Minor Thoughts from me to you

I'm about two years behind the times to be only seeing this now, but that's still pretty good for me, since it's not like I keep up with horror movies at all.

The above image is a teaser for the 2007 slasher film The Tripper, the plot of which is summarized on Wikipedia as follows:

"Free-loving hippies... escape to a modern-day Woodstock for a weekend of debauchery, only to be stalked by a radical-minded psychopath dressed and talking like Ronald Reagan."

You can't help but love the tag line ("Heeeeeeeere's Ronnie!"), a clear reference to The Shining. I can't think up a better one and I've been thinking them up ever since I read it ("This summer: BLOOD TRICKLES DOWN", "You Can't Just Say No", "Mourning in America", "There'll be no recovery from this", etc. Sigh. See?).

"Writing is 2% creativity, 98% not being distracted by the internet." - Anonymous

Words of wisdom which I am intent on following today, so no posts. Yet I feel a responsibility to those of you who depend on your Minor Thoughts commentary as you depend on bread and water, and therefore herein offer in substitute the limited number of blogs I personally visit daily or weekly.

Knowing even as I do that this will probably result in you never stopping by our website again.

Twenty-Sided Tales - Shamus Young is a Christian libertarian with a gift for humor who primarily blogs about video games - and even if you don't play them, what he has to say is worth reading. Young obtained internet fame with his now-completed "DM of the Rings" series, a free web comic that dares to imagine how Tolkien's famous Lord of the Rings saga might have played out if it was a Dungeons & Dragons game. Start your perusal of his site there, but be warned: once you start, it's hard to stop.

Slacktivist's Right Behind - The theologically-educated and very funny Slacktivist (Fred) has done a solid for the world by dedicating his analytical prowess to taking apart LaHaye and Jenkins's Left Behind book series. Highly-recommended if you've read them - you'll be amazed at how much you didn't catch that Fred does.

Paul O'Brien's If Destroyed, Still True - A blog dedicated to reviewing comic books (primarily ones starring the X-Men and related characters), wrestling matches, and the top ten British songs on any given week. As with all of the sites I list here, Paul O'Brien has a great sense of humor - but he's also the only online reviewer I bother to read because he's the only one I've ever encountered with an eye for the science of writing. Great examples (don't even worry if you haven't read the stories in question, just click): his reviews of Uncanny X-Men #439, #440, #433, and Wolverine #55.

Enjoy.

One kernel of common wisdom often repeated among American Christians today is that God is not a Republican or a Democrat.

The great majority don't actually believe it, of course; most of them are firmly convinced that those bastards on the opposite side of the political spectrum (by which I mean about a quarter-inch over - both Dems and 'Pubs have a fairly myopic view of what positions are available, too) are the ignorant, hateful pawns of Satan himself. And the few who do mean it when they say it are usually making the claim that Jesus simply eschewed politics altogether, not that Jesus' politics simply don't match either party platform.

They're all wrong. Of course Jesus had politics, first of all - everyone has politics, however little exercised, because they're inseparable from having a world view - and of course they don't match up along today's political party lines. In fact if Jesus were to run for president of the United States in '12, likely every voter to read or hear His platform would be absolutely horrified.

Which is why I present it for their pleasure below - 'cause that's a good enough reason for me.

Abortion: I always try to give people the benefit of the doubt when they claim the Bible is either silent about or in favor of abortion: I assume that they are joking. If Jesus held the predominant view of other rabbis in his time, He believed Genesis 4:10 informs us that people are alive before they are even conceived. Because God claims in that verse to hear Abel's "bloods" (plural, though most translations don't show it) and the Jews thought/still think it very strange that God did not use the singular "blood", they decided the additional blood belonged to all of the descendants Cain might have had if he'd lived. Similar ideas still stand in many sects of Judaism today.

Government Control of the Economy: In His guise as the Father in the Tanakh, Jesus set up a socialist safety net that releases many citizens from their debts and forbids landowners from reaping their entire harvests. At certain times passersby are also allowed to freely eat what they can pick from other people's property.

Sales and Work on Sunday: Absolutely forbidden, except for doctors, nurses, et al. on call.

Gay Marriage: One problem that often results from the claim that the Bible is God's Word is that it encourages people to read it as if it's a legal document and they are lawyers. Never mind the Good Book's historical context or even any clear implications one might make from its stories about how the ancient Hebrews saw the world; a contested ban must not only be very specifically written down in the Bible (with God as the speaker or that's an easy out) but also include a note to the effect of "and this holds true for every possible permutation of said offense", else it doesn't hold water. For any secular student of the Bible, the idea that any ancient form of Judaism or Christianity right back to Jesus and Moses ever looked kindly on homosexual activity is just totally bizarre. Not so for the desperate churchgoer.

The Death Penalty: Jesus approvingly quotes the Torah's well-known position on the topic in several gospels (Matt. 15:3-4 and Mark 7:8-11 - and don't let the story of Jesus sparing the adulteress fool you, by the way. It's not authentic). But try to be honest with yourself - do you really need citations to know that? That this question is ever debated is an excellent example of how Christians like to rip the Bible free of its historical context. Being against the death penalty was more or less unheard of in Jesus' time - and if Jesus had been against it, that would've been major news, certainly all the Jews needed to write Him off as a blasphemous kook.

Religious Tolerance: Jesus doesn't say much about these values, but since He is "one substance" with the Father - and since the Jews of His time still wanted to bring back the Tanakh's example of Hebrew government - we can always dig for His answers in the Old Testament. And what we find there is that in so far as religious expression goes, you really should stay in your own country if you're anything but a worshipper of the LORD - God repeatedly demands the desecration and destruction of other religions' temples and holy sites, along with the deaths of anyone who leads the public away from His worship. No separation of church and state here, that's for sure.

Form of Government: God supports a monarchy for most of the Tanakh's length and for all of Israel's existence as an actual nation (prior to that it was an alliance of tribes). Sometimes the king is answerable to a greater, spiritual guide (for instance, in the case of Saul and Samuel). For a comparison, one might look to the make-up of the Iranian government today (sans the voting pretense), with a dictator nominally in control of the country but nonetheless answerable to the ayatollah.

Yessir - and it's high-time we returned to the values on which I'm told this country was founded.

And a good Saturday evening to all of you. While Adam is busy churning out the interesting and (I hope) controversial content, I've been lying lazily about. But I did manage to bestir myself long enough to make a few updates to the site. Those of you reading by RSS through Google Reader may want to pay attention to at least one of these updates.

1. For the past few months, Google Reader has been refusing to show the full text of articles in the RSS feed. To solve that annoyance, I've changed the feed address. The old one will still work, but it won't show the full text. To view the full text, you'll want to unsubscribe from our site and re-subscribe to the new address http://feeds.feedburner.com/MinorThoughts.

2. You know how some sites have that cool feature that lets you get notified by email when a new comment is added to a post that you commented on? Now we have that too. We also added threaded comments a little bit ago, so our comments are now twice as snazzy as they were at this time last year.

