Politics

This video of Andrew Meyer getting Tasered at a John Kerry event at the University of Florida is pretty crazy.  I'd like to see a video of Kerry's face throughout this.  He has such a calm, understated tone in his voice...but surely a facial expression or two must have slipped out.

Not that I'm a policy wonk.  I haven't studied the issue, but the possibility of universal health care is certainly intriguing.  One of the most common criticisms seems to be something like this (e.g, from wizbang politics):

Health care services are not unlimited, so offering "universal coverage" necessarily requires price controls and rationing.

The expected reaction to this argument is, I guess, "price controls and rationing?!?  Heck no!  Homey don't play dat!"  But the idea of universal healthcare is not unlimited universal healthcare.  It is healthcare that is available universally at a certain minimum level.  Those of us with the means, of course, will have options beyond that minimum.  And as far as rationing goes, if rationing is really what is required to make the minimum available to all, then I'm for it.  Rationing is what compassionate people with an interest in the common good do when there isn't enough to go around.  We take a little less for ourselves so that all can at least have some.

I'm no fan of labels like liberal and conservative...not in politics, religion, wherever. Still, they're often kind of hard to avoid...because it does feel feel like theres something about people such that, on the surface at least, do tend to fall in one of two camps, whatever you choose to call them. Denise Gellene describes what that something is in the LA Times article titled "Study finds left-wing brain, right-wing brain":

Exploring the neurobiology of politics, scientists have found that liberals tolerate ambiguity and conflict better than conservatives because of how their brains work. In a simple experiment reported todayin the journal Nature Neuroscience, scientists at New York University and UCLA show that political orientation is related to differences in how the brain processes information. Previous psychological studies have found that conservatives tend to be more structured and persistent in their judgments whereas liberals are more open to new experiences. The latest study found those traits are not confined to political situations but also influence everyday decisions.

It's kind of funny what the actual study was...a fairly simple game involving either typing or not typing a letter on a keyboard when it appeared on a monitor.

Based on the results...liberals could be expected to more readily accept new social, scientific or religious ideas.

Lead author David Amodio, an assistant professor of psychology at New York University, cautioned that the study looked at a narrow range of human behavior and that it would be a mistake to conclude that one political orientation was better. The tendency of conservatives to block distracting information could be a good thing depending on the situation, he said.

Still, he acknowledged that a meeting of the minds between conservatives and liberals looked difficult given the study results. "Does this mean liberals and conservatives are never going to agree?" Amodio asked. "Maybe it suggests one reason why they tend not to get along."

A few days back David Kuo had an interesting blog post with the same title. First he quotes David Brooks' quoting Bush:

Bush is convinced that history is moving in the direction of democracy, or as he said Friday: "It's more of a theological perspective. I do believe there is an Almighty, and I believe a gift of that Almighty to all is freedom. And I will tell you that is a principle that no one can convince me that doesn't exist."

Kuo takes issue with Brooks and Bush. An excerpt:

God does give us freedom. But that gift of freedom is not a freedom based on a form of government - it is the freedom to live as individuals with total, complete, and utter free will. It is the freedom to choose or to reject God, the freedom to choose or to reject God's gifts. THAT is God's gift of freedom. To confuse that gift with a form of government reflects both theological and political naivety.

I agree with that perspective. This sparked some conversation with a friend.

A few weeks back Lisa noticed that one of the articles summarized in the current issue of The Week was written by David French. We knew a David French at Lipscomb, so she googled him and he's the same one. The column highlighted in The Week was in the National Review online discussing a recent survey of college faculty and titled "Bias Against Evangelicals on Campus? You Don't Say!." An excerpt:

For some time, the leftist academic establishment has responded to literally hundreds of stories about the violation of the fundamental rights of religious students with the argument that those stories are mere "anecdotes" and are not evidence of a wider problem. In recent years, however, the systematic studies have come pouring in, including studies showing dramatic political disparities in the classroom, dramatic drop-offs of faith practice during the college years, and now we see concrete evidence of sheer bigotry. Our nation's colleges and universities have a religion problem, and faithful students and professors are paying the price.

Turns out that David is a frequent contributer to the "phi beta cons" blog ("THE RIGHT TAKES ON HIGHER ED") on the National Review (an archive of his posts from the last 30 days is here). He appeared on The O'Reilly Factor back in May with a UCLA student who was embroiled in a controversy with Planned Parenthood (French writes about the controversy here). Last year he quit his job with the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, took a new job with Alliance Defense Fund, and joined the army reserve (he writes about it in the National Review here). David's wife is Nancy French of "A Red State of Mind" fame. David and Nancy are involved in the Romney campaign and the Tennesseans for Mitt and Evangelicals for Mitt web sites. It's been interesting to see what one of our college acquaintances has been up to on the national stage. I was curious to see if he's on Wikipedia, but not yet.