I’m back <== painful pun

It’s been a little while. A big little while. I’ve learned something over the last few months, namely that while I am capable of doing many things at once I’m not so good at doing many things at once while I’m in horrible pain.

Horrible, horrible pain.

What happened? I herniated a disc in my lower back, and it has been by far the least pleasant experience of my life. If you haven’t experienced it yourself, I can best describe the sensation as comparable to being stabbed with a bolt of lightning, except the stabbing goes on and on and on. The human body is an amazing thing, and it is amazing how something as simple as picking up a bottle of shampoo can make you lie on the floor of your bathroom sobbing for half an hour. Seriously.

I like to think of myself as a pretty stoic guy when it comes to physical discomfort. I haven’t taken a sick day in the last four years, even when I had an Exorcist-style stomach flu (my co-workers were impressed by my dedication, even as they stood at a safe distance and yelled at me to go home). I have been struck by a falling log full of nails (true story). I have had a bottle broken over my head, I have been kicked in sensitive regions, I have accidentally stapled my own hand to a stack of papers – never, not once, have I accepted so much as a Tylenol to ease my suffering. I can take it. Then this happened:

That bump is my nucleus pulposus, popping its little head out through a tear in my annulus fibrosus to say ‘Hello! I’m crushing your sciatic nerve!’. My body’s immediate reaction was to tie my lower back into a solid steel knot, which my pain receptors then used as a stage for a week-long performance of ‘Screaming Anguish: The Musical’. During this time I discovered that the best way of getting around my apartment was crawling. Backwards. I ate an entire raisin challah and washed it down with a pint of pineapple juice because that’s what was on the bottom shelf of my refrigerator.

The weeks that followed are a blur. That’ll happen when your diet consists entirely of breakfast cereal and oxycontin. Fortunately I had more than a month’s worth of days off saved up at work; unfortunately, there was so much urgent work to do that I didn’t take any of them. You know you’re living the dream when you’re lying in bed, talking to a client on your cell phone, and pressing ‘mute’ every three minutes to scream obscenities at the ceiling.

The good news? I’m feeling better now. Not all-the-way-better – not, for example, so much better that I’m not still munching Schedule IA narcotics several times a day. But a rigorous regimen of having steroids injected directly into my spine with what I’m pretty sure is a bayonet has gotten me back on my feet, and with some luck I may avoid needing surgery (or a spinal cord stimulator, the idea of which gives me nightmares). Work has eased up a bit, too. So … here I am. Back again.

Hi!

In Praise of Responsible Motherhood

As I type, the US Senate is engaged in debate about the coverage or lack thereof that will be provided for abortion services under proposed health care reform legislation. As I listen to Orrin Hatch and his colleagues wring their hands over the prospect of American tax dollars being used in a way that some American citizens may find morally offensive, I am struck by two things:

1) What an incredibly, laughably weak argument this is.

2) They’re going to get away with making it, because the weakness of the defense of abortion rights is even more striking.

The reason for this is simple: there is no voice out there defending abortions. Not one. There are many pro-choice groups, but nowhere will you hear or read a defense of abortion itself.

Well, not quite nowhere. Read on.

Abortion is a wonderful thing. There are few things a person can do that can so change the trajectory of a person’s life for the better than, under the right circumstances, having an abortion. If women are allowed to choose – in cunning imitation of rational, independent human beings – whether or not to bear children, they have the power to control the circumstances under which the next generation of Americans comes into the world.

Do we approve of homeowners who decide to buy a house that they can’t afford? Do we approve of incompetent professionals who try to perform jobs they don’t know how to do? Then why on earth would we approve of (forget about insisting upon) a woman bearing a child without the means, competence, or desire to take care of it? There will always be lousy parents – must we put ourselves to the trouble of making more?

On the other hand, is it possible to speak too highly of the good mothers of this world? Does anybody do more to help a child grow up healthy, happy, economically productive and socially functional than a caring, competent mother? Three cheers, then, for every tool that we as a society can put at her disposal to make her job easier. In life, as in comedy, timing is important. Abortion gives American women the ability to make the most important decisions they make exactly that: decisions.

Finally – and let us say this loud and proud, and all the more so because it is demonstrably true by any reasonable standard:

An abortion is only a big deal if you need one and can’t get it.

