Short exchange with an atheist and a buddhist on FB

I have better morals than half the religious people out there, thank you very much.

Atheist voted "No" to the question "Do you believe atheists are immoral?" along with 38,969 other people.

Keith Rickert Jr.: Atheists can be moral, they just don't have a raison d'être for being so.

Buddhist: Because it's right is reason enough to do the right thing. you don't need some promise of reward or punishment to do the right thing.

Keith Rickert Jr.: Under atheist metaphysics, how is anything *right*? Morality assumes some kind of working definition of good and bad. Setting aside any objective definition of good or evil, all moral experiences attribute some kind of value to our choices. For whatever reason -- because it is more kind, non-violent, more tolerant, etc. -- one choice is seen to be better than another. But under atheistic metaphysics, how can anything be intrinsically better or worse than another? In a purely material and therefore godless universe, there can be no final design, direction, or purpose. No-one intended matter or the laws of physics to be the way they are; therefore, the universe and everything in it is just an affair of blind, purposeless chance from beginning to end. How can it be anything more than that? Many people who adamantly doubt the existence of any God or gods will freely project onto the universe some sort of Pantheistic Personality like "Mother Nature" in order to imagine some vague sort of intent or design or purpose or meaning being the goings-on in the universe. But if we're doubting God or gods, what basis is there for believing in such a personality or intent governing or even influencing nature? If the universe is purely material, godless (and mother-less) how can its goings-on--and indeed, it's very existence--consist of anything more than random chance, blind matter, and mindless forces (which are themselves the product of random chance)? In such a universe, what basis is there for believing that anything is better than anything else or that there is any inherent value in anything at all? When it comes to morality, all things, better or worse, come from the same source -- the universe and its laws. Atoms, in blind obedience to the laws of physics, produce in me some kind of personal standard of, let's say tolerance and non-violence. Yet, the very same kind of mechanistic process produces in me the urge to act contrary to that standard. Moreover that very same kind mechanistic process produces the beliefs and standards of Nazis, despotic dictators, serial killers, child molesters, wife-beaters, etc. On what basis do we judge one mechanistic process to be better -- on principle -- than another? What standard is there above the mechanistic processes by which we can judge one to be good and the other bad?

"If there isn’t any God, there isn’t any problem of evil. And if there is no God, then there is a problem of good! . . . . As Nietzsche pointed out, atheists who follow through on all the implications of their beliefs are nearly nonexistent. Most atheists do create an as if world. They act as if reason is connected to reality, at least for pragmatic purposes. They act as if, in a rough sort of way, things make sense. They act as if progress is the law of history. They act as if reason, justice, truth, compassion, solidarity, and love were more than mere breath expelled by lying lips. But they do not say how and why they believe that reason, justice compassion, and the rest are in some way better than irrationality, oppression, the big lie, ruthlessness, and cynicism. What metaphysical commitments justify these beliefs?"
—Michael Novak to daughter, Jana Novak in Tell Me Why: A Father Answers His Daughter’s Questions About God (New York: Pocket Books, 1998), 89, 97-98.

Buddhist: what you're talking about, Keith, is worshipping science instead of God. There can be fundamental principles of morality without believing in God. There is right and wrong either through enlightened self interest or through a morality that we have evolved over time that is part of who we are. To suggest that the ONLY reason to be a good person is because God wants you to isn't really morality at all. That's doing the right thing just because you expect a reward. I can list a number of reasons why being religious does not lead to living an ethical life if you want, but I think just mentioning 9/11 should be sufficient.

Keith Rickert Jr.: Your telling me what I'm talking about, Buddhist, yet there is nothing in my post that can be construed as the worship of science. And NEVER did I say that the only reason to be good is because God wants us to. What I did say, however, is that our feelings, intuitions, and impulses to moral goodness can only be ABOUT something real if they are rooted as their source in a God who is Goodness Itself. In the atheistic universe these feelings, intuitions, and impulses are not ABOUT anything beyond themselves. In fact, they are illusory because they aren't about moral goodness itself, but about survival value. "Goodness" is nature's way of dressing up survival value. Instead of God, there is Nature; who according to her one, supreme value of "survival value", tricks us into attributing "goodness" and "evil" to certain actions merely to keep the show going. As Yeats said to Chesterton, "You would not get out of your chair and walk across the room, if Nature had not her bag of illusions." But those things aren't REALLY good or bad, according to atheistic metaphysics. Nature just wants us to think and act like they are. On the other hand, if you want to believe in good for goodness sake (i.e. real morality), then God is logically necessary. THAT is what I'm saying Buddhist...nothing about punishment or reward or the worship of science. And I can list a number of reasons why being atheistic does not lead to living an ethical life if you want. I think just mentioning Stalin should be sufficient.

Buddhist: Can't there be a natural law of morality in the universe without the existence of a personal deity? Why does if HAVE to be rooted in a God in order to exist?

Keith Rickert Jr.: Where would values come from in a godless universe driven from beginning to end by blind, random chance?

Buddhist: You're making an assumption that the universe can't manifest a purpose on it's own. That it needs some higher being to make it anything other than random. (did I higher being than god give god a purpose to?) But, I can put that aside for the moment and just say that values come from enlightened self interest. If I put negativity into the world, I am making the world a slightly worse place for everyone, including myself. Therefore, I have every reason that I need to behave in as positive a way as I can. Or, to put it a more complicated way, I believe in Oneness. that is, all things in the Universe are parts of a whole, not nearly as separated as we perceive. From that perspective, I have every reason to be kind to others, since harming others would be no different than harming myself. For that reason, I have every reason to believe in practicing a moral life, without having said practice rooted in faith in a divine figure.

Keith Rickert Jr.:

If there is something higher than God, then God is not God. Enlightened self-interest is not being good for goodness sake: Empathy is not really empathy, but, ultimately self-interest; love is not really love, but, ultimately, self-interest; kindness is not really kindness, but, ultimately, self-interest; self-sacrifice is not really self-sacrifice, but, ultimately, self-interest. I believe in real love, kindness, empathy, gratitude, self-sacrifice; therefore I am not a naturalist or an atheist.