3. And, by popular request (all one of them), we've added the name of the post's author to the top of the post. Now you can know what to expect before you start reading the article. True, this does ruin the element of surprise. But it might help you avoid mental whiplash when I finally come out of hiding and post something new.

Now, in case I don't see you, Good Afternoon, Good Evening, and Good Night!

So this week I've been ragging a lot on the new Conservative Bible Project going on over at Conservapedia. Just 'cause it's, uh, y'know... stupid.

Yet confirmation bias, lack of perspective, and baseless theology certainly aren't phenomenas found solely on the Right end of the political spectrum. And to remind us all of that, today I present to you the website Jesus Is A Liberal, the creators of which want you to know:

"We believe it is high time someone stand up for the Liberal, Progressive, Tolerant and Independent thinking majority's position that any plain reading of His words, any genuine interpretation of His intent, outline a Liberal, Progressive, Tolerant, Loving [sic] and holistic world view... Our Mission is to promote the Integral Koan (TM), holistic meme, and the original belief and understanding that Jesus IS a Liberal, and to their very core His teachings outline a Liberal, Progressive, Tolerant, Loving, open minded, holistic, and sustainable vision for our World.

I tried to look up what a koan is, as well as how one might be trademarked, but according to a Buddhist priest "a koan can't be answered or understood by the intellect." Which explains the website perfectly, really.

Unlike the Conservative Bible Project, this website is now inactive - and curiously so, since it had obtained a modicum of success selling bumper stickers and t-shirts. Its Articles section advertises new updates coming your way in June of '07.

Still, as a monument to paradigm-shackled thought processes it remains exemplary, so have fun checking it out.

Because one way to regularly update a blog is to shoot fish in a barrel, today we continue our look at the development of a Republican Study Bible (because may we just be honest? While the project is officially entitled the "Conservative Bible Project", "conservative" is a term that's changed its meaning several times just in the last century. "Republican" is much more accurate), now underway at Conservapedia.

From the Project's website, we learn:

Socialistic terminology permeates English translations of the Bible, without justification. This improperly encourages the "social justice" movement among Christians. For example, the conservative word "volunteer" is mentioned only once in the ESV, yet the socialistic word "comrade" is used three times, "laborer(s)" is used 13 times, "labored" 15 times, and "fellow" (as in "fellow worker") is used 55 times.

Now as someone with a B.A. in English and an interest in politics, I've always found the propaganda potential in word choice very real and interesting. Still, I'm unconvinced words like "laborer" and "worker" are so much Leftist vocab as they are common words that Leftists have simply run into the ground.

But hey, who knows? Maybe better alternatives do exist - so out of curiosity I jumped onto Thesaurus.com to find a few synonyms they might prefer, then decided to try inserting them in a sample verse.

I chose 1 Timothy 5:18 (ESV): "The laborer deserves his wages." Clearly runs afoul of the CBP's standards, so let's see what we can do with it, shall we?

"The worker deserves his wages." Hmm. No, that's definitely no better, is it?

"The blue collar deserves his wages." Oof, no. Even worse. The United Auto Workers could put it on a poster.

"The drudge deserves his wages." Apolitical, but seems a little insulting. Looking down the list I also see "peon" and "grunt", neither of which I feel any better about.

"The farmhand deserves his wages." Too narrow.

"The stiff deserves his wages." Too on the nose.

"The wage-earner deserves his wages." Redundant?

"The migrant worker deserves his wages." Uncomfortably pro-immigration.

"The grunt deserves his wages." I told you they were further down the list.

"The manual worker deserves his wages." If we could only get rid of that darned 'w' word. Replace it with "technician", maybe - but I suppose that would be what the Conservative Bible Project calls "liberal wordiness".

"The jobholder deserves his wages." OK, this is technically perfect, but doesn't it sound like it came out of the company manual instead of God's Word? Ditto for "staff member" and the like. I just want something with a bit more soul.

Shoot. Well, I've been through most of the modern synonyms the online thesaurus has to offer, and I haven't found any I think would really communicate the proper capitalist spirit in a striking fashion. I guess for me the words "laborer" and "worker" are justified. Maybe the good folk at the Conservative Bible Project are a little more inventive than me, though.

Come to think of it, to believe what they do I guess they'd have to be.

Oddly enough, I learned about the following endeavor from the latest Steve Grant column - who mainly writes about trends in comic books.

So: On the online Conservapedia you can now find a webpage dedicated to the new Conservative Bible Project, which seeks to remedy the fact that no current edition of the Bible exists on which a Republican president may swear and mean it.

The Project lists ten guidelines according to which it intends to re-interpret God's Holy Word, which must simply be reproduced in their entirety:

Framework against Liberal Bias: providing a strong framework that enables a thought-for-thought translation without corruption by liberal bias

Not Emasculated: avoiding unisex, "gender inclusive" language, and other modern emasculation of Christianity

Not Dumbed Down: not dumbing down the reading level, or diluting the intellectual force and logic of Christianity; the NIV is written at only the 7th grade level[3]. [Note: I never really understood why something being written simply makes it dumber.]

Utilize Powerful Conservative Terms: using powerful new conservative terms as they develop;[4] defective translations use the word "comrade" three times as often as "volunteer"; similarly, updating words which have a change in meaning, such as "word", "peace", and "miracle".

Combat Harmful Addiction: combating addiction by using modern terms for it, such as "gamble" rather than "cast lots";[5] using modern political terms, such as "register" rather than "enroll" for the census. [Actually, I quite like this suggestion. Will they make it clear that the ancient Hebrews rolled dice to determine the will of God?]

Accept the Logic of Hell: applying logic with its full force and effect, as in not denying or downplaying the very real existence of Hell or the Devil. [Sickos.]

Express Free Market Parables; explaining the numerous economic parables with their full free-market meaning. [I didn't make this one up. Go check the page. It's really there. I hope this project works out; I can't wait to see what they do with the God-given, quite socialist rules of ancient Israel in regard to private debt, alms, etc. Not to mention the early church having everything in common...]

Exclude Later-Inserted Liberal Passages: excluding the later-inserted liberal passages that are not authentic, such as the adulteress story. [As an example, they cite Luke 23:34 - which was indeed apparently inserted later into the gospel. But blamin' this on liberalism is just laughable.]

Credit Open-Mindedness of Disciples: crediting open-mindedness, often found in youngsters like the eyewitnesses Mark and John, the authors of two of the Gospels. [But will the translators be able to recognize it when they see it?]

Prefer Conciseness over Liberal Wordiness: preferring conciseness to the liberal style of high word-to-substance ratio; avoid compound negatives and unnecessary ambiguities; prefer concise, consistent use of the word "Lord" rather than "Jehovah" or "Yahweh" or "Lord God." [The ridiculousness of this particular charge should be self-evident. Writing styles break down across ideological lines, with taut writing being conservative. Amazing.]

Their webpage also includes suggestions as to how they might approach the job of interpreting on a practical level ("identify pro-liberal terms used in existing Bible translations, such as 'government', and suggest more accurate substitutes").