It’s between a woman and her doctor for the same reason a prostate exam is between a man and his doctor: it’s uncomfortable, potentially embarrassing, and nobody else’s business. Sure, some people have decided to object to it on moral grounds; in this respect, abortion can get on the bus with meat-eating and hip-hop. You’re entitled to your moral objections. Just don’t expect us to pay much attention to you. Because if we’re smart, we won’t.

An open letter to the Trench Potatoes

Every American schoolkid has been compelled at one time or another to write a letter to Congress. Then, it was for our benefit; now, I think it might be good for them. I address this to those legislators who, waist-deep in Capitol Hill mire, may need a little bucking up. A little inspiration. A little perspective. A boot in the rear. Here’s the text that – amended to include a few specifics – I’ll be tossing into a few Congressional mailboxes.

Dear Representatives of the American People,

Perhaps our most tragicomic instinct as human beings is to seize control over little things when all other control is lost. Survivors who escaped the towers on 9/11 have described hovering near their desks as fire alarms blared, calmly and intensely deliberating and then, finally, picking up a book to carry with them down the emergency-lit stairwell. They didn’t need the book, or want it – they just needed to make a decision for themselves, at a time when all decisions were being taken away from thousands of their fellows.

When nothing can be done, we feel the need to do something. But when something must be done, and we have the power to do it, all too often we stand by and let the moment pass.

In the towers, people who never asked to face danger made choices that saved or ended their lives. These are the same kind of choices that a soldier in a trench might have to make – simple choices with profound consequences. To stand up and shoot, or to duck and cover? Neither option guarantees safety, and when you’re sitting in the mud with bullets singing overhead even the act of lighting a cigarette is neither easy nor without significance. Once you’re in the trench, the decision to “go over the top” – to force your nerveless body up and into no-man’s land – is one that humans are not designed to make.

That’s why you make that decision before you set foot in the trench.

Hard decisions are one thing, decisions under hard circumstances quite another. C.S. Lewis describes ‘courage’ as not itself being a virtue, but rather the form of every virtue at the testing point. Courage of conviction can be as simple as pure, bloody-minded obstinacy, a determination to do what you came to do no matter how different things look when you arrive. That’s not an easy quality to develop, especially once you come under fire. However:

THIS IS A TRENCH YOU CHOSE.

You chose to fight. You fought to fight. Every one of you sits where you sit now because you campaigned, you struggled, you battled, and you were victorious. The trench is your prize. You could be making more money, working shorter hours, and taking less abuse if you went back to your legal practice or took a corporate job. But you are where you are because you chose it, and you chose it for a reason: you, along with a scant handful of your fellow citizens, are in a position to fight for the future of your nation. Your constituents picked up the one rifle they had and handed it to you.

That doesn’t make the decision to fire any easier; therefore, remember that it’s a decision you’ve already made. I won’t argue that fortune favors the bold, or that the warriors who stand up in the face of controversy tend to outlast those who seek safety. I don’t have to: it’s self-evident, and it’s not the point. The point is not the medals you may earn or the speeches you may make, though both will be brighter for being harder-won. The point is that we, the people, didn’t accept your application for a spot in the trench so that you could sit in it. We want you to fight.

So, fight.

Eating the Teacup

“I’d rather live free than die with health care,” the sign said.

Last Thursday, shortly before noon, I was on Capitol Hill chatting with two little old ladies. We’ll call the LOL1 and LOL2. They’d been struggling to take pictures of the podium, and I’d offered them the benefit of my height advantage; they were very grateful, and we chatted amiably about the relative merits of being unusually tall vs. unusually short. They wore American-flag visors, and had come up from Virginia on the Metro. We talked about the weather, and about whether their digital camera was the best kind for taking pictures; LOL1 thought so, LOL2 thought perhaps not.

Then ‘Won’t Get Fooled Again’ stopped playing, the first speaker approached the mic, and it was time for me to unroll my sign. I’ll be the first to admit, it wasn’t the most impressive sign anybody ever made – just marker on poster paper – and the message I’d written was hardly earth-shattering. Last month, the Washington Post and ABC conducted a poll, and my sign highlighted one of that survey’s findings: that roughly 23% of Americans oppose the creation of any type of public health insurance program.

LOL1 looked at my sign, looked up at me, and told me that somebody should kill me. LOL 2 said I wasn’t worth it, and led her friend off to another part of the crowd.