Buddhist: And you feel like you absolutely could not believe in real love or kindness without first believing in God? If doing what God says is right is the motivation, isn't that self interest too?

Atheist: hahahaha come on guys, I know it's a touchy topic, but a Buddhist and Catholic aren't going to be able to agree.

Keith Rickert Jr.: "and you feel like you absolutely could not believe in real love or kindness without first believing in God?" NOPE. Not it at all. I FIRST believe in real love and kindness and then search for the metaphysics that would logically make them possible. I STILL have never said ANYTHING about doing "what God says". Ashleigh: Maybe, but healthy, respectful debate is good for everyone.

Buddhist: and you feel like there is nothing that could logically make them possible other than a personal deity?

Keith Rickert Jr: I don't feel that way, I have reasoned my way to that position. Tell me, in a Godless universe, what would make possible good for goodness sake, as opposed to good for some other sake?

Atheist: Cavemen didn't know God, but when their babies came out they loved them! If they didn't the species wouldn't have made it. Debate is fine, this one is just never going to end.

Keith Rickert JrAnd eventually those cavemen became men and asked, "If love is real, in what is it rooted?" Are you going back to the fallacy that you have to know God to be moral? I can be moral w/o recognizing the metaphysical roots of morality, just like I can eat food w/o knowing where it comes from or how it gives my body nourishment. Actually, 99 percent of all who have ever lived have believed in some form of a deity...so it is probable that cavemen believed in God. As far as the debate ending, it doesn't have to. How long has mankind had this debate? I'm not arrogant enough to think I'm going to have the last word. But I believe that if beliefs aren't worth defending, they're not worth having. Plus, I always learn something each time I debate.

Buddhist: we just have a fundamental difference of opinion. You think that real goodness requires a deity to exist and I think that real goodness can exist on it's own without a need for an explanation. It just is.

Movies for Halloween

My criteria:

• Classic or semi-classic
• Scary
• Involving the supernatural (in the spirit of Halloween)
• English or silent films. (Foreign language -- esp. Italian -- horror is a whole other undertaking, but I'm open to suggestions.)
  
• Available on DVD
  

This is a list of films I want to see, so I'd love feedback about what's good, what's not, what's appropriate for kids, what's inappropriate for kids (besides the obvious), and what's missing.

For Christians perplexed as to the merits of horror movies, I highly recommend this essay by Rod Bennett, as well as the work of Lint Hatcher (here and here).

---

• Dracula
• Nosferatu (1922) - The original and probably best Dracula film (and the only one on the Vatican Best Films List).
• Dracula (1931) - The first in Universal's series starring Bela Lugosi. Considered the best, but all the sequels are duds (in contrast to Hammer Film Productions' sequels).
  
• Horror of Dracula (1958) - The first Dracula installment by Hammer Film Productions (starring Christopher Lee) and the first one in color.
• The Brides of Dracula (1960) - Dracula II by Hammer Film Productions
• Dracula: Prince of Darkness (1965) - Dracula III by Hammer Film Productions
• Dracula Has Risen From the Grave (1968)...and is about to have his ass handed to him by Catholic priest (Dracula IV by Hammer Film Productions. The series fizzles out after this one).
• Frankenstein
  
• Frankenstein (1931) - The first in Universal's series (features Boris Karloff)
• The Bride of Frankenstein (1935) - Frankenstein II by Universal
  
• Son of Frankenstein (1939) - Frankenstein III by Universal
• The Ghost of Frankenstein (1942) - Frankenstein IV by Universal. (Skip the remaining sequels.)
• The Curse of Frankenstein (1957) - The first in Hammer Film Productions' series.
• The Revenge of Frankenstein (1958) - Frankenstein II by Hammer Film Productions. (Skip the remaining sequels.)
  

• The Mummy
  
• The Mummy (1932) - The first in Universal's series.
• The Mummy's Hand (1940) - The Mummy II by Universal (after which the series fizzles out).
  
• The Mummy (1959) - The first in Hammer Film Productions' series (and the only good one.)
  

• The Old Dark House (1932) - Stuck on a roadtrip, a group people seek help at a creepy old mansion nearby...and Boris Karloff answers the door.
• The Black Cat (1934) - Universal's first pairing of Boris Karloff and Bela Lugosi as a doctor and a satanist who do creepy things in an art-deco mansion.
• The Wolf Man
• Werewolf of London (1935) - Universal's first foray into the story.
• The Wolf Man (1941) - Not a sequel, but a remake by Universal. Considered the best Wolf Man movie.
• The Hound of Baskervilles
• The Hound of the Baskervilles (1939) - The most celebrated adaptation of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle's supernatural mystery (by 20th Century Fox).
• The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959) - Superb adaptation by Hammer Film Productions

• The Uninvited (1944) - An old-fashioned ghost story.
  
• Dead of Night (1945) - A hugely influential collaboration by four British directors about a really bad case of déjà vu.
  
• Isle of the Dead (1945) - A Val Lewton production about some people who, avoiding the plague, stay on a remote island...with Boris Karloff.
• Night of the Demon (1957) - Original, uncut British version about a skeptical scientist's encounter with the supernatural.
  
• The Innocents (1961) - A newly employed governess believes the house is haunted.
  
• The Haunting (1963) - A group of people spend the night in a haunted house.
  
• The Devil Rides Out (1967) - A Hammer Films Production starring Christopher Lee as a good guy fighting a coven of satanists.
  
• Rosemary's Baby (1968) - A pregnant newlywed has a run-in with some satanists. (Apparently, Sinatra divorced Farrow over this film.)
  
• The Exorcist (1973) - The scariest movie of all time?
  
• The Evil Dead (1981) - Rated NC-17 for substantial graphic horror violence and gore.