At present it looks like the Project has either translated or is in the process of translating all of the New Testament, but has expectedly barely gotten anywhere with the Tanakh.

The deep irony here is that the men and women involved in this project are part of a tradition which they will deny exists to their very graves: even the earliest manuscripts are chock-full of verses which bear obvious signs of having been ever-so-slightly tampered with in order to buttress a particular ideology.

Hitler and Holocaust comparisons are considered fairly gauche these days on account of their overuse.

Nevertheless, bear with me.

Imagine you’re a German in the 1930’s or early ‘40’s – nobody of particular consequence, but a lawful and ethnic citizen of das Deutschland. Turning on the radio one morning, you hear a typically bellicose and historically divergent Fuhrer publicly announce that any living man, woman, or child who is not a member of the Nationalist Socialist Party by the time Germany wins the war will be receiving a special gift from the government: a one-way ticket to the ovens of Auschwitz and Birkenau.

Needless to say, you’re alarmed. Not for yourself, of course; you’ve been a member in good standing of the Third Reich’s sole political party since childhood, when you would go camping in the summers with all your friends in the Hitler Youth Corps. But you have friends, coworkers, and even family whom you love very much and of whom you think very highly, yet who have foolishly never decided that accepting Hitler as their leader is in their best interests.

Usually you greet every directive of the Fuhrer with implicit and joyful trust, but this time doubt wells in your heart. You understand why your Jewish neighbors had to go – they were, after all, constantly trying to sabotage the creation of the German utopia – but why all these other people?

You ask your friend Johann, who works for the Party and is schooled in the impeccable reasoning that underwrites all its actions; he’s always been able to clear up for you any idelogical concept you don’t quite grasp, so long as you aren’t actually challenging the government’s authority.

And it’s “Quite simple, really,” Johann tells you, an understanding smile on his face. “I grant you that it’s sad, but surely you’d agree that a socialist utopia can never occur if selfish capitalists and other undesirable elements are allowed to keep operating within it. They’d ruin everything. They must be weeded out.”

“Can’t we just force them to obey?” you ask hopefully.

Johann clucks his tongue. “And make them all slaves? The Fuhrer respects the free will of each citizen. He believes in personal freedom.”

“Then exile,” you desperately suggest. “The Fuhrer could banish them from Germany, yet he could also show mercy by allowing them to return once they realize the error of their ways!”

“An infinite amount of time to choose,” Johann patiently explains, “would render their judgment inconsequential. What does it matter what path one selects, if he may later instantly step onto the path he forewent? And furthermore, of what worth is an oath of loyalty, when victory has already been won? No, my friend, a line in the sand must be drawn, and the end of the war is the right place to do so. ”

He pats you on the shoulder. “Listen to me. I know how difficult this is for you. It is the same for me. I do not want any Germans to burn up in the ovens. That’s why I work so hard every day for the Interior Ministry of Propaganda – because I love my countrymen and want to convince as many of them as possible to accept Hitler as their own personal fuhrer. Now, if I may speak candidly and if you will be discreet, I will confess something to you: if I was the one in charge of the government, I would not have the strength of will to sign an order to eliminate so many. But I’m not the one in charge, nor should I be. Nor should you be, my friend, I think you will agree. So let us both just have faith in Adolf Hitler, that what he does is and always has been good and wise. He will not lead us astray.”

You nod, slowly but firmly. All of his points make sense, but it’s the last things Johann said which actually soothe the ache that had been developing in your heart: that you and he aren’t the ones responsible for doing this. It’s not in your hands. You’re both just two good people trying to save as many Germans as possible before the Fuhrer does what he must. And as for the Fuhrer’s role in all of this? Even if you don’t completely understand that, you should just have faith it’s all for the best.

Besides, it’s not like people who turns down membership aren’t choosing the ovens for themselves. If they are sentenced to death, it’ll be their own fault.

“Heil Hitler,” Johann ritually declares, bringing an end to your meeting.

“Heil Hitler,” you reply, and stand.

*

I’ve encountered another mainstream argument for the justness of Hell that I haven’t paraphrased in the above allegory. It’s a claim made by many of the largest websites on Christian apologetics: that people ultimately go to Hell because they literally prefer eternal torment to complete surrender to God.

It’s the only reason that still makes sense to me. But that’s because it’s the right decision - the one any brave enough person should make if confronted with a despot threatening genocide. To support a murderous regime is a monstrous evil in and of itself, even if yours is not the murdering hand. The German people of the 1930’s and ‘40’s certainly bore a collective guilt for following a man we now refer to as a gold standard of evil. Christians who believe in Hell and serve its creator bear the same.

On some level, I think most Christians now understand that, too, which is why in these more enlightened times popular interpretations of Hell have begun to soften, with references to fire, brimstone, and outer darkness being declared metaphorical or judiciously ignored. They speak instead of “eternal separation from God,” a softer fate parallel to my scenario’s suggestion of Hitler exiling non-Nazis.

That’s nonsense, but at least it’s an attempt, however underhanded, to rid themselves of the evil doctrine. The Christians I don’t understand are those who do not consider it incumbent upon themselves to address it at all. They piously punt, assuring all inquirers that while they don’t know God’s reason, it’s sure to be a good one – on its face a breathtakingly irresponsible decision.

Or they utilize excuses like those in my scenario, telling in that their obvious purpose is selfish. People who do feel better after Johann’s defense do so because their concerns have nothing to do with mercy; everything he says only addresses and absolves them and their god of culpability. And that is good enough for them.

The truly loving person would not be so satisfied. Indeed, you would think that the natural response of a Spirit-filled Christian, theoretically brimming with love for his or her fellow man, would be to either immediately commit to a lifetime of missions work or plunge headlong into abyssal depression, perhaps followed by alcoholism and drug abuse. Biblical precedents exist for both routes.

I would prefer a third option, however, that also has an example in God’s Supposed Word: that of Moses, the humblest man then alive, who nevertheless had the courage to say to his LORD on Mt. Sinai, “Please forgive their sin—but if not, then blot me out of the book you have written."

It’s probably a good idea to write my next review on somone about whom I have generally positive feelings, if a few criticisms – and God bless him, economist Thomas Sowell certainly counts.

A perfectly publishable 500-750 word opinion piece isn’t difficult to write. I can write one in ninety minutes. But to write a good one, one needs either a specialized perspective or a unique voice with which to communicate one that’s unremarkable. Ann Coulter is a good example of someone with the latter (yes, she’s a lawyer by training, but that almost never figures into her commentary anymore).

Mr. Sowell possesses the former due to his background as a working economist; the almost constant theme of his column is what people think and say versus what the reality of a situation is, form versus substance. Yet the thought process he earned from that same background enjoyably imbues him with a style, too; I’d be willing to bet money that no other conservative commentator uses the question mark to punctuate his sentences as much as Mr. Sowell does. His string of them from “Listening to a Liar” (Sept. 8 of this year) is just one of numerous examples:

"If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?

If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election?

If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to "hurry up and wait" on something that is literally a matter of life and death?