By the time Congresswoman Michele Bachmann’s rally was over, my sign had accumulated a pretty fair collection of reactions from my fellow citizens. I was jostled, shoved, elbowed and poked. Somebody threw a wad of chewing gum, which adhered to the first ‘I’ in the phrase “NOISY MINORITY.” I was called a commie, a traitor, and a “gay apricot” – at least, I think that’s what the gentleman said. A woman in a green sweater patted me on the back and said that she liked my sign; fortunately, the adhesive on the anti-health care reform bumper sticker she’d affixed to my jacket was not strong.

Other people with signs moved to stand in front of me and behind me, blocking me out. I sidestepped, they followed suit. I raised my arms as high as I could (as I mentioned, I’m unusually tall) – they jumped up and down, and called over other demonstrators with signs on poles. I congratulated them on their American spirit. They called me a faggot. Eventually the event ended, all the signs came down, and everybody went home.

Let me be clear: at no point did I ever feel that my life or bodily safety were in danger. The fight that the folks who gathered for the ‘High Noon’ demonstration on 11/5 wanted to start was not with me, or even with supporters of health care reform in general. To some HCR seemed almost an afterthought (no doubt it’s hard to focus on the minutiae of regulatory policy when your president is a stupid Kenyan impostor who’s trying to socialize abortions).

I will coin a term for this kind of political ecumenicalism. I will call it ‘eating the teacup’.

There was an astonishing amount of teacup-eating going on last Thursday. The tea being drunk at this party was a complex brew indeed, a mixture of many different and largely unrelated causes. The demonstrators drank it with gusto, cheering equally for school prayer, congressional filibusters, the Pledge of Allegiance, anti-abortion legislation, accusations of socialism, and anything else that the various speakers stirred into the murky ideological sludge they were offering. They drank it all, and then ate the cup. That’s what happens when you’re so determined to fight you cease to care about what you’re fighting for.

“I’d rather live free than die with health care,” the sign said. I think that just about sums it up. To one whose goal is war the battlefield is immaterial, and these warriors honestly don’t care whether or not all their slogans make sense. They are the Noisy Minority, a movement without a meaningful direction. They are a very interesting phenomenon, emotion without substance, and in the coming weeks I will be putting together a playbook for taking the wind out of their sails. In the meantime, I just wanted to deliver a report from the trenches. It’s getting ugly out there.

Lunch with the Noisy Minority

I have the luxury of living in Washington DC, and consequently of having a season pass to our nation’s finest circus: democracy in action. Political demonstration fascinates me – it brings out the best (and occasionally the worst) in the citizens of our great nation. This year we’ve seen a bumper crop of rallies on a variety of topics, and today we’re set to reprise the 9/12 Tea Party with:

TEA TWO: High Noon

Congresswoman Michele Bachmann (R-MN) has called a rally to take her message into the halls of power today, with a rally at noon followed by (supposedly) a flood of demonstrators invading the Capitol. Exactly how many people will turn up remains to be seen, but rest assured, I will be one of them. I will be on hand to help keep things in perspective, to serve as the Voice of Context. The Tea Partiers have managed to get a vast amount of media coverage in their brief tenure, but when you rally on Capitol Hill you’re participating in a celebration of democracy. And in a democracy, the majority rules.

You can't shout down a democracy

It’s great to be vocal, it’s wonderful to be passionate, but at the end of the day the Tea Partiers represent a very small fraction of the American electorate. They are a “noisy minority” – and while they have every right to express their views, it can’t be forgotten that those views lie well outside the mainstream of American political sentiment.

I won’t use this space to go into exactly why our government should provide its citizens with a public health insurance option (you can read about that here, or watch it here). Today’s a day for standing up and being counted – and when you count up the opponents of health care reform, they simply don’t add up to much. Not because they’re not good, sincere Americans. Not because their leaders are screwy (although if Glen Beck and Michele Bachmann are the sharpest knives in your drawer, you probably eat a lot of soup). But because there just aren’t that many of them.

Only 23% of Americans oppose a public option. By contrast, 34% think that George W. Bush was a better President than Obama is.

You might think that those numbers speak for themselves. I’m not going to risk that – I’m going to go speak for them. If you’re in DC, why don’t you join me?