Did I miss any?

ZENIT - The Mind That Is Catholic

I love Schall. This interview could be the theme of not only this blog, but my life. It touches on why, for me, Protestantism lead to unbelief; as well as why an encounter with Plato in a college textbook would eventually lead me to Catholicism.

ZENIT - The Mind That Is Catholic -- Fr. James Schall

Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno (15/05/1931)

Pius XI, Quadragesimo Anno (15/05/1931): "If Socialism, like all errors, contains some truth (which, moreover, the Supreme Pontiffs have never denied), it is based nevertheless on a theory of human society peculiar to itself and irreconcilable with true Christianity. Religious socialism, Christian socialism, are contradictory terms; no one can be at the same time a good Catholic and a true socialist."

Op-Ed Roundup: The Health Care Speech

RealClearPolitics - No Bickering or Thinking. Just Do It. -By David Harsanyi

• Those who claim that President Barack Obama's speech on health care this week wasn't a glorious success are fooling themselves. A Washington takeover of health care never sounded so enticing or fun.
  

  Just ignore the specifics, because when the president says he welcomes substantive new ideas, he means that if you have the nerve to offer any ideas -- as Whole Foods' CEO, John Mackey, did in The Wall Street Journal last month -- his allies will attempt to destroy your business and reputation.

  

  And when the president says he welcomes bipartisanship, what he means is that he hasn't met with a single Republican on the issue since April -- despite numerous requests and two separate House bills chock-full of ideas.

• As we all know, if any organization has demonstrated an uncanny ability to control costs, drive innovation and foster competition, it's been government.

  The best part? Like that exotic mortgage taxpayers are paying for you, all this wonderment can be yours, according to the president, for absolutely nothing! Better yet, it would not add a single dime to the deficit in the next 10 years. Ignore the Congressional Budget Office's $900 billion estimate (and The Lewin Group's $1 trillion estimate).

  Nope, we can pay for this by extracting $1 trillion in savings from insurance companies and Medicare (start cutting down on gratuitous use of paper clips, pronto). And if you even allude to the prospect of cuts (meaning government rationing for seniors), you are trafficking in a ghastly fabrication that might hasten your being "called out" by the president. No one wants that.

  You may wonder how President Obama logically can sell a public option while claiming that reform would be paid for by waste found in another "public" option. You also may be wondering how mandates, price controls, regulations and added costs would save us any money and preserve level of care. Don't. Just bask in the radiance of barren rhetoric.

  Because when the president tells us that this is "the season for action" and that we no longer can waste time debating, he means that legislation won't be initiated until 2013, that this is all about politics and his very own entrenched ideology -- not yours.

Commentary » Blog Archive » LIVE BLOG: The Real Takeover - John Podhoretz

• “To my Republican friends: Rather than making wild claims about a government takeover of health care, we should work together to address any legitimate claims you may have.” That comes after 20 minutes of claims about new laws imposing new mandates. What exactly does he think a government takeover would look like? The ideal government takeover is one in which government controls insurance companies without actually running them outright.

RealClearPolitics - Obama, Health Care and the Limits of Charm - Mike Gerson

• This failure of imagination was on full display during Barack Obama's address to Congress. In a moment that demanded new policy to cut an ideological knot, or at least new arguments to restart the public debate, Obama saw fit to provide neither. His health speech turned out to be an environmental speech, devoted mainly to recycling. On every important element of his health proposal, he chose to double down and attack the motives of opponents. (Obama was the other public official who talked of a "lie" that evening.) Concerns about controlling health costs, the indirect promotion of abortion and the effect of a new entitlement on future deficits were dismissed but not answered. On health care, Obama takes his progressivism pure and simplistic.

Commentary » Blog Archive » LIVE BLOG: How Was It? - John Podhoretz

• Fine, the president wasn’t trying to talk to me; indeed, he was trying to find ways to ensure that the arguments of people like me lose their purchase.

Commentary » Blog Archive » LIVE BLOG: Liberal Red Meat - John Podhoretz

• It’s interesting. He does very little to reach out to the middle and more to satisfy his own supporters. This means either a) he’s worried about his base; b) he mistakes the Left for the Center; c) this is what he truly believes. Or all three.

Commentary » Blog Archive » LIVE BLOG: Government Is Going to Tell You What to Do - Jennifer Rubin

• Obama delivers the directive:

  That’s why under my plan, individuals will be required to carry basic health insurance — just as most states require you to carry auto insurance. Likewise, businesses will be required to either offer their workers health care, or chip in to help cover the cost of their workers. There will be a hardship waiver for those individuals who still cannot afford coverage, and 95% of all small businesses, because of their size and narrow profit margin, would be exempt from these requirements. But we cannot have large businesses and individuals who can afford coverage game the system by avoiding responsibility to themselves or their employees. Improving our health care system only works if everybody does their part.

  And we’ll tell you what type of plan is good enough. And if you don’t do what we say, we’ll fine you. This is the distillation of pure liberal statism. We know best. You are incapable of making any decision other than selecting from one of several preapproved plans.

Commentary » Blog Archive » The Bait and Switch - Jennifer Rubin

• And because he has no clue about solving existing problems, he’s going to build the “future.” Not only will he build it, but it will be so perfect as to never require redesign. He goes through the arguments for health-care reform once again — because we obviously didn’t understand it when he explained it dozens of times before.

FACT CHECK: Obama uses iffy math on deficit pledge - AP

• OBAMA: "Nothing in this plan will require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor you have."

  THE FACTS: That's correct, as far as it goes. But neither can the plan guarantee that people can keep their current coverage. Employers sponsor coverage for most families, and they'd be free to change their health plans in ways that workers may not like, or drop insurance altogether. The Congressional Budget Office analyzed the health care bill written by House Democrats and said that by 2016 some 3 million people who now have employer-based care would lose it because their employers would decide to stop offering it.