If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe?

And that’s why Mr. Sowell is one of few Townhall.com columnists I still recommend: Everyone is offering answers, but far more often than most Sowell will point out for you factors you might not have noticed and demonstrate the line of inquiry he used to unearth them, thus actually educating you.

About those “few criticisms” I mentioned at the beginning, though: personally I chalk it up to the bad influence of other successful columnists, but occasionally Sowell does mimic their unattractive habit of using disparaging terms for Leftists – “limousine liberals”, “feminazis”, and the like. For many columnists this habit doesn’t make any difference, since only a dyed-in-the-wool Republican would ever be caught dead reading their vitriol anyway (Ann Coulter, again), but Sowell’s logic is so universally applicable and appealing that it’s a real shame when he provides statists with a big notice that he is their enemy and hence should be dismissed.

And speaking of statism, Sowell’s occupation as an economist and his accompanying love of free markets sometimes seems to take a backseat to his Republican identity. Despite his understanding of how unrestricted trade across borders benefits all and competition improves any industry, he accuses those darn illegal immigrants of taking our jobs (“‘Vigilantes’ on the border?”, May 3rd, 2005). There are cultural and safety arguments against illegal immigration, but labor competition?

But if I were to ask Mr. Sowell why he wrote it – and he had time to answer - I am sure I would receive an intelligent and interesting reply, whether I agree with it or not. That confidence, finally, is why Mr. Sowell is the Republican you should read.

Yesterday I found trying to write the archetypal 500-word op-ed so much fun that this morning I've decided to write a couple more on (what I will charitably call) the art form. And because Rabbi Jesus advised us to go where the sinners are - an idea revealing of His divine understanding of marketing - I've thrown it up on a blog on Townhall.com itself to feature it. I've named it "Townhall Reviewed".

This morning I pounded out the following column (took about 30 min.). While I won't claim its source to be divine, I frankly feel God probably agrees with it.

I'll probably do a few more, so c'mon back later if you find it pleasing.

A Varied Diet Is Good For You: Stop Reading So Many Conservative Pundits

If you’re reading this, odds are you’re not a very informed person.

Forgive me, but it has to be said by somebody.

And I say it, if it makes any difference, as a young man who grew up listening to Rush Limbaugh, at least until his father discovered any number of other talk radio hosts who quickly followed in El Rushbo’s historic wake, and who by my sophomore year in high school did not end a day without absorbing every new column published by Townhall.com’s elite assemblage of conservative pundits.

Over a decade later I still read and listen to them, too - they’re just not all I read and listen to.

Today I also listen to podcasts from Dan Carlin, a moderate. And also broadcasts from Air America, which isn’t. Books I’ve recently read: Barbara Ehrenreich’s Nickeled and Dimed and Hillary Clinton’s autobiography.

All of this is good.

For all the intuitive understanding today’s conservatives possess of the marketplace and specifically the wonderfully-termed marketplace of ideas, they tend not to bother shopping around in it. Six or seven years ago I certainly never did. What information I needed to know from the books, articles, and videos of my political opponents I learned from quoted excerpts within my own, which handily came with ready rebuttals to any points I might find troubling.

That I had encased myself within a bubble of groupthink, one no less Orwellian than that which envelopes our universities, did not occur to me until late in college, when in my zeal to become the most effective culture warrior I could be I decided to start reading the works of my enemies; I wanted to be a Christian apologist and writer, so I started by putting away Norman L. Geisler, Lee Strobel, and other “defenders of the faith” and instead reading alternative commentaries on the Tanakh by moder-day Jewish scribes like Gunther W. Plaut and Dennis Prager, after which I graduated to the atheist treatments of Dr. Robert M. Price and the full-bore counter-apologists we all know so well: Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens, Sam Harris, et al.

I liken the effect of this expanded reading list to having eaten only American hamburgers for most of my life and then discovering ethnic food exists. The variety and richness of thought I encountered, even though I disagreed with a lot of it, was intoxicating – and yes, I started coming across arguments against Biblical inerrancy and various Christian values that C.S. Lewis, Norman L. Geisler, and the rest never mentioned to me. For the first time in my life I was truly being challenged, and only the opinions I truly deserved to have survived this refiner’s fire.

Naturally, I soon enough applied the same approach to my politics, and now – well, now I’m in a place I’d never thought I’d be. Which is scary, but also very exciting.

There’s little practical difference between living in a one-party state where you are constantly brainwashed and living in a two-party state where you are constantly conditioning yourself. Don’t waste the blessing you’ve been given of living in one of the few countries on Earth where you really can explore every point of view. It’s too rare a gift and it’s dishonest.

Take a break today from Townhall.com. Hell, take a week off. It’s not like you don’t know what all of these people think about everything anyway. Instead, jump over to a Libertarian website (they half-agree with you! Good place to start!), or even a Democrat one if you’re brave enough. Then when you return to the discussions here, at least you’ll have a unique voice, as opposed to being just another Republican repeating the exact same points from the exact same sources that everyone else is repeating.

Become informed.

My father is a fan of Rush Limbaugh.

Also Sean Hannity, now that he's come on the scene.

And Hugh Hewitt, actually, and also Michael Medved. Come to think of it, Dennis Prager too, and...

Well.

You understand. Perhaps your heart is even going out to me. You are thinking of what my childhood must have been like.

Actually it wasn't bad at all - I'm certainly not about to form a support group - but it's true that by the tender age of 15 I had taken upon myself a daily reading list that included practically every major Republican name with a national opinion column - and I found them all conveniently collected for my daily perusal at Townhall.com, still so far as I know the preeminent clearinghouse on the internet for conservative messages (not that I am looking). Daily columns, cartoons, podcasts, pictures of Ann Coulter back when she was attractive, FOX stuff... It's all there.

Here's the thing: when I eventually went cold turkey on the extremely addictive website, it wasn't because I'd jumped over to the Libertarian position. I didn't do that until years later. No, I quit reading Townhall.com's columnists out of boredom.

I tried to explain this to my dad a couple months back, said: "Listen, maybe it's just that I have a Bachelor's in the English language, for which you paid by the way and I am grateful, or maybe it's that the similarities between all of those articles become more apparent to you when you read as many of them as I did on a daily basis. But they're all the same, Dad. There's little difference in style, still less in formula, and either one of us could very likely guess the opinion of any one of them on any given issue at any time. Really, it's hack work, stuff they pretty obviously churn out when they're not busy doing the real jobs that made their names. If they're not ghost-written they should be, because I could write them easy."

"I don't think you could do what they do," replied my father. No doubt he simply thought his son's ego was once again getting ahead of his actual abilities, which admittedly has been known to occur.

But y'know what? I can write them easy. And just as a writing exercise today before I get started on what I high-falutin'ly refer to as my "serious work", I churned out the following column in about an hour and a half. I plan to "forward" it to my father this week with a pseudonymous byline (at the moment I'm thinking "Christofer Fuller", being my first and last name in their respective German pronunciations, but that may be too obvious).