My Testimony to the City Council

Yesterday I gave testimony before the DC City Council regarding Bill 18-482, the Religious Freedom and Civil Marriage Equality Amendment Act of 2009, authored by At-Large Councilmember David Catania and supported by the good Phil Mendelson. It was a great experience, although the public witness immediately preceding me took the opportunity to propose to his boyfriend. Congratulations to both of them, but still … that’s a tough act to follow.

My testimony (link to video will follow when available):

I’d like to thank the Council for this opportunity to speak. My name is (x). I’m a longtime resident of the District of Columbia, an American citizen, a taxpayer and a voter. I am a patriot; I believe in principled government, in law and civil order, in strong families and the values that help them prosper. I am a heterosexual. I am also a son and a grandson and a brother.

I have a duty to my country, my community, and my family, to support them and protect them and stand up for them. That’s why I’m here today. To speak on behalf of my family, and all families.

I said that I’m a brother. I’m actually a big brother, and that’s has responsibilities of its own. With regard to my little sister Charlotte, I have always had two jobs: to give her a hard time, and to stand up for her against anybody else who might try to do likewise. Since I was four years old I have had a very specific expression ready for any boy who might think about breaking my baby sister’s heart. If you have little siblings, I think you know what I mean: an expression that says “nobody messes with my loved ones except me.”

I’ve never gotten to use that expression.

My sister and I fought, squabbled, and grew up. We both had crushes and heartbreaks, and she was always there for me during my bad times and after my bad decisions. But I never got to use my warning death-glare, and I never will, because I don’t have it in me to intimidate a pretty, intelligent girl who loves my sister with all her heart.

I got this in the mail last week [hold up wedding announcement]. “The honor of your presence is requested at the wedding of…” I never understood these things. They seem like an expensive way to tell me something I already knew. My sis is getting her master’s degree, and her fiancée is doing Teach for America; I don’t know how they can afford the pretty stationery. I guess it’s romantic to want to make something beautiful to announce something beautiful. And I guess it’s cheaper to have the printers call a wedding a wedding, rather than a ‘commitment ceremony’ that, if hardship strikes, could be worth less than the pretty pink paper this is printed on.

I’m addressing the Council today for two reasons. First, because I’m going to have to give a wedding toast pretty soon, and I need practice. Second, because it’s my job as a big brother to stand up for my sister, to make sure she gets treated fairly by everyone except me. My sister is smart, funny, deeply obnoxious, incredibly loving, and her relationship with her partner is … pretty ordinary. They argue, they fight, they like Japanese art, and they want to visit all fifty states. I love them, but they’re already a boring old married couple. I’m jealous. They – and everybody like them, everybody who’s found time in their lives to meet someone who makes the world a simpler and happier place – deserve nothing more than to be allowed to make the best of it. The legal right to marry won’t give my baby sister, or those like her, the happily-ever-after they’ve always wanted and always deserved. But it’s a wonderful thing, and it’s the least we can do.

I thank the Council for its time.

DC Marriage Equality – Stand Up and Be Heard

Live in DC? Want to do something – as in you, yes you, personally do something – to help get marriage equality in the District? Good! A bill to legalize marriage equality in Washington, DC is going to be introduced in the City Council shortly. You can see the notice here. Citizens are invited to given oral and written testimony on the proposal, so here’s what you can do:

TRAIN!

The HRC is offering training to help you prepare to deliver your testimony to support marriage equality.  The training will be tomorrow, Tuesday, October 20th at 7pm at the Human Rights Campaign located at 1640 Rhode Island Ave. NW. To register, go here. For more information about the training, contact Michael Crawford at michael@dcformarriage.org.

ATTEND!

The hearing will be on October 26 beginning at 3:30pm on the 5th Floor of the Council Chambers at the Wilson Building located at 1350 Pennsylvania Ave. NW.

TESTIFY!

Remember, marriage equality is NOT a done deal in DC! With “moral politicians” such as Marion Berry speaking out against it, there are no guarantees that we’ll even keep the gains we’ve already made – and we still haven’t managed to legalize this basic human right in our nation’s capital! So stand up, speak your piece, and spend the rest of your life feeling important because you helped accomplish something so important!

MORE DETAILS!

