The Savage Solution

Tonight I heard Dr. Michael Savage offer a three prong fix to the current health care dilemma that did not include tearing down the house to remodel a bathroom. While Savage stated that he would offer a three part plan that would save nearly a trillion dollars, only two steps were clearly articulated during the malay produced by his incediary delivery. The two steps that I was able to deciper were to cap medical malpractice suits to $250,000 and to put a police officer in every hospital to arrest/deport illegal immigrants seeking medical attention.

Savage raises two valid points, but offers two highly flawed solutions. Dr. Savage is on the money by pointing out that medical malpractice suits and the ridiculously high insurance needed to cover potential suits is a direct cause for rising medical costs. I often joke that lawyers are the cause for 25% of the cost of everything. While I joke that lawyers account for a percentage the cost's of everything in the kitchen cubbard, I understand that lawyers provide a valuable societal function. Essentially, we have to live with the good and the bad caused by lawyers. Savage's assessment that we should cap medical malpractice suits seems to be a blanket solution to scenerios that vary from case to case substantially. Blanket solutions typcially cause as many promblems as they fix (see standardized testing). How can I say this though when every year some schmuck collects millions of dollars because the Winobago owners manual did not explicitly state that cruise control does not equate to auto pilot (this seems still to be an uncofirmed example, but hyprocraphal at the least)? Medical malpractice suits often pay too much to the victim. How much is a finger worth? How much should chronic headaches for the rest of your life pay? These are subjective and difficult judgements. Capping at 250,000 dollars, however, punishes some poor person or their family who geniuenly received inadaquate care under the guise of a man under the influence of prescription pain killers in a white coat and with an M.D. on his nametage. To give Savage credit, several weeks ago he criticized the lower quality of doctors that medical students consistently produced. He pointed out that a once reputable and difficult degree has become water downed to a degree. I think his is right to some extent on this point.

I have been guilty of complaining about the enormous payouts awarded to the woman caused every to-go cup of coffee require, CAUTION CONTAINS EXTREMELY HOT COFFEE. Or another case I recently read about in Ohio, where a jury awarded a man's family 3.5 million dollars because the doctor did not help him to lose weight, which resulted in a fatal heart attack (http://www.triallawyersinc.com/healthcare/hc05.html#notes). All of these cases cause us to groan and doctor's to groan louder.

Who smiles when settlements are made to quiet the storm, juries award such high payouts, and judges allow such absurdities? Insurance companies. While they take this immediate monetary hit, it is only the loss of a single engagement or battle that actually helps insurance companies win the greater war. When such cases reach the public ear, they cause such an outcry, which we aimlessly direct at the greedy lawyer and victim. The medical malpractice insurance companies, however, get a high publicity case that misleads the public into believing that medical payouts are consistantly too high. Morevoer, insurance companies use this evidence to falsly justify rising insurance premiums, which equate to higher medical costs.

What is the solution? A cap for all malpractice suits. Surely not. The solution rests with us. We need to become more reasonable. Shame on the jury who awards the payment that is clearly ridiculous. Shame on us for allowing insurance companies to become vehicles solely driven by profits and stock prices. Shame on us for not demanding that insurance companies maintain a degree of moral integrity.

Oh no, I just made a remark that did not undiyingly support unregulated capitalism. Surely, someone one will call me a socialist, Marxist, Nazi, who seeks to destroy republicanism and capitalism. I'm not. I love capitalism. I love republicanism more. I do not love greed demons though. I still call for businesses to operate with a degree of integrity. I'm not asking for insurance companies to stop striving for profits. But when does the desire for maximum profit trump the inititial purpose of the inistitution? Aren't these institutions meant to help people?

We need reform. Nevertheless, simplifying the promblem is just sweeping the complications under the rug.

The Tyranny of the Majority

It’s ironic that the Bill of Rights' father, James Madison, believed the document to be near useless. Modern preconceptions have caused many to believe that the greatest threat lies in the minority. The belief that a small cable exists and dominates the majority by occupying the economic resources through the exertion of social control is a somewhat avant-garde notion. This emerging idea is not unsupported, however. History confirms that kings, oligarchies, dictators, and tyrants have repeatedly benefited from the lower classes' labor and vitality. The industrial movement and the rise of the robber baron have only supported these fears. Nevertheless, many activists inaccurately argue that this belief inspired America's founders to solely construct the Constitution and the Bill of Rights to protect the individual from despotic government controlled by a greedy minority. While the founders were certainly concerned about the concentration of power in the few, they were equally concerned that the threat the majority posed to minorities. America's founders wanted to secure individual liberty from concentrated power in the hands of tyrants and from the uneducated masses, who often acted on emotion, self-interest, and instinct. Currently, it seems that the threat has morphed into a hybrid version of the two. A small cable, elected by the majority, is acting in what they claim to be in the interests and desires of the majority. There is a detrimental side effect, however. Elected representatives, who claim the mandate of the majority, have disregarded there constituency and are violating the individual liberties of the minority. They believe there actions honorable, but they have yet to see there transgressions. The populous that elected these representatives will see it soon.

