MayerBlog: The Web Log of
|
|
|
Midsummer Musings
Some brief observations on current developments in politics and popular culture:
n Retrogressive Public Policy Over thirty years ago, when I was a high school student taking a drivers’ education course over the summer, I had my first experience driving a car on an expressway in Michigan where the speed limit, at that time, was 70 mph. Also at that time, in the early 1970s, the legal drinking age was 18. I reflected on these two facts recently, after returning from a road trip to upstate New York. In none of the states in which I traveled (Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York) did the speed limit on the expressway exceed 65 mph. (In Pennsylvania, where the state police are notorious for ticketing motorists who exceed the posted speed limits, even by as little as 1 mph, the speed limit was frequently less, 55 mph in urban areas and 45 mph in construction zones, where posted signs also dictated that drivers turn on their headlights. Given its paternalistic road laws, perhaps Pennsylvania ought to adopt as its state slogan not “You’ve Got a Friend” but rather “You’ve Got Big Brother”! Ohio, the state of my principal residence, isn’t much better, for while neighboring states Michigan and, just recently, Indiana, have raised the speed limit on interstate highways to 70, Ohio legislators keep it at 65 mph or below.) And, in all these states (as well as all over the U.S.A.), the legal minimum drinking age is now 21. Both these changes in the law – compelling American drivers to travel at slower speeds, and denying young adults the freedom to imbibe alcoholic beverages – were dictated by the U.S. Congress, ostensibly to “save lives.” (The real reason behind the lower speed limit, however, was the government’s failed energy policy of the 1970s – the phony energy crisis, created by bad public policy that produced distortions in the nation’s natural gas and oil markets – and lawmakers’ belief that 55 mph was the “optimal” speed for fuel economy. That drive for fuel economy – which forced automakers to build vehicles with lighter bodies – cost at least as many lives as the lower speed limits supposedly saved. Finally, after two decades of trying to force Americans to drive at unreasonably low speeds on highways designed to accommodate high-speed travel, Congress finally relented and allowed states to increase the speed limits on interstate highways, most increasing them to 65 mph and with only a few bringing them back to 70 mph. Congress pressured the states to increase the minimum drinking age from 18 to 21 by the same unconstitutional means it had pressured them to lower speed limits: by threatening to deny them federal highway funds – in other words, by attaching strings to porkbarrel spending. One by one, the states relented, pressured also by fanatical lobbying groups like MADD (Mothers Against Drunk Drivers) armed with statistics that supposedly showed that the under-21 age group had a disproportionately large number of intoxicated drivers.) This is not progress; it’s retrogression. Rather than giving more freedom and responsibility to our citizens, we are taking them away. (Denying people the freedom to travel at reasonably high speeds also deprives them of the time they waste traveling at the slower speeds dictated by government. And, of course, denying adults under 21 the freedom legally to consume alcoholic beverages deprives them of the freedom enjoyed by other adults; it ought to be considered an unconstitutional deprivation of equal protection of the laws.) I have no studies to back me up on this, but it seems to me (as a matter of common sense) that trying to force Americans to drive at unreasonably low speeds has not helped to make safer the highways (where it’s not high speeds per se but drivers traveling at differing speeds that’s so dangerous). It also seems that by denying 18-21-year olds the right legally to drink alcohol, we have made it more difficult for young adults to learn how to drink responsibly – and that this is why “binge drinking” and other problems have emerged on college campuses. As with the failed federal “war on drugs,” however, American politicians have failed to learn the lesson of the unintended consequences of paternalistic policies that treat our citizens like children. Freedom and the responsibility that freedom entails, not more draconian laws, are the answer.