• Those who wish to testify should contact Ms. Deborah Kelly, Legislative Clerk, at (202) 724-7808, by fax at (202) 724-6664, or via e-mail at dkelly@dccouncil.us, and provide their name, address, telephone number, organizational affiliation and title (if any) by close of business Thursday, October 22, 2009.
• Persons wishing to testify are encouraged, but not required, to submit 15 copies of written testimony. If submitted by the close of business on Thursday, October 22, 2009 the testimony will be distributed to Councilmembers before the hearing.
• As it is anticipated that a large number of witnesses will testify, witnesses will be limited to three minutes of testimony.
• The Committee will continue this hearing at a later date if the number of witnesses exceeds what can be reasonably accommodated in a single day.

See you all there!

Fahrenheit 3:16 – Read A Book You’d Rather Burn

Everybody celebrates holidays in their own way – Chinese food for New Year’s, green Guinness for St. Paddy’s, crushing bitterness for Valentine’s day – but let’s face it: some holidays demand fire. From Fourth of July fireworks to Hanukkah candles, you’re not really partying unless flames are involved. In this festive spirit, the good folks of Amazing Grace Baptist Church in Canton, North Carolina are going to be celebrating Halloween this year with a get-together that combines the great tradition of fire-for-fun with another time-honored practice: burning books.

Fire is a versatile thing. It’s not just pretty, it’s eloquent: nothing says “you had probably better listen to me” like a little combustion. Pretty much anything – a flag, a cross, a witch, a Reichstag – carries more political significance when it’s burning. That’s why Pastor Marc Grizzard and members of his church will be burning some heretical tomes to celebrate All Hallows Eve. And these won’t be satanic or pornographic books, not evolutionary texts, not even Harry Potter (getting a burn permit for all seven volumes is nearly impossible). Nope. They’re gonna burn Bibles, as well as books by such notable blasphemers as Billy Graham, Rick Warren, and Mother Teresa. Also, “music of every genre” – hopefully on vinyl, since everybody knows that analog has a warmer sound.

Personally, I’m skeptical of the efficacy of bonfires as a means of suppressing Kenny G (though God knows it’s worth a shot). Besides, ideas always seem to pull an Obi-Wan Kenobi – if you try to strike them down they only become more powerful. So I’d like to put aside the specifics of Pastor Grizzard’s little Savonarola impression and make a suggestion:

READ A BOOK YOU’D RATHER BURN

There are a lot of bad books out there, but I’m not talking about that paperback thriller you bought off a rack at the airport. I’m talking about Bad, capital-B-Bad books. Evil on paper. Try to find a real-life equivalent of the Necronomicon from the Evil Dead movies, curl up with a cup of tea, and start at page one. I did. I read ‘The Turner Diaries’.

This novel, written in 1978 by William Pierce, was a favorite of Timothy McVeigh prior to the OKC bombing. It follows the heroic exploits of Earl Turner, a white man who makes a valiant stand against the wicked Jews and brutish Negroes who have seized control of the US government. After waging a protracted campaign to protect the Aryan race by executing ‘race traitors’ and pawns of the Zionist-controlled government, Turner cements his status as saint and martyr by strapping an atomic bomb to an airplane and crashing it into the Pentagon. Thus, the stage is set for his white brethren to sweep across the globe and finally eradicate the mud races from the earth.

Trust me, I have not even come close to doing this book justice. Only a literary talent like Mr. Pierce could have described in such loving detail the placards tied around the necks of a young interracial couple prior to their lynching. If you haven’t read it, you can’t imagine the cathartic ecstasy of a man on a mission who has climbed into an airplane on a God-given suicide mission to destroy the Pentagon.

So, you should read it.

Seriously.

Especially if you really, really, really don’t want to.

There are some ideas we don’t want to have inside our heads. There are some perspectives so horrifying that to step into the shoes of their authors is to feel a sense of defilement, a need to take a shower with a cheese grater just to get the filth off. And I highly recommend it – because afterwards, you’ll understand a very real view of the world that you’d never otherwise have been able to believe existed. You’ll be wiser for it. And you’ll have demonstrated the difference between yourself and the coward whose first instinct is to reach for a torch.

P.S. – Got a suggestion for a good ‘Bad’ book? Please comment, I’d like to put together a list! But please stick to the spirit of the thing; not everybody likes ‘Atlas Shrugged’ or ‘Das Kapital’, but I’d like to avoid too many flames. Ironic as that is.