  In the past Obama repeatedly said, "If you like your health care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period." Now he's stopping short of that unconditional guarantee by saying nothing in the plan "requires" any change.

• OBAMA: "There are now more than 30 million American citizens who cannot get coverage."
  

  THE FACTS: Obama time and again has referred to the number of uninsured as 46 million, a figure based on year-old Census data. The new number is based on an analysis by the Kaiser Commission on Medicaid and the Uninsured, which concluded that about two-thirds of Americans without insurance are poor or near poor. "These individuals are less likely to be offered employer-sponsored coverage or to be able to afford to purchase their own coverage," the report said. By using the new figure, Obama avoids criticism that he is including individuals, particularly healthy young people, who choose not to obtain health insurance.
  

Commentary » Blog Archive » He Is the Change He Was Waiting For - Jennifer Rubin

• Obama campaigned with the affectation that it was all about us, all about the little people getting together to change the government and live up to America’s best ideals. Now that he’s the government (an ever bigger share of the federal government, with czar-mania breaking out), the little people are a mob in his eyes, an impediment to what he wants.

  And what does he want? The most grandiose and ambitious scheme attainable for regulating, taxing, and controlling health care. As Bill Kristol explains, Obama has invented or reinvented a health-care “crisis” so enormous as to justify his ambitions

• But it is hard to convince the vast majority of Americans who have health-care insurance (and like it) that we should turn over their most significant health-care decisions to the government, which can’t manage mundane tasks like spending stimulus money in a useful fashion or getting car dealers paid in a timely manner for the clunker cars.
• The scope of his ambition and the disdain with which he regards his opponents are startling. Never once in his speech did he concede the merits of his opponents’ concerns. It is all silliness, lies, misunderstanding, and partisanship—by the other guys.
• Can Obama convince everyone they are wrong? In politics, never say never. But the voters thought it was about them, not his big-government ambitions. And now they find out it wasn’t ever about them.

The American Spectator : Time to Get Out the Iron - Philip Klein

• In a much-hyped speech aimed at rejuvenating his health care
  push, Obama delivered a message that was strikingly similar to
  the one that has failed to resonate with the American people thus
  far. The reason is that while Obama can paper over political and
  policy realities by speaking in broad strokes, it’s always the
  specifics that have caused him problems.

• Back in May, President Obama went before the American Medical
  Association and declared, “no matter how we reform health care, we will keep
  this promise to the American people: If you like your doctor, you
  will be able to keep your doctor, period. If you like your health
  care plan, you'll be able to keep your health care plan, period.
  No one will take it away, no matter what.” Last night, Obama
  offered a more nuanced pledge that “nothing in this plan will
  require you or your employer to change the coverage or the doctor
  you have.” While his revised statement may be more accurate, it
  is no less disingenuous.
  

  Regardless of whether legislation specifically requires
  that Americans give up their coverage, there are still many
  changes to the system that could cause some people to lose it
  anyway. For instance, one provision Obama backed last night -- to
  tax expensive health plans -- is explicitly aimed at encouraging
  employers to drop benefit-rich policies in hopes that it would
  help rein in medical spending.
  
• he argued that he could pay for
  most of his proposal with cuts to Medicare that would not have
  any impact on benefits to seniors. The reason, he explained, is
  that we could save money by reducing “the hundreds of billions of
  dollars in waste and fraud…” in Medicare -- the very
  government-run program he touts as a model for the creation of a
  new government-run program.

Karl Rove: Obama’s Big Political Gamble - WSJ.com

• Millions of Americans watched President Barack Obama's speech last night to a joint session of Congress. Much of it was familiar, having been delivered in at least 111 speeches, town halls, radio addresses and other appearances on health care. But his most revealing remarks on the topic came on Monday, at a Labor Day union picnic in Cincinnati.

  There Mr. Obama accused critics of his health reforms of spreading "lies" and said opponents want "to do nothing." These false charges do not reveal a spirit of bipartisanship nor do they create a foundation for dialogue. It is more like what you'd say if you are planning to jam through a bill without compromise. Which is exactly what Mr. Obama is about to attempt.

• The problem for Democrats is they are scaring voters by proposing a takeover of health care that spends too much money, creates too much debt, gives Washington too much power, and takes too much decision-making away from doctors and patients.

Obama's Health Care Pitch - Now with more Ted Kennedy - by Fred Barnes

• Obama didn't come close to offering a persuasive explanation of how he'd pay for ObamaCare. And that remains his biggest problem. He promises much, much more in guaranteed health benefits and says it will cost less. Even Obama himself couldn't really believe that. No one else who can add and subtract does.

• Instead of scaling back his plan to comply with public sentiment, Obama stuck to every promise and provision on which he's dwelled in more than two dozen speeches. There was nothing new, except the size of his audience.

  
  From this, it's clear he's decided to push a partisan bill through Congress with Democratic votes alone.

• I had five questions that I looked for Obama to answer in his address. I wanted to see if he was serious about achieving moderate, bipartisan health care. It turns out he's not. Here are the questions.

  
  1) Did he advocate real tort reform to curb health care costs? Nope. He simply talked up a pilot project that he said was President Bush's idea. This was a trifle.

  
  2) Did he offer anything of significance to Republicans? No.

  
  3) Did he bring up his favorite straw man about those whose alternative to ObamaCare is to do nothing at all to reform the health care system? Yes, more than once.

  
  4) Did he demonize the health care providers he's actually made deals with? Well, not all of them, but the health insurers took their usual beating.

  
  5) Did he repeat the false claims he's made repeatedly in earlier speeches? Yes indeed. He brought up nearly all of them, including the ones on no abortion coverage, no loss of one's current health insurance, and the "savings" that would come from more preventive care.

  
  As a matter of stagecraft, Obama made a big mistake. He spent precious minutes delivering his same old arguments that have left a majority of Americans cold.

