Reflections of a stormy petrel

A real and serious issue with exporting any European or Japanese model of universal health coverage to the USA is the size and diversity of the nation. The attempt to micro-manage the British Health Service - by now reduced, thanks to the growth of local parliaments, to England alone - from Westminster is notoriously one of the major problems with this body, although in my view neither the biggest nor the worst. To expand it over a country eight times as populous as England and sixty times as large would be to multiply problems to an intolerable extent, and to deliver to the Federal Government an amount of power which it is neither well placed nor legally supposed to handle. Any attempt at universal health cover must be based on the States, and, for choice, have its decision-making as far down the level of organization as is compatible with its goals. The issues with this are obvious: first, the inevitable rise of a "postcode lottery" of the kind that is being fought against in Britain as we speak, and much more deeply rooted in the vast differences between states; and second, the danger that some states might take their sets of ideological blinkers to health care provision. I am thinking both of those states that produce leaderships and governors that demand "equal time" for creationism in class, and of infernos of PC and denial such as the three West Coast states. For this reason, establishing an American Health Service would not only be a complicated business, but one that would demand a great deal of legally enforceable protections against mismanagement, and, if necessary, a certain amount of resource transfers from richer to poorer areas.

(Incidentally, I would like to point out that John McCain dodged one Hell of a bullet when he chose his running mate. Among those who favoured a young Christian conservative, the favourite was not Sarah Palin - although she was much better known than the media would have us believe - but Louisiana Governor Bobby Jindal, a man barely in his thirties and widely regarded as a rising star. The problem is however that, while both Jindal and Palin have expressed vague personal Creationist views, Palin has explicitly stated that she would not force her views on the Alaskan education authorities, whereas Jindal has been caught red-handed trying to slip Creationism into the Louisiana school curriculum. And there is far less excuse for him than for her, since he is a self-declared Catholic, and the Catholic Church explicitly rejects Creationism. Jindal is as unacceptable as a candidate to the Presidency as Huckabee - whom I condemned months ago for the same reason - and just as unelectable; and worse, in that as a Catholic he should know better.)

One of the things that really annoy me as a Catholic is when people like... well, let us just say, some who were once friends of mine... assimilate the Catholic faith to the least acceptable features of Protestant Fundamentalism, or, even worse, Osama Bin Laden's religious views. There is no way to convince them of the opposite - any more than you could convince Osama - because, without realizing it, these people are just as closed to argument. Their vision of the Catholic Church is fixed, and they are not going to have it spoiled by the facts, let alone by argument - something that their attitude excludes in any case. And if you believe I am exaggerating, I would refer you to my extraordinary exchange with a certain would-be Buddhist, which ended with my being banned from her LJ purely because she did not want to be told that there were reasonable arguments against her PC views. I was to be a "nutjob" if she had to shriek herself hoarse in my face and poke all her fingers in her ears not to listen to my arguments. Clearly, such people have much more in common with the very worst Fundamentalists than they imagine - even apart from the fact that the Fundamentalist bogeys of their nightmares hate the Catholic Church as much as they do.

The article I place behind the cut - not because there is anything to be hidden about, quite the contrary; only because it is very long indeed - has a lot to say about the relationship between faith and reason. It is written by a real live scientist who also knows a lot of theology. It is timely, in that it deals with a dangerous movement in some Catholic areas which I too have seen, and seen, what is worse, not only in America but even in Italy. (Luckily the Bench of Bishops stepped on it pretty sharp.) What I mean is the increasing desire to imitate Fundamentalists in their rejection of science and what amounts to a revolt against reason, which is of all things the least Catholic. Wiccans, atheists and pseudo-Buddhists may live on faith alone and disregard argument and evidence, but if Catholics do not believe in reason, they deny their religion and make it useless.

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