If you've read conservative columnists of the sort that fill Townhall.com then you know whether or not I successfully capture the right formula. I think it needs slight polishing but it otherwise feels authentic.

How Democrats Can Fix Our Health System

By Christofer Fuller

There’s a fairly easy way to tell whether someone’s offer to help you is truly altruistic or has ulterior motivations: just reject the offer and see if the wannabe do-gooder accepts your answer. For instance, if you’re a woman carrying groceries to your home and a man resolutely demands that he bring them inside for you, it’s time to shout for help.

The Democrats’ recent refusal to listen to the millions of Americans who have made it abundantly clear they want nothing to do with government-mandated health care clearly fails this test. President Obama, Sen. Harry Reid, and Rep. Nancy Pelosi aren’t just determined to present every American with the choice of purchasing health insurance; all of them want to fine you if you make the wrong decision, to the tune o’ $950 if you’re just you and up to $3,800 if you’ve got the the wife and kids. I ask you: what could be the rationale behind making this threat? If the Democratic Party can successfully lead all the horses of America to water, why force the ones that aren’t thirsty to drink?

And for that matter, why insist on American tax dollars funding this expensive program – especially with the national debt as high as it already is – when the Democratic Party itself already has the power to fix our whole system?

All the Democratic Party has to do is enter the health insurance market.

I'm serious. Look: According to our would-be rescuers, the problem is that greedy health insurers are jipping us, right? And also not accepting those of us with preexisting conditions, the jackals! Well then, let the Democratic Party establish its own non-profit insurer – let’s call it the Democratic Health Co., or D.H.C. - devoted to taking on anybody and everybody wanting coverage at rock-bottom rates.

This should be easy. After all, the Party already has a list of 72 million customers (their registered voters) who want the product, right? Most companies would shed blood for a database like that. One e-mail to everybody on the list and D.H.C. could rival BlueCross BlueShield right out of the starting gate.

As for getting the money to start this ball rolling? Are you kidding? This is the same organization that raised nearly a billion dollars for the last election. For a noble undertaking such as this they could probably raise more.

It would be great to see the D.H.C. really show all of our current money-grubbing insurance providers what it really means to care for others – and best of all, its entry into the market would force those sons of guns to compete by making the same offers! So everybody would end up with affordable health insurance, without having a plan pushed on them they don’t want! Wouldn’t that be great?

If the Democrats only cared enough about me to make a no-strings offer like that, shoot – I’d put ‘em into every local, state, and federal office for which I have a vote.

But they don’t, do they? If I say no, they threaten me.

HELP!

UPDATE: Oh, why not? I just submitted it to a couple of different conservative opinion editors. Total shot in the dark, I know (and if one of them wanted it, I'd have to take down this post in a hurry), but why waste ninety whole minutes of work?

UPDATE 2: My wife agreed that "Fuller" was too obvious, so I chose "Paulson" as my nom de guerre (my father's name is Paul). As the saying goes, "Let's see if he can taste the difference!"

UPDATE 3: Nope, he couldn't.

I just read a pretty good essay over at The Freeman, discussing the difference between what we can do and what we ought to do. Too often, people talk about what we ought to do before even considering if we can do it. The essay, appropriately enough is Ought Implies Can.

There are two parts I particularly liked. The first was on the problem of imperfect knowledge.

The economist David Prychitko once defined economics as “the art of putting parameters on our utopias.” And in a particularly insightful definition, Nobel laureate F. A. Hayek wrote that “The curious task of economics is to demonstrate to men how little they really know about what they imagine they can design.” What both definitions suggest is that economics deals with the realm of the possible and in doing so demarcates the limits to what should be imaginable.

The author points out that this practice makes economists unpopular.

Economists are thus often seen as only knocking down the ideas of others without coming up with solutions of their own. There is some truth to this claim. That is how economists spend much of their time. But it’s an important function: showing why a proposed solution would only make matters worse is a valuable contribution to the broader process of solving the problem.

So, before you tell me that we ought to do it -- healthcare reform, for instance -- you first need to demonstrate that we can do it. Preferably in some level of detail.

Introduction

Just why is Minor Thoughts your #1 source for the latest news and discussion concerning embattled Christian archaeologist Dr. Ron Charles, and his book The Search ? Is it our incisive reporting on the subject? Our delicate handling of the larger issues raised in indicting a fellow believer for his suspicious claims? Or perhaps just our marked determination, ironically so similar to that of a Christian archaeologist, to not stop digging until the truth is uncovered?

Probably not, as we haven't even mentioned the dude on our blog for years now. But we wish you'd tell us, because our original, off-handed mention that the guy's book is suspicious is still receiving replies. And recently a Mr. Richard Peck, who's co-authored an article on the subject of the man for Personal Freedom Outreach's journal, has offered me his research for the purpose of debunking Ron's claims. Other respondents include Dr. Ron Charles himself.

Who, I might add, I am personally starting to feel a little sorry for. This politico-religious blog calling him names now actually comes up first when you search him out on Google. For the longest time his own RonCharles.com _came in second, and now I can't find it at all. Meaning _we're actually the only real publicity this man has: a side-mention slamming his book as not worth finishing a couple years ago. We should start a charity to hire him an SEO writer.

Perhaps this visible position we hold at least explains why some, like commenter Flor Hull, angrily accuse us of acting as "Satan's helpers" for being so "stupid and naive [as] to spend all your time just [trying] to prove one man wrong." They assume that Webmaster Joe and I actually became the thorn in Ron Charles's side we apparently are through some sort of effort.

Allow me to dissuade all interested parties of that illusion. Joe and I have barely even spoken about Ron Charles. And so little patience for nonsense do I possess these days that I've lacked the constitution to even read more than a couple pages of Ron Charles's life's work at a time, so I certainly haven't let him unduly distract me. A few years ago I simply opened The Search, on the recommendation of a friend from whom I thankfully borrowed it instead of wasting my own money, read several of its ridiculous statements - all written in an amateurish style that assured me the author does not possess a professor's education, regardless of the bio in the back - and then I put it back down. Out of a sense of civic duty I typed out a quick form letter of protest to the people at Final Frontiers dumb enough to hire such a person.

That's been the extent of my personal investment in the issue. Frankly, the Church and the religious world in general possesses no shortage of crackpots pedaling obviously ridiculous theories to the gullible - I just finished reading Tim LaHaye's (Left Behind) guide to the Book of Revelation, incidentally - and Ron's a pretty small fish, all things considered.

Yet the case was recently made to me that whereas I have often said that the only credible role of the blog-o-sphere is to provide commentary not currently available in the mainstream media, and whereas no resource currently exists on the internet for people at risk of being fooled by Ron Charles's absurd "findings", writing an actual article on the question of Ron Charles's book and creditability would provide an authentic service. After all, "small fish" are exactly what blogs are best at catching.

So I caved in, and I wrote this.

I thank Mr. Richard Peck and Personal Freedom Outreach, who graciously allowed me to use research from their own article on the matter ("The Search for the Real Dr. Ron Charles") from the July-September '08 issue of PFO's Quarterly Journal. If you want more information, go buy a copy.