Obama Doubles Down - WSJ.com

• The speech was especially notable for its use of one of Mr. Obama's favorite rhetorical devices: Noting in the first instance that his opponents have a good point, and entirely legitimate concerns, only to reject their ideas in toto when it comes to policy. Thus he endorsed the public's concern about the competence of government to manage one-sixth of the economy, only to finish with a soaring oration about the moral necessity of letting government do so.
• Mr. Obama also deplored the "unyielding ideological camps that offer no hope of compromise"—a line meant to appeal to independents who deplore partisanship. Yet the truth is that four of the five committees writing ObamaCare largely closed off their negotiations to Republicans. The President and his party have also trashed some of the best reform ideas—advanced by the likes of Wisconsin Republican Paul Ryan, Democratic backbencher Ron Wyden and every serious health economist in the country

• Instead of trillions of dollars, he put his price tag at a less politically toxic $900 billion. But that is only within the first 10-year budget window and assumes "savings" that are surely illusory.

  Instead of raising individual taxes right away—as the House bill would—Messrs. Obama and Baucus say they will only tax insurers and other health-care providers. But those providers will only pass those costs through to consumers, raising the price of private insurance and thus raising the subsidies that government would have to pay to make it affordable.

• Perhaps Mr. Obama's most remarkable sleight-of-hand was his claim that he "will not stand by as the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are." The reality is that nearly all of those "special interests" are standing with him. The doctors' lobby, the hospitals, Big Pharma, even the largest insurers have all invested enormously in government health care.

  Mr. Obama's speech was less about persuading the public than it was a political pep talk to this Beltway constituency. He hopes to buy enough political breathing space with a bump in the polls—however short-lived—to steel their nerves to power ObamaCare into law. The only way to stop it now is with a giant wave of popular opposition.

President Obama's speech crossed the easy hurdles, skipped the high ones -- latimes.com

• Still, the president's comments about the savings available in Medicare were disingenuous, as was his assertion that a new tax on insurers would lead them to "provide greater value for the money" instead of simply passing the cost on to policyholders. Obama will have to come up with a more complete approach to paying for reform as the legislation moves forward. He claimed the plan as his own with this speech, but he left some of the hardest questions unanswered.

The San Diego Union-Tribune - Editorial: Missed opportunity

• Nevertheless, Obama's depiction of rising public doubts about big health changes as the product of “scare tactics” and “tall tales” undercuts his assertion that he takes seriously critics' “legitimate concerns.” This editorial page has joined many others in criticizing falsehoods such as the allegation that the president wants to set up “death panels” to winnow out the ailing elderly. But it is not a “scare tactic” to doubt Obama's claim his proposal to vastly expand health coverage would save money. The Congressional Budget Office says it would carry a 10-year, $1 trillion price tag. It is not a “tall tale” to question his claim that his plan would not affect individuals satisfied with their present coverage. It would give employers a powerful incentive to meet their insurance requirements by opting for cheaper government coverage and dropping their private insurers.
  

  We need to have a full and open debate about these concerns. But based on his speech last night, Obama would have us believe that he has a blueprint for a health care system that miraculously would be both much cheaper and much bigger — and the only thing that those who doubt him can offer is “misinformation.”
  

  Sorry, Mr. President. That's just not true.
  

Forbes.com - The Unhealthy Politics of Deja Vu - David Gratzer

• President Clinton's health-care legislation didn't fail in 1994 because people didn't want better health care. The White House plan failed because it was too bureaucratic, too complicated, and too expensive.

  Last night, President Obama's response to sixteen years (and one angry August recess) worth of bi-partisan doubt was to double down and bet even more political capital on the same approach. It's as if he expected Americans to tune in, and suddenly realize their mistake.

  
  

  This was supposed to be the Administration of the post-partisan rational center. Arguments were supposed to work with this White House. While many critics of President Obama's health-care plan have been too extreme, some rational criticism should have broken through. The speech was brilliant--unless you've actually read the legislation behind it, which contradicts many of the President's restated "commitments."

• It's not that President Obama wants to turn the health-care policy clock backwards sixteen years. It's worse than that. It's as though the last sixteen years never even happened. It's like a health-care Groundhog Day where Americans wake up to the same tired arguments for government-run care every morning, simply because Democratic Presidents can't resist testing the same pick-up lines on an unwilling America.

  And the lines are wearing thin. The President (yes, Obama this time) told Congress that "our collective failure to meet this challenge--year after year, decade after decade--has led us to a breaking point." Has it really? When President Clinton conjured similar fears about pink slips and millions losing coverage to Congress in 1993, 15.3% of Americans were uninsured. In 2007, the percentage of Americans without insurance was...15.3%. A solution to this problem is needed, but the fact that it hasn't grown worse is a sign that Congress has time to think, and little reason to panic.
• President Obama's address to Congress made it clear that he's barely listened to the national debate on health care that he himself set in motion. Yesterday's teachable moment: the more America learns about government-run health care, the more Barack Obama wants to talk, and the less he wants to hear.

Obama's Lies Matter, Too: The president pushes back against health care misinformation, then spreads a bunch of his own. - Reason Magazine - Matt Welch

• On Wednesday night a broad chunk of the American left, and an overlapping circle of media commentators, got what they'd been aching for since the beginning of August: A presidential bitch-slap of the lying liars who've been, in the words of stereotypical L.A. Times columnist Tim Rutten, "crowding out nearly all substantive and realistic discussion of the critical issues surrounding healthcare reform."
  