For Madison, the legislature and populous posed, perhaps, the greatest threat to individual liberty. In the wake of Shay's rebellion, Madison and other proponents of the Constitutions were extremely concerned that the emotions of the masses threatened individual liberties as much as a tyrannical king. Commenting on the effectiveness of previous Bills of Rights, Madison stated, "Repeated violations of parchment barriers have been committed by overbearing majorities inevery State. In Virginia, I have seen the bill of rights violated in every instance when opposed to a popular current." Madison foresaw the legislative branch creating laws that benefited the demos or masses at the expense of the minority. While Madison's objections are certainly applicable to America's current situation, he could have never foreseen the calamities of America's current situation. Ironically, Madison and Jefferson's partisan politics may have planted the seed for today's tyranny.

Currently, I live under what I believe the freest government to date. Many historians have noted that Madison also lived under the fairest government in existence during the eighteenth century, the British Constitutional Monarchy. He demanded more, and so do I. The current Democratic administration has developed one policy (Cap and Trade Act) and is working on another that contradicts the very spirit of our country. They have cleverly done this under the guise of a popular mandate. Our current representatives confidently shape American policy because they believe that their constituency has given permission to reshape the economic structure to promote better environmental conditions. Moreover, the Democratic controlled House, greatly urged by President Obama, is calling for sweeping reforms to the healthcare system because their constituency has elected them to do so. Certainly, Americans want policy to be shaped in ways that promote environmental responsibility. Americans truly want healthcare reforms that expand coverage by making insurance more affordable. President Obama recently remarked, “When we do pass this bill, history won't record the demands for endless delay or endless debates in the news cycle. It will record the hard work done by the members of Congress to pass the bill and the fact that the people who sent us here to Washington insisted upon change." The only way history will not note these demands for debate is if this legislation is flawless. There is not a word of legislation that is flawless. The debate may just save us from diving head first into a shallow pool.

In many ways our system is failing in the guise of action. Our representatives are no longer representing our interests, but now they are now selfishly representing their own agendas, instead. The new Cap and Trade legislation is similar to punching blindly at an enemy in the pitch black. Pushes for sweeping healthcare reform are equally unproductive. They are not carefully or responsibly constructed attacks on the enemy. The Democratic controlled House has acted just to act. They are aware that their control is temporary and that their popularity is tenuous. They have hastily passed legislation that will substantially alter the American economy because they believe they have to, not because it is in the interest of their constituency. I urge that we do not act on the whim of emotion, but on the stability of logic and reason. Develop legislation that has a chance to work. Drawing up an environmental plan or healthcare plan on a napkin over a scotch has little chance of solving the problems. The situation is complex. A well developed plan has a great chance of falling short or failing. Poorly developed plans will lead to disaster.

Although this post has singled out the Democratic Congress specifically, it should not be viewed as a partisan attack. This is an attack on the current defects of the American Republic. Our representatives have stopped representing our interest and are advancing their own instead. Our rights and interests are being trampled by a minority that claims a mandate given by the populous. Nevertheless, they are deceiving the demos and simultaneously violating the rights of the minority and the majority by disregarding their pledge to responsibly act in the interest of their electorate. I firmly believe that any logical American, Democrat or Republican, desires carefully crafted legislation that moves to improve societal and economic conditions instead of partisan legislation that seeks to act now and fix it later. The real problems is that politicians are too worried about being politicians and too little concerned about being Americans.

Sword's Manifesto

In Cato's Letter number 15, Thomas Gordon stated that "Without freedom of thought, there can be no such thing as wisdom; and no such thing as publick liberty, without freedom of speech....Freedom of speech is the great bulwark of liberty; they prosper and die together."

The Sword of Liberty is a discussion forum for any and all ideas. In an enlightened spirit, the Sword will embrace the intellectual strategy advanced by America's founders such as, John Adams, Samuel Adams, John Dickinson, James Otis, Peter Timothy, Christopher Gadsen, and the countless other contributors who secured American liberty from a tyrannical British government. John Adams argued that the American Revolution occurred before a single shot was ever fired. He believed that the real Revolution was in the "radical change in the principles, opinions, sentiments, and affections of the people" that took place in the decade preceding Lexington and Concord. This radical change in American sentiment would have never occured had it not been for a vibrant social and political discussion that occurred throughout the colonies. American Revolutionaries used the most assessable, effective, and influential medium available, the newspaper, as a forum to hash out the political and social ideas they believed in accordance with good government. Likewise, they used newspapers as a means to expose, sometimes obvious, but in many instances covert, attacks upon liberty.

The conventional newspaper, however, is a relic of the past. The newsapaper's spirit has reincarnated itself in cyberspace. The Sword of Liberty seeks to carry on the Revolutionary conversation by discussing ideas necessary to securing and protecting our political liberty. If successful, this discussion will expose attacks levied by liberty's natural foe, tyranny.

As William Loyd Garrison vowed, "I will be as harsh as truth and as uncompromising as justice." The Sword of Liberty will not compromise. Our life, liberty, and property depends on it. Awaken, while still free. For remaining in your slumber will inevitably lead to irons around your neck.

Manus haec inimica tyrannis

Einse petit placidam cum libertate quietem

(This hand, enemy to tyrants,

By the sword seeks calm peacefulness with liberty.

AS