I want my Republican Party back!

I want the Republican Party that would work across the aisle, using a combination of tax increases and spending reductions to balance budgets (George H.W. Bush with a Democratic Congress; Newt Gingrich with a Democratic President).

I want the Republican Party that saw health care as a problem that requires government attention (Richard Nixon; Mitt Romney as governor of Massachusetts).

I want the Republican Party that believed that conservative values include conservation of our natural resources (Theodore Roosevelt established the US Forest Service; Nixon established the Environmental Protection Agency).

I want the Republican Party that only fought wars when necessary, and that kept them limited (Dwight Eisenhower and G.H.W. Bush).

I want the Republican Party that stood for civil rights (Abraham Lincoln repealed slavery; Eisenhower signed the first civil rights bill since Reconstruction and established the Civil Rights Division within the Department of Justice).

I want the Republican Party that worried about competition when corporations get too powerful (the trust-busting T. Roosevelt).

I want the Republican Party that stood for strong defense but worried about "unwarranted influence ... by the military-industrial complex" in national affairs (Eisenhower).

I want the Republican Party that knew we have to talk to our enemies (Nixon visited China; Ronald Reagan met with Mikhail Gorbachev several times).

I want the Republican Party that recognized the danger posed by proliferation of weapons (Nixon signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the USSR; Reagan initiated the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, and G.H.W. Bush signed it into law; Senators Richard Lugar (R-IN) and Sam Nunn (D-GA) co-sponsored the 1992 Cooperative Threat Reduction Program).

I want the Republican Party that saw the development of infrastructure as an obligation of the federal government (T. Roosevelt began the Panama Canal; Eisenhower began the interstate highway system).

I want the Republican Party that introduced the pure food and drug laws (T. Roosevelt).

I want the Republican Party that worried about safety in the workplace (Nixon with the Occupational Health and Safety Act and the establishment of OSHA).

I want the Republican Party that worried about undue influence of soft money in campaign financing (Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Russ Feingold (D-WI) co-sponsored the Bipartisan Campaign Reform Act of 2002).

Looking forward:

I want a Republican Party that recognizes that "government of, by, and for the people" means that the other party will control the government about half the time, and that neither Democrats nor the government is our enemy.

I want a Republican Party that recognizes that most Americans do not want Roe vs. Wade repealed; that most Americans are comfortable with homosexuals living in committed relationships; and that putting anti-abortion and anti-gay rights planks into the party platform is a futile exercise that will keep us from electing a Republican president.

I want a Republican Party that recognizes that non-Hispanic Caucasian males represent only about one-fourth of the US population, and that it will be increasingly difficult to elect a Republican president as long as white males represent the vast majority of the Republican power structure.

In short, I want my moderate, progressive Republican Party back!

Without comment

"Again and again it has been demonstrated that the unpredictable cocktail of fading energy and seasoned talent, of mortality and desperation (just another word for ambition) can accomplish wonders." -- Roberta Smith, in her review of "Dalí, The Late Work" at the High Museum, Atlanta; New York Times, September 3, 2010.

Ambling in Ambleside

I'm in England's Lake Country, for the Mathematical Virology meeting, which begins tomorrow at the Ambleside campus of the University of Cumbria. Came a couple of days early to de-jetlag, and caught a spot of nice weather.

A nice walk up a local hill yesterday. Spent this morning preparing and practicing my talk and was headed out for a light lunch and a moderately serious half-day walk when I ran into Peter Prevelige. He'd just arrived, we haven't seen each other in a year or two, and we were both hungry, so the plans got a bit waylaid -- fish and chips, a couple of pints, and long conversation... The moderately serious walk turned into a very moderate and very non-serious stroll along the river.

Maybe I'll do better tomorrow morning...

Bloggers and Disasters

I put the following into a blog about the oil spill from the Deepwater Horizon last night (http://www.boston.com/bigpicture/2010/04/oil_spill_approaches_louisiana.html):

I love bloggers.

The blog mentions everyone from the Flying Spaghetti Monster to Chief Seattle. One analysis discusses the role of globalization in the spill, while another compares the spill to the Holocaust. Proposed solutions range from prayer to peat moss to bringing in the army or truckloads of welfare deadbeats.

There are the inevitable rants, with all the usual suspects hauled up for either praise or damnation -- the president, Al Gore, Sarah Palin, even Ted Kennedy. Ms. Palin is neither a goddess nor a devil in this, because she has appeared on the scene too recently. Instead, she's a symbol, a saint to some, a sinner to others. Her rise to national prominence is a consequence of the intensity of the energy debate -- not a cause -- although she is now becoming another contributor to it. Whether you love her or hate her, she's going to be around for a while (no way yet of knowing how long), because of the importance of this issue.