  "But know this," President Barack Obama said in one of several such satisfying passages in his health care speech last night. "I will not stand by while the special interests use the same old tactics to keep things exactly the way they are. If you misrepresent what's in the plan, we will call you out."
• It is telling that so many people who claim to be speaking on the side of Truth, Justice, and the American Way of Journalism have consistently focused their outrage-o-meters at individual townhall attendees, political broadcast entertainers, and the lesser lights of a lame (if resurgent-by-default) opposition party, while letting walk nearly fact-check-free the non-irrelevant occupant of 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue. If calling out lies and misrepresentations about a significant policy proposal is such pressing journalistic business—and it should be!—you'd think the watchdogs might start with the guy doing the proposing.
• Again and again last night, the president's numbers didn't add up. "There may be those—particularly the young and healthy—who still want to take the risk and go without coverage," he warned, in a passage defending compulsory insurance. "The problem is, such irresponsible behavior costs all the rest of us money. If there are affordable options and people still don't sign up for health insurance, it means we pay for those people's expensive emergency room visits." No, it means that, on balance, the healthy young don't pay for the unhealthy old. The whole point of forcing vigorous youth to buy insurance is using their cash and good actuarials to bring down the costs of covering the less fortunate.
  
  Such fudges reveal a politician who, for whatever reason, feels like he can't be honest about the real-world costs of expanding health care.
• And in a critical, tic-riddled passage that many of even his most ardent supporters probably don't believe, Obama said: "Here's what you need to know. First, I will not sign a plan that adds one dime to our deficits–either now or in the future. Period." In case you couldn't quite read his lips, the president repeated the line for emphasis. Then: "And to prove that I'm serious, there will be a provision in this plan that requires us to come forward with more spending cuts if the savings we promised don't materialize."
  
  If that "one dime" formulation sounds familiar, that's because Obama made—then almost immediately broke—the same promise regarding taxes on Americans earning less than $250,000 a year. Surely the no-new-deficits pledge is headed for the campaign dustbin faster even then that "net spending cut" we'll never see.
• As the reform supporter and professional skeptic Mickey Kaus noted before the speech, "Obama doesn't need to get 'Republicans on board.' He doesn't need to get Blue Dog Democrats on board. He needs to get voters on board." And if there's any tactic less effective at wooing skeptics than number-fudging insincerity, it's number-fudging insincerity coupled with attacks on the veracity, motivation, and worldview of the skeptics themselves.
  
• The center of the debate, as always, was wherever he chose to stand.
• And above all else, Obama chose to shadowbox against the more extreme claims of the Sarah Palins of the world, rather than engage the most serious of the skeptics' arguments. No, the administration doesn't "plan to set up panels of bureaucrats with the power to kill off senior citizens," but what about the possibility of government cost-cutters frowning upon expensive hip replacement surgeries for the chronically old? No, the proposal doesn't amount to a complete "government takeover" of health care, but it does continue to expand the government's role (and, promises aside, expenses) in ways that make a deficit-whiplashed nation nervous. No, "no one would be forced to choose" a public option, but what about the argument that incentives would eventually push Americans from private insurance to the public plan?
  
  The result of this challenge-dodging counterpunch was a speech that pleased Keith Olbermann and Rachel Maddow, but I doubt will sway the many Americans who are both on the fence and off Sarah Palin's e-mail list.

RealClearPolitics - HorseRaceBlog - Obama Votes "Present" by Jay Cost

• In my judgment President Obama's address last night was little more than a campaign speech with the Congress as the set piece. Evaluated from that perspective, it was a success. But from the perspective of finding a policy solution - i.e. actual governance - it contributed nothing to health care reform.

  The President had to give yesterday's speech for a simple, straightforward reason: his party is divided on a few key issues, above all the public option. This is what forced the delay through August, at which point the opposition was able to seize the microphone from government leaders and drive their poll numbers down.
• However, it failed to address the reason for their doldrums. Democrats need rallying because of internal divisions over actual policy disagreements. President Obama did not deal with those divisions. When you strip away the setting, the soaring rhetoric, the poetic cadences, and all the rest, you're left with the criticism that both Hillary Clinton and John McCain leveled at him through all of last year: he voted present.
• Meanwhile, Republicans have already been forced to walk away from the table because of all sorts of other items. As a rhetorical point, it is all well and good for Democrats to blast Republicans for not cooperating in the process, but that is tantamount to criticizing them for not being Democrats. Let's be serious: does anybody really think the bulk of the GOP - the party of William McKinley, Calvin Coolidge, and Ronald Reagan - will sign on to such a massive increase in governmental regulation of private activity? This is what makes most Republicans who they are. You can add goodies like tort reform trial programs, but that is like putting chocolate frosting on chopped liver as far as most Republicans are concerned.

• With this in mind, here's the question: what did last night's speech contribute to finding a solution? I'd say that the answer is nothing. The President (once again) refused to get his hands dirty on this issue. He praised the public option to the hilt, rhetoric intended for the progressives, then he hinted that it could be ditched, rhetoric intended for the moderates. At some point in the policymaking process, a choice will have to be made. It was not made last night, which means that this was a governing opportunity lost.

  President Obama clearly aspires to be a great president, like FDR and Lincoln. Last night he framed the health care debate by confidently placing himself at the end of a list of Presidents that begins with a leader so consequential his visage is on Mount Rushmore. Here's something he should know about the great ones, who have a few key features in common: they know their political parties like the backs of their hands, and they know how to guide them to policy success, much as a good business executive guides her employees to profitability. If this President does not learn how to manage the factions within his own party - he will not be remembered as a great President. "Rah-rah" speeches such as last night's are sure to be part of any good management strategy, but they are far from sufficient. The President is going to have to do more.

Thomas Sowell : Listening to a Liar: Part II - Townhall.com

• To tell us, with a straight face, that he can insure millions more people without adding to the already skyrocketing deficit, is world-class chutzpa and an insult to anyone's intelligence. To do so after an analysis by the Congressional Budget Office has already showed this to be impossible reveals the depths of moral bankruptcy behind the glittering words.

• Even those who can believe that Obama can conjure up the money through eliminating "waste, fraud and abuse" should ask themselves where he is going to conjure up the additional doctors, nurses, and hospitals needed to take care of millions more patients.
  

  If he can't pull off that miracle, then government-run medical care in the United States can be expected to produce what government-run medical care in Canada, Britain, and other countries has produced-- delays of weeks or months to get many treatments, not to mention arbitrary rationing decisions by bureaucrats.
  