n Who Switched Off the Cruise Control? Actor Tom Cruise has been making headlines, and not just because of his starring role in Steven Spielberg’s blockbuster film The War of the Worlds or because he’s been going ga-ga over his fiancé, Katie Holmes. Cruise’s critical comments about psychiatry, in an interview with Matt Lauer on NBC’s Today show, have sparked much controversy. “You don’t know the history of psychiatry. I do,” Cruise told Lauer, as he asserted that there was no such thing as chemical balances that need to be corrected with drugs, and that depression could be treated with exercise and vitamins. Cruise also criticized actress Brooke Shields for taking anti-depressants after suffering depression following the birth of her first child in 2003. Shields, who has written a book describing her experiences, Down Came the Rain: My Journey Through Postpartum Depression, replied in an op-ed piece published in The New York Times. “I’m going to take a wild guess and say that Mr. Cruise has never suffered from postpartum depression,” she wrote, adding that Cruise’s comments denying the efficacy of antidepressant drugs were “a disservice to mothers everywhere.” Cruise, it should be noted, is a devoted follower of Scientology, the “religion” invented by author L. Ron Hubbard that, among other things, apparently, teaches that psychiatry is a destructive pseudo-science. Well, I suppose one could say it takes one to know one: talk about the pot calling the kettle black! Psychiatry certainly has its limitations: there’s a lot we’ve yet to learn about the human brain; and while some medications certainly are helpful in treating certain types of mental illness, many psychiatrists do have the unfortunate tendency to rely too heavily on drugs in their treatment. People with far more credibility than Tom Cruise – like the maverick psychiatrist Dr. Thomas Szasz, who has strongly criticized his own profession in his book The Myth of Mental Illness (1974) – have raised some valid criticisms of psychiatry. Nevertheless, it is a field of science, with its hypotheses subject to testing through time-tested scientific methodology and, ultimately, the standard of reason – while Scientology clearly is nothing more than irrational mysticism, an opiate for the gullible.
n Misguided Fools and the “Dark Continent” Over Independence Day weekend, a series of “Live 8” concerts were held at nine cities around the world, ostensibly to help aid the impoverished people of Africa. “Live 8” is the successor to “Live Aid,” the 1985 rock mega-concert that raised millions of dollars to alleviate famine in Ethiopia. Organizers of “Live 8,” undeterred by the fact that all the millions and millions of dollars that Western governments and poverty-relief agencies have pumped into Africa in the past 20 years have failed to ease poverty on that continent, declared an even more ambitious agenda for this year’s concerts: they seek to generate sufficient political momentum to push the world leaders gathering at this month’s G8 summit in Scotland to double their governments’ aid to Africa and to fully cancel African nations’ debts. The organizers of this effort, the entertainers who participated in it, and all the gullible people – ranging from the average Joes who called in their support, all the way up to the Bush administration and the leaders of other G8 nations who partially bought into the “Live 8” agenda – all are misguided fools, if they think their “feel-good,” knee-jerk altruistic politics somehow will lift Africans out of poverty. The economic ignorance of the entertainers who participated in “Live 8” was epitomized by Dave Matthews (of the band that bears his name), who said, “It is not hard to see that the wealth of the world is spread unevenly. A very small group of people tend to enjoy the majority of the spoils while most struggle to get by.” (“Countdown to Live 8,” USA Today, July 1.) Apparently, it’s hard for Matthews to understand the fundamentals of economics. Wealth is not just “spoils” that magically comes into being; it has to be created, by productive people. The reason “the wealth of the world is spread unevenly” is that it’s created unevenly: there are nations that produce wealth, like the United States, because their people are free to earn it (because, in turn, their economic/political system makes the production possible); on the other hand, there are nations that do not produce wealth, where the bulk of the people do “struggle to get by,” because their economic/political system does not make production possible. Direct aid, or handouts, do not lift people out of poverty; they provide only short-term relief that does nothing to address the long-term causes of poverty. Nor is debt relief the path to prosperity, for either individuals or nations. Allowing people or nations to evade their financial responsibilities may provide temporary relief, but it undermines the moral code of responsibility that is at the root of the only sure, long-term solution to the problem of poverty: capitalism, the economic system that protects individuals’ rights to property ownership and economic freedom. For free markets to work, contractual obligations and property rights must be respected. Africa’s basic problem – and the cause of its wretched poverty – is the fact that most of its nations have governments that are Marxist socialist at best and totalitarian dictatorships at worst. In other words, the cause of Africa’s poverty is that it lacks capitalism, the only economic/political system in the world that gives people the freedom they need to produce wealth – the only sure “cure” for the problem of poverty. (Just as individual poverty in prosperous, capitalist societies is a result of personal irresponsibility, endemic poverty in entire nations – or continents – is a result of institutionalized irresponsibility, which is socialism.) At the end of the 19th century and in the early 20th century, many people in the West referred to Africa as “the Dark Continent,” which was not only a racist reference to the dark-skinned native populations of the continent but also an apt characterization of a continent that was still largely unmapped and unknown. Today, notwithstanding its political incorrectness, “Dark Continent” is still an apt metaphor for an Africa that has not been enlightened by capitalism. Property ownership and free markets are the essential conditions for both personal freedom and economic prosperity. Until its nations embrace capitalism, Africa is doomed to remain the “Dark Continent.”