Who is Dr. Ron Charles?

Ronal D. Charles is a man who has written a book about his personal search ("a culmination of more than 30 years of historical research") for information on Jesus Christ - aptly titled The Search. You can buy it on Amazon. Apparently some people do. As of this writing all of the reviewers have given it perfect scores, too, though at least some of these people are known to be personal friends of Mr. Charles.

When I received his book from a friend, I first opened it to its back page. Since I'd never heard of Ron Charles, I wanted to know who he was. Here was the information I found:

"Dr. Ron Charles is well qualified [sic] to write a book about the search for historical Jesus... [He has] a B.A. in Theology... an M.A. in Ancient History, an M.A. in Historical Theology, a Ph.D. in Ancient History, a Ph.D. in International Relations, and a Th.D. in Historical Theology... He serves on the Board of Directors for Pacific International University... as a member of the Board of Governors of Cambridge's Biographical and Historical Division, and has recently been a recipient of Cambridge's One Thousand Great Americas[sic] award. Dr. Charles has Mitten [sic - surely he means "mitted". What a multi-talented man!] six other books."

Note that I've just quoted only a little of The Search so far and have already had to note two mistakes. There are three paragraphs total within the "About the Author" section and they contain several more mistakes, run-on sentences and the like. For me, this is what immediately flagged Ron Charles's book as not to be trusted. Any man capable of earning doctorates in multiple subjects shouldn't write on a high school student's level. In fact, he almost certainly would be capable of getting his work published by a university press or other book publisher, instead of having to self-publish (not that I have anything against self-publishing - some great books have been self-published - but you should note when one is).

I didn't follow up on Ron Charles's biography then. I just flipped to the front of the book and began reading. But recently I've come back and taken a second look at this section, bothered to check a few of the credits listed. I'd never heard of Pacific International University but simply assumed it was a credible institution.

Not so. Pacific International University is apparently what's sometimes called a "diploma mill", according to the Council for Higher Education Accreditation. No institution respectable enough to meet the standards of the Department of Education or the Council for Higher Education considers P.I.C.'s degrees to be worth anything. In some states it would even be fraudulent to suggest so. Which makes one wonder how many of Ron Charles's degrees are from its printer or that of a similar (let's call it what it is) business.

Let me quench one's curiosity. Richard Peck's article for PFO's Quarterly Journal details at least three such degrees, all obtained via "home-correspondence courses" from Florida International University: a B.A. in Theology, a master's in Biblical History, and a doctorate in Biblical History. And all obtained within a three-year span! No easy feat, unless of course it was.

Richard Peck also notes many other degrees Ron Charles has allegedly claimed to hold, but which on review he doesn't: theological degrees from actual respected academies like Berean University, U. of Southwestern Louisiana, Kilgore College, and - get this - Cambridge University. No less than honorary PhDs from that last one too, though it's news across the pond.

If this is true, who is "Dr." Ron Charles? I certainly couldn't tell you, but apparently not someone "well qualified" to write a book about Jesus.

A Look Into Ron Charles's The Search

The shortcomings of its author aside, let's consider Ron Charles's magnum opus on its own merits. Now, I've admitted to having not read the entirety of The Search - just the first few chapters on several occasions and a few random selections from the tome's innards. Factor that as you will into your estimation of my opinion on it, but life is short and we are all stewards of the time we are given on Earth. I don't think reading all of The Search is good use of it. Nor do I really think it's necessary when what I have read of it is so dubious.

Ron Charles has written in our comment threads that "within the body and text of [The Search] I have identified each and every manuscript that I used. I name the museum, the university, or institution where the document can be found (in case someone wants to also research the documentation), the author, the date that it was written and exactly where it is located in the institution. I researched for over 30 years; traveling to over 50 countries in that research and it took me 3 years to write it."

(An aside: Whoa. Three years. That's as long as it takes to get three degrees!)

Poppycock. "Identified each and every manuscript that I used"? On pages 226-235 he claims to have discovered ancient scrolls in the possession of a mullah in Turkey, documents illuminating much about the wedding feast in Cana described within the Gospel of John, including who's wedding it actually was (Jesus' sister). After reading these scrolls with understandably breathless excitement - this is the kind of find deserving cover treatment by every Biblical archaeology magazine in print, the kind of find which makes a scholar's legacy - what does Ron do? Plead with the mullah to entrust the document to a museum? Photograph it? Return later with a renowned professor to authenticate it, followed by a team to excavate the area in which the scroll was found? Trade the mullah his scrolls for a briefcase of laundered cash? Surely something! After all, this is the sort of revelation that would bring a grinding halt to any previous investigation and consume all further attention.

Well, sorry to disappoint you. He leaves and The Search doesn't bother mentioning them again, even though these scrolls (if they really exist) are worth a few dozen dessertations in and of themselves. And where can a reader go and investigate these scrolls for himself? He or she can go to Amad's house in Hatay, Turkey, that's where. Or maybe it's "Amada's" house. I'm not sure because neither is Ron Charles. He can't seem to remember the name of the man with whom he shared this transformative experience. For half the story he spells it one way and half the time he spells it the other (for which I again do have sympathy, since I honestly make the same mistake on a regular basis. When I'm writing fiction).

Anyhow, the name's not important. If you want to find the man, you can identify him because he's the mullah of a mosque that, er... used to be named the Church of St. Barnabas. Ask around town 'til someone's eyes light up.

Another weakness of this story is worth mentioning for what it says about either the character of Ron Charles or the extent of his education: Ron's unquestioning acceptance of these long-lost sheepskin scrolls at face value. Even if the documents truly are real and are old, instead of fakes sold by a native to unsuspecting tourists, Ron's education should tell him that spurious additions to the story of Jesus' life were (and are) a dime-a-dozen. We have tons of ancient reports like these scrolls in the possession of universities, pretending to be evidence of new details about the life of the Christ. In fact, some of these fake additions have made it into the Bible itself (Did you know that the story of Jesus sparing the prostitute from stoning is nowhere to be found in our best and oldest manuscripts?).

But Ron Charles is a very trusting man. He leaves Amad's/Amada's house a true believer. "In one short afternoon," he writes on page 235, "I had learned that the wedding at Cana was probably Jesus' sister's wedding, Mary was the sponsor of the wedding, there were two different types of wine served, Mary's wine-order had been "short-changed," [sic] Jesus was responsible for giving a benediction at the wedding" and much, much more.

I am not so trusting a man. You, Dear Reader, should not be one either.

There are plenty of similar examples within The Search, if you care to read the other 600 pages. Experts you don't know authoritatively produce information of which respectable Bible professors I know have never heard. Untitled documents are found in libraries. Really, it's all not unlike The Da Vinci Code, only purporting to be real and without a set of antagonists nipping at Ron Charles's heels (though he's got 'em now). As with any fantasy, you read until you feel your suspension of disbelief break.

The Questions

Mine are obvious, so let's answer everyone else's.