  Obama can deny it in words but what matters are deeds-- and no one's words have been more repeatedly the direct opposite of his deeds-- whether talking about how his election campaign would be financed, how he would not rush legislation through Congress, or how his administration was not going to go after CIA agents for their past efforts to extract information from captured terrorists.
  

• One of the secrets of being a glib talker is not getting hung up over whether what you are saying is true, and instead giving your full attention to what is required by the audience and the circumstances of the moment, without letting facts get in your way and cramp your style. Obama has mastered that art.
  

  Con men understand that their job is not to use facts to convince skeptics but to use words to help the gullible to believe what they want to believe. No message has been more welcomed by the gullible, in countries around the world, than the promise of something for nothing. That is the core of Barack Obama's medical care plan.
  

Does Obama think Americans are so gullible? | Washington Examiner

• Sometimes the prevarications were so obvious that even the president’s most ardent supporters – like the news staff of The New York Times - had to concede that he was playing fast and loose with the facts. For instance, the Times quoted Obama’s repeating of his familiar claim that “if you are among the hundreds of millions of Americans who already have health insurance, nothing in our plan requires you to change what you have.”

  "That is technically true,” the Times carefully admitted, “but there is a real possibility that existing policies could change as a result of the legislation. The government, for instance, would set new standards, and employers that already offer insurance would have to bring their plans into compliance.” In other words, when, as is inevitable, the cost of providing health insurance is more than the federal fine Obama seeks for not providing it, companies will drop their employee plans, forcing millions of people into the government-run health care system against their will.

Who lies? by James Bowman - The New Criterion

• It would seem pretty hard to argue that the bar was not lowered for such incivility and boorishness during the Bush years, and for that the Democrats and the media who are now tut-tutting about Mr Wilson bear a heavy responsibility.

  Not, as I say, that that’s any excuse for the gentleman from South Carolina, who at least apologized for his remark almost as soon as it was made — which was more than Senators Reid and Kennedy ever did. But I can’t help feeling a sneaking sympathy for him, too, on account of the tacit conspiracy of the Democratic majority and the media to treat this president’s words, in striking contrast with those of his predecessor, as the truth merely because he has uttered them.

ARTICLE: Green Is the New Red by Rich Lowry on National Review Online

Green Is the New Red by Rich Lowry on National Review Online

must read

Op-Ed Roundup

Obama’s Promises Could Use a Good-Faith Deposit: Caroline Baum - Bloomberg.com:

Obama is a gifted orator, but his empty rhetoric is finally
catching up with him.

During the campaign, voters projected their fantasies onto
the young, attractive and unknown candidate: a community
organizer, academic (with no published scholarship to his name)
and less-than-one-term senator. Lack of experience was a virtue
in a world where Congress offers lifetime employment, not to
mention great benefits.

When it comes to governing, form over content will only get
you so far.

The Political Left Believes in Power, Not Freedom » Secondhand Smoke | A First Things Blog:

I consider myself a Martin Luther King liberal, which is to say, I am now called a conservative. As a man who has co-authored four books with Ralph Nader, that still seems surrealistic to me. Nevertheless, I have reluctantly concluded that the Left (generally) isn’t interested in freedom today (with exceptions), as much as it is in wielding power. Proof is found in today’s Thomas Friedman column. He decries democracy–people’s resistance to his desires for health care and radical environmentalism–and yearns instead for an “benign oligarchy” like China’s (!) to impose the “right” policies.
[. . .]
the insufferable smug presumption in the superiority of the Left’s ideas–which is relevant to the Obamacare debate and how the cost control panels would work–is revealing. Friedman’s swoon over China is yet another warning about the threat of allowing people of his political ilk to exercise centralized control over crucial aspects of our lives.

The convenient fantasies of President Obama | Washington Examiner:

The resignation over the Labor Day weekend of White House "green jobs" czar Van Jones tells you some interesting things about the Obama administration. One of them is that a man who proclaimed himself a "communist" in the 1990s and signed 9/11 "truther" petitions suggesting Bush administration complicity in the Sept. 11 attacks was considered fit for a White House appointment. Liberal columnists have been attacking Republicans because some of their voters are "birthers," believers in the absurd charge that President Obama was not born in Hawaii and thus is not a natural-born U.S. citizen. But they have failed to identify any "birther" who occupied a position in the Republican firmament comparable to that of "truther" Van Jones in the Obama administration.
[. . .]
There is an element of convenient fantasy as well in Obama's health care statements to date. We are going to save money by spending money. We are going to solve our fiscal problems with a program that will increase the national debt by $1,000,000,000,000 over a decade. We are going to guarantee you can keep your current insurance with a bill that encourages your employer to stop offering it.

The list goes on. We are going to improve health care for seniors by cutting $500,000,000,000 from Medicare. We aren't going to insure illegal aliens, except that we won't have any verification provisions to see that they can't apply and get benefits.

Commentary » Blog Archive » Flotsam and Jetsam:

In Obama’s otherwise praiseworthy speech to schoolchildren, there were some tell-tale “gag-phrases,” as Mickey Kaus points out. Kaus writes: “He has two wars and a health care bill to worry about, and a whole lot of other politicians and bureaucrats whose job it is to refurbish up school facilities. Is he Superman? Obama’s willingness to cut out all the other players does suggest an unattractive solipsism and egotism at best and . . . a troublesome cult-building instinct well, let’s just leave it at that.” Indeed.

Yeah...why IS the American Left in love with totalitarian dictators?

Surprise, Surprise: Obama Sides with Leftist Dictator and Shuns Democracy in Honduras (PJ TV)

ARTICLE: When protest is uncool, &c. by Jay Nordlinger on National Review Online

When protest is uncool, &c. by Jay Nordlinger on National Review Online

A Must Read which outs contemporary Liberalism's hypocrisy.

