabric of our social contract as integral to “the promotion of the general welfare”, how can we be so dissociative when it comes to mutual care of our brief mortality?
Whether we wish to associate ourselves with the implication of the phrase “promote the general welfare” or the legal delicacies of the Commerce Clause, it may be instructive to examine the passive acceptance of the body politic to the huge and indecent expenditure on our military, which is frittered away on non-existential threats, not to our nation, but to our world hegemony and empire. So, if it a matter of how our commonwealth is spent, and if we are a truly free people, not indentured to any ideological master, why can’t universal health care be a legitimate social construct simply because we want and need it?
Friday, November 18, 2011
Thursday, November 10, 2011
AKA Voter Nullification
Today I was on a conservative blog site where there was an almost cult-like refutation of the NAACP's intent to challenge voter ID laws nationwide.Unfortunately my cynicism doesn't allow me to believe that this new urgency for voter ID is motivated by concern for the integrity of our elections. Although arguments about the ubiquity of identification or the ease of its acquisition in our society are compelling, the most egregious recent controversy over proper democracy was in the 2000 election where the votes of duly registered voters were not counted because of arbitariness with a distinctly partisan odor. I haven't been convinced of the new serious, compelling circumstances requiring this new scrutiny of individuals showing up at the polls to vote. And I marvel at the ideological divide of those who want more people to show up and cast votes and those who are threatened by it.
In the present environment where wealth and therefore power is so unequally partitioned, it would seem the rich and powerful would have the greater ability and incentive to encourage and stimulate fraudulent votes, and yet the party most closely identified with the financial and corporate elite, is the political party most closely identified with measures that would place barriers, however insignificant they are reputed to be, between living, breathing people and voting. And though many of the commentators on that site advanced the observation that it is politically incorrect to notice that most of those impacted by the new and necessary requirements are among the "brainwashed" black and brown populations, it is nonetheless hard not to notice.
It is also hard not to notice the results in Maine this past Tuesday.
In the present environment where wealth and therefore power is so unequally partitioned, it would seem the rich and powerful would have the greater ability and incentive to encourage and stimulate fraudulent votes, and yet the party most closely identified with the financial and corporate elite, is the political party most closely identified with measures that would place barriers, however insignificant they are reputed to be, between living, breathing people and voting. And though many of the commentators on that site advanced the observation that it is politically incorrect to notice that most of those impacted by the new and necessary requirements are among the "brainwashed" black and brown populations, it is nonetheless hard not to notice.
It is also hard not to notice the results in Maine this past Tuesday.
Paterno's Lesson
There are several tragedies attached to the Penn State affair. The rape and maiming of children by a sexual predator is the most immediately egregious and monstrous. But for some reason all eyes are drawn to Coach Paterno, a man who used sport as his instrument to mentor boys into manhood. My brother, a Penn State alumnus, four decades removed, used to regale us with Paterno’s famous “football is like life” predicate to the similarities of the vicissitudes experienced on the football field and those inescapable in real life. Although we chuckled at his mimicry we nonetheless absorbed the sensibleness of many of the coach’s dictums and I, at least, have repeated the mantra silently in my mind at various points of decision and hardship where the hard-knock of conscious direction was required in resistance to the momentum of the flow. That is why this heinous fiasco has re-humanized and re-adultified the slumbering and rote activities of my moral senses.
Not to belittle the terrible and permanent scarring that will be borne by the actual victims, but we have all been injured in that our belief in ourselves must be challenged by Coach Paterno’s shortcoming. We are beset by a society and a culture that defines and rewards a conception of adult sophistication, personally and geo-politically, as measured by our bravery to do the naughty thing, and not by our courage to do the right thing. Mr. Paterno blessed with wealth, fame, family, and success, and after the Biblically allotted three score and ten years, presented with his test of morality, principle, and courage, pitted against friendship and legacy and loyalty to a university and football program, was confounded into inaction. It was a horrible choice much beyond the sniveling choices, that thankfully, most of us are accosted with, but I’m sure in retrospect Coach Paterno will admit the consequences of belittling morality and courage for a temporary convenience is a more horrible burden to bear than the weight of the decision he had been called upon to make.
It is a shame that the Michelangelo statue of Mr. Paterno’s life and career has been graffiti-ed by a man he called friend, but it was Mr. Paterno himself who caused the chip that forevermore will not allow his personal legacy to be appraised at its highest possible value.
The riotous overreaction is somewhat to be expected from a mob of deeply disappointed youth, but Mr. Paterno’s termination was a correct decision responsible adults were required to make. It is only debatable whether they are requiring a higher or minimal standard of us all.
Not to belittle the terrible and permanent scarring that will be borne by the actual victims, but we have all been injured in that our belief in ourselves must be challenged by Coach Paterno’s shortcoming. We are beset by a society and a culture that defines and rewards a conception of adult sophistication, personally and geo-politically, as measured by our bravery to do the naughty thing, and not by our courage to do the right thing. Mr. Paterno blessed with wealth, fame, family, and success, and after the Biblically allotted three score and ten years, presented with his test of morality, principle, and courage, pitted against friendship and legacy and loyalty to a university and football program, was confounded into inaction. It was a horrible choice much beyond the sniveling choices, that thankfully, most of us are accosted with, but I’m sure in retrospect Coach Paterno will admit the consequences of belittling morality and courage for a temporary convenience is a more horrible burden to bear than the weight of the decision he had been called upon to make.
It is a shame that the Michelangelo statue of Mr. Paterno’s life and career has been graffiti-ed by a man he called friend, but it was Mr. Paterno himself who caused the chip that forevermore will not allow his personal legacy to be appraised at its highest possible value.
The riotous overreaction is somewhat to be expected from a mob of deeply disappointed youth, but Mr. Paterno’s termination was a correct decision responsible adults were required to make. It is only debatable whether they are requiring a higher or minimal standard of us all.
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