n Michael Schiavo Vindicated Last month, on June 15, 2005, the Pinellas-Pasco County Medical Examiner’s office in Largo, Florida released the results of the autopsy performed on the body of Terri Schiavo. The findings confirmed what Mrs. Schiavo’s husband, Michael, had maintained – and what the Florida courts, considering the opinions of medical experts, had found – namely, that she had severe brain damage and no chance of recovery. Schiavo’s brain was profoundly damaged: it had atrophied so much that it weighed less than half that of a normal human brain. She also was blind: damage to the occipital lobes of her brain destroyed the centers that would interpret what the eyes see. “The damage was irreversible, and no amount of therapy or treatment would have regenerated the massive loss of neurons,” Medical Examiner Jon Thogmartin said – meaning that Schiavo truly was in a persistent (indeed, a permanent) vegetative state. The findings vindicate Michael Schiavo and his supporters – including me. As I noted in previous entries this spring (see “A Life That One Owns,” “Spring Briefs,” “Inevitabilities,” and “More Spring Briefs”), Michael truly represented Terri’s best interests – he loved and respected his wife enough to let her go, when her life effectively was over – while Terri’s parents, the Schindlers, were not only in denial of reality but also guilty of treating Terri as a means to their narcissistic ends – guilty of trying to use the coercive power of government to impose, by force, on both Terri’s body and the legal system their irrational hope for a miraculous recovery. Thankfully, the courts did their duty in following the rule of law and allowing Terri’s life finally to end with some dignity. As this case so poignantly demonstrated, sometimes love means being able to say good-bye.
n A Tale of Two Cities International sports groupies were shocked earlier this month, when the International Olympics Committee, meeting in Singapore, announced its choice for the host city for the 2012 Summer Games. Five cities were finalists: New York, Madrid, Moscow, London, and Paris. Near the end of the selection process, the first three were eliminated and the competition was between London and Paris. Virtually all commentators had assumed that the nod would go to Paris, which had been the leading contender all along; however, after British prime minister Tony Blair flew in and the Brits presented a slick plan that included redevelopment of London’s entire East End, the IOC ultimately picked London. Considering the last-minute actions on behalf of the Paris bid, it really shouldn’t have been such a surprise: French president Jacques Chirac also flew to Singapore and made his personal appeal, “You can trust the French.”
n Progressive Spain At the end of June, Spain’s Congress of Deputies approved legislation allowing same-sex couples to legally marry. Spain – a country whose population is 80% Roman Catholic – notwithstanding the Church’s opposition, thus joins two other European nations, the Netherlands and Belgium, in recognizing same-sex marriages. Canada, where some provinces already have legalized same-sex marriages, is set to do so nationwide as soon as its upper house of Parliament approves. Meanwhile, in the United States only Massachusetts thus far has recognized same-sex marriage although Vermont, and perhaps a few other states, including California, do (or soon will) recognize civil unions between same-sex couples, providing them legally almost the same rights as heterosexual married couples. It is an outrage that the United States – a nation founded explicitly on the principles of individualism – is lagging behind Europe (even Spain, the homeland of the Inquisition) in modernizing the institution of marriage and thus protecting the fundamental rights of all individuals, homosexuals and heterosexuals alike.
| Link to this Entry | Posted Monday, July 18, 2005 | Copyright David N. Mayer |
|