ARTICLE: The American Spectator : The Conservative Facts of Life

The American Spectator : The Conservative Facts of Life:

I have said for 25 years that Liberalism is the ideology of adolescence. A perpetual, preserved-under-glass adolescence. Talk to any liberal, even an ostensibly grown up one, and it's like talking to a teenager. Or examine any of their Big Ideas and they are all, at bottom, founded on a 'life isn't fair' complaint and determination to make the unfairness go away by any means necessary, if necessary. And it always is because life's realities don't go away, all of the whining and complaining notwithstanding. As Margaret Thatcher said, 'the facts of life are conservative.

ARTICLE: Thomas Sowell : Listening to a Liar - Townhall.com

Thomas Sowell : Listening to a Liar - Townhall.com

One plain fact should outweigh all the words of Barack Obama and all the impressive trappings of the setting in which he says them: He tried to rush Congress into passing a massive government takeover of the nation's medical care before the August recess-- for a program that would not take effect until 2013!

Whatever President Obama is, he is not stupid. If the urgency to pass the medical care legislation was to deal with a problem immediately, then why postpone the date when the legislation goes into effect for years-- more specifically, until the year after the next Presidential election?

If this is such an urgently needed program, why wait for years to put it into effect? And if the public is going to benefit from this, why not let them experience those benefits before the next Presidential election?

If it is not urgent that the legislation goes into effect immediately, then why don't we have time to go through the normal process of holding Congressional hearings on the pros and cons, accompanied by public discussions of its innumerable provisions? What sense does it make to "hurry up and wait" on something that is literally a matter of life and death?

If we do not believe that the President is stupid, then what do we believe? The only reasonable alternative seems to be that he wanted to get this massive government takeover of medical care passed into law before the public understood what was in it.

ARTICLE: Jones Resignation Deals Blow to Obama and the Left - WSJ.com

Jones Resignation Deals Blow to Obama and the Left - WSJ.com

As a candidate, Barack Obama was at pains to offer himself as a man of moderate policies, and especially of moderate temperament. He said he would listen to both the right and left, choosing the best of each depending on "what works." He sold himself as a center-left pragmatist. When his radical associations—Reverend Jeremiah Wright, William Ayers—came to light, Candidate Obama promptly disavowed them. Now comes Mr. Jones, with a long trail of extreme comments and left-wing organizing, who nonetheless became the White House adviser for "green jobs." This weekend he too was thrown under the bus.
[. . .]
No President is responsible for all of the views of his appointees, but the rise and fall of Mr. Jones is one more warning that Mr. Obama can't succeed on his current course of governing from the left. He is running into political trouble not because his own message is unclear, or because his opposition is better organized. Mr. Obama is falling in the polls because last year he didn't tell the American people that the "change" they were asked to believe in included trillions of dollars in new spending, deferring to the most liberal Members of Congress, a government takeover of health care, and appointees with the views of Van Jones.

ARTICLE: America’s Food Revolution by Jerry Weinberger, City Journal Summer 2009

America’s Food Revolution by Jerry Weinberger, City Journal Summer 2009

I thought the author wrote, "...engineer our own morality..." I think that applies just as much as what the author actually wrote, at least when it comes to the "perfervid vegans, virtuous vegetarians..."

When I was a kid, my parents taught me that if someone invites you over for dinner, you eat what they serve and—however disgusting it is—you clean your plate and compliment the host. Or if someone takes you to a restaurant, even Dutch treat, you say it’s terrific, even if it stinks.
[. . .]
Just try having a dinner party today. You’ll have to contend with perfervid vegans, virtuous vegetarians, persistent pescatarians, lamb-phobics, tongue-phobics, veal-rights advocates, the gluten-intolerant, the lactose-intolerant, the shellfish-intolerant, the peanut-intolerant, the spicy-intolerant, and on and on in an ever-fragmenting array. For God’s sake, don’t serve foie gras; a guest might show up wearing a suicide vest and blow the whole party to kingdom come. All this has a lot to do with the decline of traditional manners and the rise of personal assertiveness and the yuppie belief that we can engineer our own immortality.

ARTICLE: We're all relativists now--News from the North (What's Wrong with the World)

We're all relativists now--News from the North (What's Wrong with the World)

This IS where the Left is leading America: tyranny under the banner of freedom.

"Liberals use the state to impose their morality all the time, and they get away with it because their faith isn’t called a religion."
-Jonah Goldberg

ARTICLE: The Omnipresent Leader by Mark Steyn on National Review Online

The Omnipresent Leader by Mark Steyn on National Review Online

The president’s strategy on January 20 was to hurl all the vast transformative spaghetti at the wall -- stimulus, auto nationalization, cap’n’trade, health care -- and make it stick through the sheer charisma of his personality. Unfortunately, the American people aren’t finding it quite so charismatic, and they’re beginning to spot the yawning gulf between the post-partisan hopeychangey rhetoric and the budget-busting prosperity-throttling future-beggaring big-government policies.

ARTICLE: Peggy Noonan: Coruscating on Thin Ice - WSJ.com

Peggy Noonan: Coruscating on Thin Ice - WSJ.com

must read.

ARTICLE: Charles Krauthammer - Obama's Magic Evaporates in the Heat of the Health-Reform Debate

Charles Krauthammer - Obama's Magic Evaporates in the Heat of the Health-Reform Debate:

Must read.

Steven Crowder on Gay Marriage

I almost choked on my coffee from laughing.

ARTICLE: Whole Foods 'buycott' turns grocery store into cultural battleground -- DailyFinance

Whole Foods 'buycott' turns grocery store into cultural battleground -- DailyFinance:

"In the meantime, Trader Joe's CEO Don Bane is hopefully keeping his head down and his opinions to himself."

I always hear from the Left how they want intelligent debate and solutions from the Right. Whole Foods CEO John Mackey must have believed that. Trader Joe's CEO Don Bane knows better.

Obama's Spending Nightmare