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Welcome to Medieval Times
Posted By Stefan Beck On January 28, 2008 @ 5:13 pm In Armavirumque | Comments Disabled

Last year, Julian Gough [1] wrote in Prospect that

western culture since the middle ages has overvalued the tragic and undervalued the comic. We think of tragedy as major, and comedy as minor. . . . The Booker prize leans toward the tragic. In 1984, Martin Amis reinvented Rabelais in his comic masterpiece Money. The best English novel of the 1980s, it didn’t even make the shortlist. Anita Brookner won that year, for Hotel du Lac, written, as the Observer put it, ‘with a beautiful grave formality.’

I couldn’t help seconding Gough’s complaint. There aren’t enough truly funny books. When the jacket copy or the blurbs promise ‘side-splitting fun’ or ‘laugh-out-loud hijinks,’ the best one can hope for is that the book will be slightly funnier than The Death of Ivan Ilych. Understanding that something is, from a technical standp"

(Via .)

Power Line: The professor who moved on

Power Line: The professor who moved on: "
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« MITT ROMNEY, UP CLOSE | MAIN
FEBRUARY 2, 2008
THE PROFESSOR WHO MOVED ON
The man who opened my eyes to the claims of the great tradition is Dartmouth English Professor Emeritus Jeffrey Hart. Professor Hart disabused me of my addled adolescent liberalism and smugness over the four years I was his undergraduate student. He was an incredibly generous teacher. Like so many of his Dartmouth students, I remain profoundly grateful and deeply indebted to him.

Having written an admiring book about National Review in 1966 -- The American Dissent: A Decade of Modern Conservatism -- Professor Hart joined the editorial board of National Review in 1969. Every two weeks for 35 years he traveled to New York for the magazine's editorial meetings in addition to his teaching duties.

In 1980 Professor Hart commenced his long service as godfather to the Dartmouth Review. Through his work with the Review he became mentor and guide to another"

(Via .)

FIRST THINGS: On the Square

FIRST THINGS: On the Square: "
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My Church, My Strip Mall
By Anthony Sacramone
Wednesday, January 30, 2008, 7:53 AM
Read Richard Mouw’s ‘Spiritual Consumerism’s Upside,’ recently made available online at Christianity Today’s website. In it Mouw defends the idea of church shopping (or hopping or skipping or jumping) as not only inevitable given our diverse religious culture but even exciting and positive. It’s more than a concession to how things are, how Christianity—particularly its Protestant and evangelical forms—has played itself out in America. It’s a celebration of it. People don’t ‘inherit’ denominational allegiances to the degree they once did, the argument goes. Most communities offer churches of various denominational ‘brands’ within short distances from each other. The ‘seeker’ church is an increasingly popular phenomenon and attracts both unbelievers and those raised in the faith but who are currently not tied to any one "

(Via .)

The Belmont Club: A bottle of whisky and a loaded revolver

The Belmont Club: A bottle of whisky and a loaded revolver: "A bottle of whisky and a loaded revolver
'Don't treat the old and unhealthy,' begins a Daily Telegraph article describing the contents of a survey conducted by Doctor magazine sparked a fierce row last night, with the British Medical Association and campaign groups describing the recommendations from family and hospital doctors as 'out rageous' and 'disgraceful'.

More interesting were proposals, by medical professionals, to withhold treatment from people who 'refused to take responsibility for their health'.


Gordon Brown promised this month that a new NHS constitution would set out people's 'responsibilities' as well as their rights, a move interpreted as meaning restric tions on patients who bring health problems on themselves. ... The survey found that medical professionals wanted to go much further in denying care to patients who do not look after their bodies.

Ninety-four per cent said that an alcoholic who refused to stop drinking should not be allowed a liver transplant, while one in five said taxpayers should not pay for 'social abortions' and fertility treatment.

Paul Mason, a GP in Portland, Dorset, said there were good clinical reasons for denying surgery to some patients. 'The issue is: how much responsibility do people take for their health?' he said.

'How much responsibility do people take for their health?' is a question, which asked hard enough, forces us to examine the merits of private versus universal health care cover. The Australian Financial Review described the problem inherent in charging an average premium to provide universal health care for everyone.

Imagine a perfect world of complete comprehensive, universal health insurance. No one would face any financial burden when they fell sick. Everyone would be able to utilise care of the highest quality both during treatment and recuperation. And all this without any waiting. This is a world where individuals’ health risks have been completely removed.

While nice to imagine, the simple fact is that the economics of health care does not (yet) permit this world. Governments may aim for perfect universal coverage, but reality falls short. Indeed, neither the government nor the market comes even close. As we will argue here, the way we have set up the health system actively works against improving the level of health insurance. This is because health insurance is governed by the forces of self selection.

Let’s start with the private market. Self selection drives away those with low health risk and makes insurance expensive for those more at risk. To see this, suppose that private insurers set a premium based on the average population health risk. Then those individuals and families who have a lower than average health risk would find the price of health insurance too high. But if some low risk families fail to buy private health insurance then the average risk faced by insurance companies increases and to remain profitable, premiums must rise. This in turn leads more low risk families to drop out. In a purely private market for health insurance either high risk families will pay more for insurance than low risk families or only those who face a high risk of medical care and hospitalisation will find it worthwhile to buy insurance.

The Telegraph story describes a situation where the relatively low risk working population of the the UK is balking at consumption of health resources by high-risk elderly and dysfunctional groups. People who are 'too old', 'too fat' -- that is to say the people on the high side of the risk curve -- ought to take more 'responsibility' for their health because otherwise they'll simply soak up the resources which other persons want. The problem in Britain is probably exacerbated by the fact that 'the NHS is not funded by insurance, instead being funded from general taxation'. Thus the burden falls on the people who pay the most taxes: people of working age.

