Stupidity and its effects on international politics

[fpb]

A sentence from the political struggle in America has gone viral in Britain, as an example of the ignorance, stupidity and vicious prejudice that drives a certain part of American public opinion. This is the sentence: People such as scientist Stephen Hawking wouldn't have a chance in the U.K., where the National Health Service would say the life of this brilliant man, because of his physical handicaps, is essentially worthless. This piece of folly does not come from some twelve-reader blog out in freakland, but from the Investors' Business Daily, favoured and eagerly quoted intellectual leader of the conservative movement.

The Professor himself has just responded in no uncertain terms: "I wouldn't be here today if it were not for the NHS. I have received a large amount of high-quality treatment without which I would not have survived." For that matter, every Briton, indeed every European, who is disabled or has a disabled relative - which include yours truly - knows what to think of it. Indeed, the NHS as a whole is, without exception, the most respected and downright loved body in British society, with a level of public credibility and support that no other organization or group even dreams of. To use it as a kind of bogeyman is an outrage against everything the British hold dear, and I am not, repeat not, exaggerating.

Not that I harbour any hope that anyone over there might even pay attention. The self-absorption, the self-regard, the total unwillingness to learn from abroad, that are among the most infuriating characteristics of the American conservative mind, have reached the point of total separation from reality in this particular matter. Hysteria about "socialized medicine" has become so widespread among American conservatives that any response from Europe would only be met with a barrage of insults. (All right, American conservatives: if I am wrong - prove it!! But I forecast that this post will receive nothing from my conservative friends, except perhaps the odd attack on my motivations or morals.)

The IBD itself has tried to rewrite its outrageous original argument, without realizing that it is simply a minor part of a misrepresentation of the British experience so huge and deeply stupid as to discourage anything except contempt from anyone who actually knows the facts. The only thing they have seen fit to correct is the evidence that they were unaware of Professor Hawking's nationality, but they have not even begun to wrap their minds around the obvious fact that this gratuitous and grotesque howler is symptomatic of the fallacy in their whole argument - that they are talking about something that simply does not exist and that has no relation to reality.

Comments

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Don't the systems in the UK and Canada pay for abortion? Why should we be different?

Because funding abortion is objectively wrong, and (despite the fact that some states do elect to pay for abortions that the federal government won't cover under the hyde amendment) broad state funding for abortions is not yet the status quo here?

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

"objectively wrong", haha. Not to me. But even if one thinks so, is it so wrong as to cancel out the wrong of not having universal health care?

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

You speak as though universal health care which covered abortions and no universal health care at all were the only two conceivable options.

[mindstalk.livejournal.com]

They're not, but I took fpb's text to mean the abortion inclusion was a fatal blow to UHC. If I misread him, I apologize.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

It is as far as I am concerned - not so much the original fact, but the evident intention to ram it through against every opposition. And incidentally, it will not do much for Catholic support for Obama and the Democrats.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

As the Democrats are managing this particular piece of legislation, that seems to be the case at present. They are making things extremely difficult for - for instance - the US Catholic bishops, who support universal health care but cannot accept the need for abortion.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Stupid jokes get deleted.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

If universal health care is used as a Trojan horse to force even more direct abortion with less or no safeguards for opposition to it, as the Democrats are certainly using it, then it makes it objectively impossible even for someone like me, who believes in the principle, to support it as it is presented. Remember that, even disregarding abortion, Obama's main intellectual sin on this one has been to present a bill so complicated and enormous, on a schedule so tight, that discussion and alteration are made more or less impossible.

[fpb.livejournal.com]

Funding for abortion already exists in the USA - every state and federal dollar that goes or went to Planned Parenthood, the late George Tiller and their greedy likes objectively pays for killing babies, because money is fungible, and even if public money supposedly only pays for sexual health clinics and the likes, nonetheless it frees other money for killing babies.

[mentalguy.livejournal.com]

Admittedly so. And there is also the simple matter that, in spite of the hyde amendment, medicare already funds (via the states) many more abortions than most people imagine. The main thing is that I really don't want to see it further institutionalized.