Still vacationing, but with the family at the beach, reading, sun bathing, I have a few minutes to blog on some recent ruminations. A comment was left on my last post which deserves attention. It also ties in neatly with some current thoughts I have about Media bias, as exemplified by the New York Times.
Ian had two basic criticisms of my San Francisco post.
I am skeptical of claims that giving public money to the homeless has a net effect of decreasing their own and others' quality of life. There must be some people who spend that money on drugs, but to suggest that the homeless flock to cities with such programs, and then (on average) dig themselves deeper into their own socio-economic situation because of their seeming comfortability - this all strikes me as presumptuously fitting facts to a preconceived "conservative" theory. Discovering the causes and nature of homelessness in cities is not the subject of guesswork, idle rambling, or armchair sociology; it is a matter of empirical science. I might not be a scientist, but I am prepared to wait for a reasoned empirical evaluation of America's homeless before I pass judgment on them. Shame on the affluent who would ignore the facts only to hold tighter to their own hateful worldviews.
This suggests two responses. First of all, studies have been done about the homeless and they show that overwhelmingly the homeless are composed of adults with Severe Psychiatric Disorders, Substance abuse, or both. The idea that most homeless people are families down on their luck has been shown to be mythical in every survey done. That being said, I do not know of any social research suggesting that "giving public money tot he homeless has a net effect of decreasing their own and others' quality of life", however I can cite a fair amount of anecdotal evidence based on my own experiences in New York City that suggest people do respond to financial incentives. New York City has an extremely generous Medicaid system (twice as much money spent per person as the second highest state, California) as well as a highly developed network of agencies and treatment facilities, well funded, for the specific treatment of HIV infections. In my year working on the lower East side (an area of New York famous fro tolerating "diverse" lifestyles and substance use, there have been a significant number of patients, newly diagnosed with HIV and other medical diagnoses, who have told me directly, that they relocated to New York because the medical care was more generous. I do not have statistics to back me up but I am referring to one clinic, serving part of one community in New York.
I had ended my post by saying:
If all of reality is a construct and any construct supported by the power structure is a priori oppressive, eventually true individual freedom will be achieved when we are all free to be homeless and substance addicted.
Ian objected to such a characterization:
Likewise for the "a priori" oppressiveness of all "construct[s]" supported by "the power structure" (Shrinkwrapped). How could anyone know anything like this about a power structure a priori? Instead of placing confused philosophical language in the mouth of a straw man, think about what you're saying. Nobody says this kind of shit, and if somebody did they wouldn't represent the views of anyong except themselves - let alone half of the people in the U.S. First, show me that John Kerry or even Eugene Debs thinks that "reality is a construct" and then maybe I'll take you seriously. Not every manifesto making characteristically "right" claims has to end with a dig at the left. You seem to be an educated guy; be responsible about how you write and how you represent others' views.
Again, two responses worth making. I would suggest that my comment about the power structure being a priori oppressive is an accurate reflection of the mind set of most committed leftists. They start from the point of view that every power structure not controlled by themselves is oppressive. My comment was somewhat "tongue in cheek" but I do think accurate. As for the idea of "reality is a construct", this is in fact the philosophical base line for the left and has been for many years. I would suggest reading my series on Political Correctness to see how these ideas have been used and abused by the left. It is a complicated chain and I will not repeat it here, but suffice to say that for the committed leftist, the Utopian world he seeks requires neglecting much of what we know of human nature and reality. And, as a matter of fact, much of Kerry's campaign depended on people believing that reality was whatever he said it was at the moment. He voted for the war, then against the war, then for the war, and expected no one would notice him contradicting himself; he didn't even have the decency to admit he had changed his mind.
[As an aside, while I appreciate critical comments and would welcome more of them, I do not appreciate expletives. I don't particularly care if you use such language in your everyday discourse, but such words cheapen your arguments and suggests you have little faith in your own views. Describing someone's words as sh*t is not a good way to get them to pay attention to the contents of your comments.]
This leads to my final thoughts. Ian didn't like that I made generalizations about the left, and in this he has a good point. Defining the left these days is a difficult problem. They do not seem to hold consistently to any set of ideas. Sometimes bringing democracy to the world's oppressed seems to them to be a good idea (Kosovo), and sometimes it seems to them to be a terrible idea (Iraq). How can we understand the difference. One easy way to tell is that if Bush wants it or does it, the left is against it. The problem with that is that Bush will no longer be President in 3 years. Perhaps we could substitute "Republicans" for Bush, but that is hardly fool proof. I do think the left has some core ideas, however. They believe strongly in identity politics, that the United States should never exercise military power unless under direct attack, the wealthy should pay higher taxes in all circumstances (except when a Democrat is President or the money is inherited and earned through investments; compare Kerry's tax rate with mine), and that abortion should be freely available without limits to any woman who wants it. However, there doesn't seem to be any particular philosophical basis to these disparate ideas, which suggests the easiest way to tell what the left side of the political divide believes: simply read The New York Times, determine when and where they are slanting the news as well as what news they neglect to report, and you will discover what the left believes.
For some recent examples:
Unspinning the NY Times' military mendacity, by Jack Kelly. Read how the New York Times completely distorted comments about the Pentagon expediting the upgrading of personal body armor for our troops in Iraq into a story of the military being short of body armor; it is incredible and you should read it for yourself.
Condoleezza Rice and The New York Times: In which the Times fabricates a quote in order to push their agenda for the poor victimized Palestinians. Again, it would be astounding if it wasn't so commonplace.
If you really want to know what is going on in the world of reality rather than wishful fantasy, you need to start going to the source. On the most important issue of the day, the War in Iraq, if you only read the New York Times or its derivatives, you will have no idea what is going on. If you have not been reading Michael Yon's brilliant reporting, you should immediately go to his site and book mark it.
As too often happens, my brief thoughts were not so brief. I will return to regular blogging on Monday and have an interesting item that is illustrative of the PC culture that holds sway at the Times and may help to put their "reporting" into clearer perspective.
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