In his comment on our original mention of him, Ron Charles asked me a question: "How does your opinion about the book translate into a personal evaluation of my character?"

It's really quite simple. A person can deduce a lot about the person who made a product from the product itself. When I read a book in which patently absurd claims are made without any back-up, I swiftly come to the conclusion that the man who produced it is not trustworthy.

He also protests: "What kind of con am I running? When I am in the USA I make people aware of the conditions of the persecuted Christians in the Muslim Middle East. Check with Final Frontiers, they are missing no money, I have not beat them out of anything. In fact, all funds that I make from my book and speaking goes to feed the persecuted Christians in the Middle East. Is that a con?"

If you're selling nonsense, yes it is, regardless of why you do it - and frankly, considering how untrustworthy his book is, I'm not willing to take Ron Charles' charity at face value either.

A gentleman named John Rose also made this pertinent inquiry: "Let me be clear with one thing at the very onset. 'IT TAKES ONE TO KNOW ONE.' The people who are slandering Mr. Ron Charles should be aware of this. What are their own credentials to discredit Ron?"

The initial reply that comes to my mind is that I am actually "well qualified" to discredit Ron, having myself received a four-year degree at an accredited institution - but really, it's even more basic than that. I'm simply a person with a capacity for some level of critical analysis. If you're one too, you probably didn't need to read this article; you quickly noticed the problems with Ron Charles and his book, then moved on.

Many people don't have that ability, however. They're the ones on whom people like Ron Charles - or to throw out another example, Jason Gastrich - prey, and the Church is full of them, since most believers have almost by definition eschewed their critical faculties in favor of simply believing what they are told (consider their general willingness to believe the Gospel of Matthew correctly cites his Old Testament sources, when all any Christian has to do to see the writer is pulling a serious Michael Moore on them is flip to those parts of the Bible) Thus do hucksters flourish there, spinning tales of having discovered surviving dinosaurs in the Congo, the Ark in the Turkish mountains, the ovens of Nebuchadnezzar in the ruins of Babylon, or anything else. They know that most of their audience will believe without question, desperate as they are to have their world view corroborated by external evidence.

I know of what I speak. I can still remember the seminars to which my parents brought me when I was a junior Baptist in Norfolk. Boy, did I eat it up.

Which brings me back to one of our commenters' questions: when most Christians are so incurious about the truth, are we just what Flor Hull said? Are we stupid and naive for trying to prove one man wrong? After all, it's clear that Ron Charles and his kind are all symptoms of what's wrong with the body of Christ rather than what ails it.

Updates and Links

• Jamaica Gleaner News has an interview with Ron Charles up on its website in which our dear evangelist is said to have discovered Noah's Ark - and as far back as 1991, no less. Strange that nobody's updated its Wikipedia entry yet.

• Enjoyably, another webpage has Ron Charles debunking someone else's same claim.

• A commenter has offered us the current webpage of Ron Charles. Here's the link. It's quite the brazen man who can declare his intent to "provide the highest quality of educational truth" to Third World peoples while on the same page lying that his books have hit the New York Times Bestseller List. Interestingly, he claims to be the author of not just The Search but also "many books on history, theology and archaeology, some [sic] have been on N.Y. Times best seller list." More drivel, or is anyone else aware of other books published by Ron Charles?

• The Midland Reporter-Telegram's website MyWestTexas.com has a full article about Ron Charles in advance of his September 15th guest spot on God's Learning Channel (which was just last night, as of this writing). The story pimps Charles's Cubit Foundation and also has a slightly less absolute declaration by Charles about his relationship with Noah's Ark: “What we can say is there was an object up [on Mt. Ararat] made out of wood that fits the same dimensions as the Bible... It very well could be.”

• Ron Charles is a "featured scholar" on Truths That Transform: A Reliable Source, a DVD that "provides myth-busting evidence which validates God's Word". Coral Ridge Ministries sells 'em here. One can only assume the product's subtitle refers to the Bible and not the documentary itself.

Notes

Charles, Ron. The Search. Bloomington, Ind.: 1st Books Library (AuthorHouse), 2007.

Richard Peck and G. Richard Fisher. "The Search for the Real Dr. Ron Charles." The Quarterly Journal. 28. 3 (2008): 5-8.

This morning I saw a new Facebook poll: "Is Health Care a Human Right?". I voted no.

Do you have a right to health care? Yes. And no. My answer ultimately depends on what you mean by a "right" to health care.

Rights come in two varieties: negative and positive. A negative right can be thought of as the right to be left alone. It's the right to do something without the fear that someone else will restrain you. A positive right can be thought of as the right to be served. While a negative right requires only that someone leave you in peace, a positive right requires that someone actively do something for you.

I believe you have the right to work with the doctor of your choice -- whether or not that doctor has been credentialed by a government.

I believe you have the right to take the drugs of your choice -- whether or not those drugs have been approved by a government panel of experts. I believe you have the right to take experimental cancer drugs, especially as a last ditch attempt to save your life. I believe you have the right to take marijuana to treat pain, to build appetite, and to relax.

I believe you have the right to buy insurance from any company, located in any state, covering any combination of conditions. I belive you shouldn't be limited to only the health insurance that covers a government approved list of condition from a government approved list of companies.

I believe in a strong negative right to health care. That's something that doesn't really exist in America today. Right now, you are not free to receive health care from anyone you trust, you are not free to take the drugs of your choice, and you are not free to buy whatever health care you desire. I am in favor of more freedom in health care. I believe you have a right to consume health care as you see fit, even if the majority of people around you disagree with your decisions. That's freedom.

I don't believe you have a right to force someone else to pay for treatment, medications, or medical supplies. I don't believe you have a right to force a doctor to work with you. It's one thing if you and the doctor can come to a mutual agreement regarding pay and hours of availability. It's something else entirely to require a doctor to treat you at a price of your choosing (not his) and at a time of your choosing (not his). I don't believe you have a positive right to health care.

To be blunt, I don't believe you have a right to turn doctors into slaves (by requiring them to treat for free or at a steep discount) or a right to turn your fellow citizens into slaves (by requiring them to work in order to pay the bills for your health care).

The current discussion of health care rights revolves almost entirely around positive rights -- getting someone else to pay for our health care. It includes an "exchange" that would strictly limit the options available. It includes subsidies forcibly taken from some people through taxes and used to pay for someone else's health care.

It includes a requirement for insurance companies to charge everyone the same price for health care. This practice, known as community rating, allows sicker people to pay less than the cost of their care and requires healthier people to pay more. In effect, community rating is a subsidy to the sick courtesy of the healthy. Community rated health care is a very bad deal for young, healthy individuals. So the current discussion revolves around a health care mandate. Most of the plans under consideration would require young people to purchase something that's a bad deal. They would be required to do this solely to provide a good deal to sick people and the elderly.

Claiming a positive right to health care is nothing more nor less than the claiming the right to enslave your fellow man. I don't believe you have that right.

Here's Warren Meyer, talking about the different types of rationing.