This is, of course, a serious disaster. Any thoughtful person grieves for the families of those who were killed or injured; mourns for the loss of wildlife, beaches, and marshes; and worries about the hard times ahead for the thousands who make their livings from the bounty of the sea -- fisherman, crabbers, shrimpers, folks who work in the tourist industry, ...

Some bloggers are screaming at one another about the relative importance of human lives vs. the environment, but there's no way to separate one from the other, when you think about it.

Thanks to those of you who work in the offshore oil industry for your enlightening comments. It's hard for the rest of us to understand what happened, how the backup systems are supposed to work (and why they didn't), and what the alternatives are for shutting off the flow. Don't worry about those who scream at you -- that's the nature of blogs -- but do keep the information coming.

In response to the sawdust/peat moss suggestion: Does anyone know if such solutions have been tried in previous cleanups? Did they work? Or did they just add to the mess? There must be huge amounts of organic waste that could be hauled out in barges and dumped, though I have no idea about the logistic difficulties, the costs, or the possible negative consequences. In addition to sawdust and peat moss, natural products might include grass, brush, agricultural waste, detritus from logging sites, and all those things suburban residents put at the curbside for pickup. On the manmade side, how about paper, cardboard, cloth -- again the things that we sort for recycling.

Thanks also to those of you encouraging others to keep this discussion calm. Like almost everyone else who's reading this, I'm 100% CERTAIN that I know the answers. But then I remember how sure I was that I had all the answers to raising kids before my own kid entered adolescence. (He's 29 now and doing fine, thanks.)

The cause? This was the failure of a complex system. All human-designed systems have (unknowable) failure rates: cars, bridges, banks, churches, marriages. Yes, it's true that corporations have economic reasons for trying to cut corners wherever they can. (You teabaggers keep that in mind as you try to get the government off of the back of business.) And yes, it's true that regulators and other government employees can be lazy or incompetent. (You liberals keep that in mind as you design a health care system.) As you wrestle with how much regulation we should have, you might ask yourself, if BIG government is bad, are there any problems with BIG corporations?

Finally, yes, it's possible that someone intentionally did something malicious, just like sales clerks and teachers and priests and car mechanics and computer geeks and carpenters sometimes intentionally wreck things. There's no evidence for that, unless you're someone who doesn't bother to read the newspapers. But even if everyone is honest and hard-working and intelligent and brave, clean, reverent and true -- well, shit does indeed happen sometimes. This was the breakdown of a very complex system.

More important, cleanup is going to be an incredibly hard problem. BP has an important role to play, and so does the government. It's going to cost bazillions, and you and I will pay for it regardless of how we divide the bill between BP and the taxpayer. (I agree that BP's liability cap ought to be big enough that they really feel some pain; Exxon-Mobil dragged the Exxon Valdez settlement out for 20 years, and only the lawyers made any money.) Sadly, most of the price will actually be borne by people who live along the Gulf Coast. Given the behavior of Big Oil in the Exxon Valdez case, and the behavior of the US Government after Hurricane Katrina, folks on the Gulf are going to be the real losers in this.

Yeah, we ought to get out of our cars, and we ought to consume less. I bought a house within a couple of miles of my workplace (in Atlanta, a city of 5 million people), so I do walk to work. Yeah, it makes me feel holy sometimes, but that's mostly BS, because the real reason I walk is that I love to walk and hate sitting in traffic. Besides, I drive halfway across the country from time to time just for fun, and I live in an air-conditioned house, and I buy plane tickets, and my garbage can is just about as full of plastic crap as my neighbors' trashcans are.

Unfortunately, for a naturally conservative person like me, the only real solutions to issues of energy/environment/climate change do require the intervention of government. Only government can control zoning and the design of our highway and rail systems, and only government can design tax systems that reward innovation and penalize waste. I'm old enough to remember how the car companies insisted that seat belts wouldn't work, that no one would wear them, and that they were too expensive. A mandatory seat belt in a car I bought in 1977 saved my life about a year later. And we might learn something from those African countries that have banned plastic bags, because of the damage these do to the environment, both in production and in disposal.

Well, enough. Thanks to all y'all for the things you've written, for reading this (I don't know why, but I feel better), and for whatever you have to say down the line...

A conservative health care plan

I'd be very interested to hear what any conservative American proposes to do about health care. The starting place is to acknowledge the problem.

