Here’s what I think of Bill Clinton: if he had a sense of shame the President would resign. But then, if he had a sense of shame, he wouldn’t need to.
That is also what I think of Kenneth Starr, of the congressional leadership, and of the entire national media.
Last week’s massacre in Chiapas, Mexico of dozens of people by a paramilitary strike-force involved in the Zapatista uprising has once again brought into our living rooms, accompanied by jaded shock, ignorant analysis, and color photographs, the man-made horrors that plague our world. We get the initial reports, rushed to us in a frenzy to be the first on-the-air, with contradictory eye-witness accounts, blustery and ignorant official positions, and the inevitable (but inaccurate) body counts. We get periodic updates, each contradicting its predecessor and claiming to be “the truth”. We get long-winded speculations on motivations and responsibility, and a running scorecard on who is helped and hurt in the political aftermath, as if it was all some kind of game, another edition of Monday Night War. And as with so many reports of such inhumanity, we are led to heights of indignation and despair by the revelation, in hushed and horrified tones, that some of the victims were women and children. They killed women and children! The bastards! Women and children!
I oppose the death penalty for reasons having nothing to do with the morality of state-sponsored execution and everything to do with the inherent fallibility of human institutions. Nonetheless, reading in David Sylvester’s commentary (Aug 4) about the death sentences commuted by former Governor Pat Brown reminds me why the death penalty has such an appeal for so many people interested in justice.
I started this book by announcing I knew how to reform the health-care system; it seems appropriate, then, that I end it with my health-care reform proposal.
Finally, to your warning about the eventual overreaction, to everyone’s detriment, to the creeping problem of general, portable access to health-care: I concur, and have for a long time. I have described this as the revolt of the officially voiceless: people with reasonable, legitimate, but inconvenient concerns – over access to health care, or over welfare, or over affirmative action, or over discrimination, or over campaign financing, or over free speech, or over taxes, or over regulation, or over some other issue – are told by the politicians, by the press, by academics, by the arbiters of social norms that they are heartless, or bigoted, or ignorant, or unreasonable, or unrealistic, or hateful; they are told that their concerns do not really exist, or are parochial, or are irrelevant, or must be borne with stoicism on behalf of some greater good; they are told they are unworthy of attention and respect; they are told, in effect, to shut up. And they do shut up – while their problems fester and swell, with animosity added to inconvenience – until they are, in the over-used phrase, “Mad as hell, and not going to take it any more.” And then we all suffer as the sledge-hammer solutions born of this groundswell of frustration create new problems and new animosities.
It seems to me the most important thing we can teach our children, future drivers, riders, and walkers — and future employers and employees and leaders and teachers and neighbors, and future voters and politicians — is courtesy. We must all share the roads. We must all share in society. Your duty in driving, and in life, should be to minimize the chaos and disruption in your wake as you strive toward your destination. Your guiding principle should be: always assume the other guy is going to do something careless or stupid. If that means sometimes ceding your right-of-way — what have you lost but a bit of pride?
I am writing to you as perhaps the last hope for sanity in the debate over health-care reform; despite my California address I am a native Granite Stater and my respect for both of you predates your current activities on behalf of the Concord Coalition. I, as most people, have become concerned about the direction in which the debate seems to be moving. Because of your commitment to weaning the American public, politicians, and government bureaucrats from the trap of entitlement programs I thought you might have a special interest in what becomes of this potentially gargantuan new entitlement program into which we seem to be plunging. It is my hope that your influence and straight talk may yet prevail over the politics dominating the discussion to date.