But since social norms prevent a complete reliance on private health insurance system which would leave the too fat and the too old unable to afford any reasonable cover, some kind of hybrid eventually emerges in which there is provision for members of society who, for reasons of age or dysfunction, can't fend for themselves.

For those unable to pay for what they need or afford the health cover appropriate to their situations, rationing eventually rears its ugly head. And rationing, in health care, means somebody gets to play God. The Telegraph describes what the logical conclusion of rationing is.

Paul Mason, a GP in Portland, Dorset, said there were good clinical reasons for denying surgery to some patients. 'The issue is: how much responsibility do people take for their health?' he said.

'If an alcoholic is going to drink themselves to death then that is really sad, but if he gets the liver transplant that is denied to someone else who could have got the chance of life then that is a tragedy.' He said the case of George Best, who drank himself to death in 2005, three years after a liver transplant, had damaged the argument that drinkers deserved a second chance.

So maybe God, after all, is nothing that even socialism can abolish. Those unwilling to trust that there is meaning to universe can still hope there will be beds available at the NHS or compassion in the heart of a bureaucrat."

(Via .)

Power Line: Obama in a rout

Power Line: Obama in a rout: "

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« DID HE OR DIDN'T HE? | MAIN | FLORIDA GOVERNOR ENDORSES MCCAIN »
JANUARY 26, 2008
OBAMA IN A ROUT
It looks like Barack Obama will rout Hillary Clinton in the South Carolina primary. AP has already called the race based on exit polls. These polls indicated that African-American voters, who made up about half of this electorate, favored Obana by a 4-1 ratio. Those are tough odds.

So Clinton and Obama have split the first four contested races. But things are going to be quite challenging for Obama from now on, since the race will be 'national' the rest of the way. Clinton has a decent lead nationally, and will likely will benefit from machine politics in some of the key states.

UPDATE: Clinton and John Edwards are fighting it out for second place in South Carolina. The oily Edwards, according to Fox News, was trying to gin up turnout by Republican voters from rural areas who didn't vote last week because of the bad weathe"

(Via .)

The UN Remains The UN

The UN Remains The UN: "

Two years ago, Kofi Annan hailed the end of UN's Commission on Human Rights as a step towards removing the malignant politicization of the UN, and especially its anti-Israel bias. The replacement Human Rights council would have safeguards on both membership and voting to ensure against a repeat of the Israel obsessions of the CHR. It would demonstrate the responsiveness of the UN and rebuild confidence in the institution as a legitimate arena for global relations and for enforcement of human rights.

How has that worked out? Not well -- according to a UNICEF spokesperson:

Last week the U.N. Human Rights Council held an emergency session, organized by Arab and Muslim nations, to condemn Israel for its military actions in the Gaza strip. That the council is capable of swift and decisive action is a welcome surprise; that Israel remains the only nation to provoke such action is not. In the 17 months since its inception, the body has passed 13 condemnations, 12 of them against Israel.

The council replaced what was widely viewed as a cancer on the United Nations -- an ineffectual 'Commission on Human Rights' that also had a single-minded focus on Israel. According to former Secretary-General Kofi Annan, 'the selectivity and politicizing of its activities [were] in danger of bringing the entire U.N. system into disrepute.'

The removal of the diseased commission two years ago was heralded by U.N. officials as 'the dawn of a new era.' Its replacement was designed to have stricter standards for membership, and rules to prevent politicized voting. But such safeguards were neutered by the time the new Human Rights Council was approved, and the results are that the council is no better than its predecessor.

The problems begin with the council's composition. Only 25 of its 47 members are classified as 'free democracies,' according to Freedom House's ranking of civil liberties. Nine are classified as 'not free.' Four -- China, Cuba, Russia and Saudi Arabia -- are ranked as the 'worst of the worst.' These nations are responsible for repeated violations of the U.N.'s own Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Yet it is they who dominate the council, leading a powerful bloc of predominantly Arab and African nations that consistently vote as a unit.

The results clearly show that the UN has done nothing to improve oversight on human rights. The fact that the worst violators remain on the panel showed that Turtle Bay had no intent to force real reform. The reshuffle and letterhead change provided only a new gloss on very old corruption and scapegoating, and the product of the HRC shows the lack of effective change.

Ronan Fallow believes that the UN can still somehow provide a real forum for human rights, but not in the present form of the HRC. He recommends that it get dismantled and rebuilt. However, the problem doesn't originate in the HRC but in the UN itself. A body dominated by totalitarian human-rights abusers will not produce any panel that will seriously look at the real perpetrators of oppression and misery. Instead, as they have done twice now, they will generate committees that deflect attention away from themselves.

Who benefits from the HRC? Right now, the biggest beneficiary is the Sudan. Despite numerous attempts to get the HRC to address the genocide in Darfur, the panel has steadfastly refused. Why? Because the African nations on the panel don't want the scrutiny, and China gets its oil from the Sudan and doesn't want to disrupt trade. Fallow notes the repeated efforts by the West to get a condemnation from the HRC for the very real genocide occurring under the nose of the UN, and meanwhile all the HRC wants to review is Israel.

Until the UN significantly reforms itself and its membership, any panel at Turtle Bay will remain suspect. Any panel on human rights that includes China, Cuba, and Saudi Arabia as judges of violations of human rights is by definition a sick joke, and reflects on its parent organization as the same.

"

(Via Captain's Quarters.)