We have a terrible infant mortality rate -- 6.3 per 1000 per year, over twice as high as the leading nations (Scandinavian countries, Singapore, Japan, Hong Kong). We're ranked somewhere below places like Slovenia, Portugal and -- yes -- Cuba. Check this out at any site you like; Wikipedia includes the list from the CIA World Factbook, which says we rank 46th in the world, just ahead of Belarus, Lithuania and Cyprus. (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_infant_mortality_rate)

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

We have the highest health care bills in the world. (1) Many people don't have insurance to cover the cost of early tests and preventative care, so the ultimate costs of care are higher than they should be. (2) The overhead costs are way too high, due to the administrative costs of HMOs and other insurers, and because of an antiquated tort system which has driven the premiums for malpractice insurance through the roof.

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

Some of us (me included) have outstanding care -- I'm covered by Blue Cross / Blue Shield at a relatively modest cost, because my employer is fairly generous. I've never been turned down by my insurer for any test ever requested by my physician.

But I have friends who pay over $10,000 per year in insurance premiums -- healthy, retired people with no previous conditions. And we all know someone who has been denied a necessary treatment because of cost.

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

Inadequate support for preventative medicine and early treatment end up costing us billions. It's not clear how quickly those costs would drop under the president's plan. But over the long run, they're going to destroy us financially, unless we do something.

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

So, tell me, what did the conservatives propose after defeating Clinton's plan? Nothing. What do they propose now? Nothing. Why? Because they're frightened by the insurance companies and the pharmaceutical companies, who are spending millions to defeat a plan that will cost them profits -- profits that are part of our high health cost.

Many countries have successful systems that mix private options with public options. So do we - Medicare and Medicaid. It's funny how those who keep screaming that Obama wants to destroy your options aren't screaming about how we should eliminate the "socialist" Medicare and Medicaid programs. Those programs have been the only thing between many elderly people and poverty.

Do the conservatives disagree with this? No.

I don't know the solution to the health care problem. But an honest discussion of options would seem a logical thing for us to engage in. With regard to a public option that would force the insurance companies and drug manufacturers to compete -- isn't that one of the Republicans favorite words? It seems to me something that deserves serious consideration at the least.

I ask again, one last time, what do conservatives propose to do?

Piety

How did a religion that began with a focus on kindness, service and gentleness -- unselfishness -- become so preoccupied with the most selfish of all actions: saving one's own soul and getting into heaven?

Requiem aeternam dona eis, Domine,

et lux perpetua luceat eis!

Cum sanctis tuis in aeternum,

quia pius es.

Give them eternal rest, Lord,

and shine eternal light upon them!

With thy saints forever,

for Thou art good.

quia pius es -- for thou art good.

pius  =  dutiful, conscientious; godly, holy; good, upright  (Collins Latin Dictionary).

pious  =  devoutly religious; making a hypocritical display of virtue; dutiful or loyal [archaic]  (New Oxford American Dictionary).

----------------------

It was, of course, Christ's own church that corrupted his message. By the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Catholic Church was telling its members that, if they didn't follow the church's dictates, they would burn in hell. They were damned by original sin, and the path to heaven lay through the Church:  prayer, ritual, and giving one's assets to the Church, rather than by service to one's fellow beings and giving directly to the poor. The Church accumulated land, gold and power. The poor and powerless sank into ignorance and misery, comforted with the promise of eternal life with all God's saints, if and only if the Church interceded with Him for them.

Then, flickers of light with Gutenberg and Luther. Literacy, the right to read God's word oneself, the right to pray directly to Him without earthly or saintly intermediaries. Renaissance.  Enlightenment. Intelligence seen as a gift from God, rather than a tool of Satan.

Progress, the end of slavery, the right of people to rule themselves -- eventually all people, regardless of race, religion, gender, or sexual orientation.

And today?  What a wonderful and terrible world!  There are lots of people who are pious in the original way -- dutiful, good, kind, generous, loving. And there are a lot whose piety is no more than a hypocritical display of virtue. Churches that serve God by serving the poorest and weakest among us, and churches that serve only the powerful, and themselves.

If only all Christians would stop worrying about saving their own butts and getting into heaven ... and simply strive to be pius.

summer is a-cummin

End of the semester.  The only people happier than the students are the faculty.

I should face a string of days with plenty of time for writing.  I've got to make major progress on The Book, a couple of manuscripts need polishing and submitting, and I've got a couple of review articles to write.

But the first month is already gone -- finals were over and grades posted by the end of April, and the new students arrive before labor day -- and I've gotten far too little writing done. A week-long trip to the west coast was interesting (UCLA, Sandia Labs and a NASA meeting in Phoenix) and offered some fun (time with old Peace Corps friends in Albuquerque), but it added to the backlog of stuff on my desk, out from under which I'm just emerging.

To complicate matters, May has been mostly beautiful, when it wasn't raining.  I sit at our new big table in the recently closed in back porch / sunroom, listening to birds calling across the neighborhood and hearing music from downstairs, where Marie is working in her studio. I'm thinking that it's time to open the bar...