So here is what it boils down to: For every product or service purchase, someone makes a price-value trade-off to determine if that product or service should be purchased for a given price in that particular instance.

One option for making this decision is to have the person who actually will consume the product or service — and whose money will also be used to complete the transaction — make this price-value tradeoff.

... A second way to do this would be to have someone who has you specifically in mind make the price value tradeoffs for you. This might be like your wife volunteering to go out to buy you some new underwear.

... So a third model, and almost certainly the worst in terms of individual satisfaction, is to have a third party make price-value tradeoffs for me only with some notion of average preferences for average people, or worse, with an incentive system that has absolutely nothing to do with my satisfaction at all. This is clearly the case for the government, and is probably the case for many private insurers today[.]

When it comes to your health care choices, who do you want making your decisions? I definitely want to make my own decisions and I think most Americans would agree with me. But the reforms that are on the table would cement the status-quo. The status-quo overwhelmingly encourages us to pre-purchase our health care through expensive health "insurance" policies. Then a bureaucracy will take a look at our care and decide what to reimburse and what to deny. That's true whether you're on an HMO plan, a PPO plan, or a government (Medicare / Medicaid) plan.

Isn't it time that we had real reform? Isn't it time that we put patients back in charge of their own health care decisions?

It's great that Great Britain has high quality health care available to everyone, courtesy of the British government. Expectant mothers are especially appreciative. After all, without the NHS, some of them would have never known that it's possible to give birth outside of a delivery room.

Thousands of women are having to give birth outside maternity wards because of a lack of midwives and hospital beds.

The lives of mothers and babies are being put at risk as births in locations ranging from lifts to toilets - even a caravan - went up 15 per cent last year to almost 4,000.

Health chiefs admit a lack of maternity beds is partly to blame for the crisis, with hundreds of women in labour being turned away from hospitals because they are full.

Latest figures show that over the past two years there were at least:

• 63 births in ambulances and 608 in transit to hospitals;
• 117 births in A&E; departments, four in minor injury units and two in medical assessment areas;
• 115 births on other hospital wards and 36 in other unspecified areas including corridors;
• 399 in parts of maternity units other than labour beds, including postnatal and antenatal wards and reception areas.

Additionally, overstretched maternity units shut their doors to any more women in labour on 553 occasions last year.

I'm so glad that the British don't leave their health care up to a greedy, heartless private sector motivated only by profits. Imagine what might happen if they did!

Sheldon Richman on "Proposers versus Producers."

"The dynamic leader who gives impassioned speeches and sponsors legislation on behalf of social justice is portrayed as heroic in part because few people can find the logical flaws in the program. As a result, all that counts are presumed motives. But motives divorced from understanding are worthless — even dangerous. In a more sensible world, proposing ends while oblivious to means would be a sign of irresponsibility, the intellectual equivalent of drunk driving."

(Tip 'o the hat to Art Carden at Division of Labour.)

The National Center for Policy Analysis published a press release from the HealthPlanWire today, showing the grow in private insurance world wide.

HPW follows health insurance markets globally, and is projecting that total covered lives will exceed one billion by 2012. Single-payer systems are declining world-wide because they are primarily based in countries which have static or declining populations, while private insurance is growing rapidly in countries with the fastest population growth.

Most of this is coming from developing countries which are for the first time ever building out a health financing system, choosing to encourage private health insurance over single-payer on five continents. Examples include China, Columbia, South Africa, Mexico, India, Australia and most of eastern Europe. Most of these countries considered and rejected a single-payer system in favor of a private insurance system, and more than a dozen more are following suit in the same regions.

Private insurance is the chosen system for several reasons. In developing countries in eastern Europe there is a strong aversion to the former Soviet-style model, and western European global insurers like Allianz and Vienna Insurance Group have actually acquired the entire single payer system from the government and turned it private.

Cool.

Jon R. Gabel writes in the New York Times today, saying that we shouldn't fear the cost of health care reform because the CBO has a long history of underestimating the savings from reforms.

In the early 1980s, Congress changed the way Medicare paid hospitals so that payments would no longer be based on costs incurred. ... The Congressional Budget Office predicted that, from 1983 to 1986, this change would slow Medicare hospital spending (which had been rising much faster than the rate of inflation) by $10 billion, and that by 1986 total spending would be $60 billion. Actual spending in 1986 was $49 billion. The savings in 1986 alone were as much as three years of estimated savings.

In the 1990s, the biggest change in Medicare came with the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, a compromise between a Republican-controlled Congress and a Democratic administration. ... The actual savings turned out to be 50 percent greater in 1998 and 113 percent greater in 1999 than the budget office forecast.

In the current decade, the major legislative change to the system was the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003, which added a prescription drug benefit. In assessing how much this new program would cost, the Congressional Budget Office assumed that prices would rise as patients demanded more drugs, and estimated that spending on the drug benefit would be $206 billion.

Actual spending was nearly 40 percent less than that.

I find it interesting though that his savings numbers only extend out a few years. For instance, he talks about how much was saved in 1986, from the 1983 bill, but doesn't talk about hospital spending trends since then. How much has the 1983 bill saved over the past 26 years? He talks about how much money was saved in 1998 and 1999 as a result of the Balanced Budget Act of 1997, but he doesn't talk about how much has been saved in the intervening 10 years. Did the trend continue?

Then I saw this graph, of Congressional health care underestimates. (Courtesy of John Goodman, courtesy of the Joint Economic Commitee. You can read the full report.)

It looks like health care costs are underestimated far more than they're overestimated.

I should know by now that whenever I try to explain something John Stossel has already explained it better. First, he delivers a great quote about why competition keeps prices low.

In a free market, a business that is complacent about costs learns that its prices are too high when it sees lower-cost competitors winning over its customers.

I posted yesterday about why "exchanges" are worse than free markets. Stossel takes that on too and does a far better job than I did.

... Competition is not a bunch of companies offering the same products and services in the same way. That sterile notion of competition assumes we already know all that there is to know.

But consumers often don't know what they want until it's offered, and their preferences and requirements change. Businesses don't know exactly what consumers want or the most efficient way to produce it until they are in the thick of the competitive hustle and bustle.

Nobel laureate F.A. Hayek taught that competition is a "discovery procedure." In other words, the "data" of supply and demand emerge only through the market process. We need open-ended competition not merely to see which rival is better, but to learn things we didn't know before and aren't likely to learn any other way.

"Competition is valuable only because, and so far as, its results are unpredictable and on the whole different from those which anyone has, or could have, deliberately aimed at," Hayek wrote.

The health care bills are perfect examples. If competition is a discovery process, the congressional bills would impose the opposite of competition. They would forbid real choice.

In place of the variety of products that competition would generate, we would be forced "choose" among virtually identical insurance plans. Government would define these plans down to the last detail. Every one would have at least the same "basic" coverage, including physical exams, maternity benefits, well-baby care, alcoholism treatment, and mental-health services. Consumers could not buy a cheap, high-deductible catastrophic policy. Every insurance company would have to use an identical government-designed pricing structure. Prices would be the same for sick and healthy.