Conservative Libertarians for a Strong Public Option. Yes, really.

It is a weird time to be a Libertarian. In the last year or so a lot conservative refugees from the tarnished Republican brand have started calling themselves Libertarians, and at the same time the crazy-brigade that has been disgracing the name of Libertarianism since forever has found new platforms for its tinfoil-hatted paranoia. If you’re somebody who genuinely believes in limiting government to its proper, narrowly defined role … well, it’s been a while since anybody listened to you.

Now, people are listening. Now, just maybe, we’ve got a little bit of power. And maybe we can use it, for the first time in history, to pursue the agenda of freedom that we’ve stuck by doggedly despite cycle-after-cycle of politicians who borrow our rhetoric for the stump and then forget it once they get elected. It’s a weird time to be a Libertarian, but it should be an exciting time too. We can do this. We can make something important happen. We can finally create public health insurance.

I’ll give the wannabes a moment to leave the room. If you call yourself a conservative or a Libertarian, but what you really like is playing the ol’ partisan game of arbitrary left versus arbitrary right, this message ain’t for you. If you believe in freedom only for people you agree with, if your support for liberty goes no further than a convenient talking-point, don’t waste your time – your philosophy of government is so shallow that if an actual idea fell into it it wouldn’t even make a splash. All gone? Okay then: real conservatives, real Libertarians, principled defenders of the sacred rights of American citizens, lock the doors. It’s time to go to work.

So, do we want government-run health care? Do we want government hospitals full of government doctors, practicing medicine to a bureaucrat’s tune? Hell no. No way, no how, not a chance. Not in my America.

So, now that we’ve got that out of the way, let’s look at something completely different: health insurance. If you don’t know the difference, go get an actuary to take out your appendix for you. Then join me in calling on the men and women in Washington who represent the citizens of these United States to stop doing all those things that aren’t their job, and do something that is their job for a change. Create a public health insurance program.

That’s right, this is their job. They should have done it long ago, and if true conservative Libertarians had power they would have. See, we have an advantage when it comes to figuring out what our government should and should not do. That’s because we don’t just have a big grab-bag of pet issues, we have a philosophy of government that says exactly what is and what isn’t the government’s business. The list of things that Washington shouldn’t be doing is too long to go into here, but the list of things it should do is blessedly short. At the top of that list: make the decisions that private individuals don’t have the power to make for themselves and don’t have the right to make for each other.

That’s right. We’re a society of laws, a democracy. That doesn’t mean we’re going to give up our guns, but we put aside the option of using them against our fellow citizens whenever we feel like it. To our government we give the responsibility of protecting us from foreign enemies. To our government we give the responsibility of policing our streets. We are a free people, and we are a lawful people, and we acknowledge that in our society it’s not up to us as individuals to take these matters into our own hands. We don’t lynch – justice belongs to all, and the system that administers it we hold in common. That’s the ONE THING that we as Libertarians can all agree on about the role of government: we do not, as individuals, have the right to say who lives and who dies.

Right?

Right.

It is not okay for you to decide to put a rope around someone’s neck and deprive them of oxygen. And if you decide to withhold from someone the medical treatment they need to keep breathing, you’re killing them just as surely. Hold on now, am I saying that healthcare is a right? No, I’m not, and it isn’t, it’s a commodity just like milk and eggs, and like milk and eggs you can’t have any unless you pay someone who knows how to produce it. But once again, I’m not talking about healthcare. I’m talking about health insurance. It’s not the doctors who are seizing control of that life-or-death decision, it’s the insurance companies. Decisions about the lives of American citizens – the kind of decisions that we would only entrust to a quorum of legislators or a panel of duly appointed jurors, are being made every day by private citizens. And it’s not a terrorist or a murderer whose life hangs in the balance. It’s mine.

Mine. My life, a life that belongs to me. We understand the sanctity of private property, and we will not surrender same except by lawful act of the government we elect. Nobody puts me in jail but a policeman with a badge that says he works for the American people. Am I going to hold the person who decides whether I live or die to a lower standard?

Now, I just mentioned private property, and it’s important to remember how fundamental that concept is to who we are and what we stand for. Remember, we’re not kleptocrats who think that property is whatever you can stuff in your pockets. We believe in true capitalism, the creation of wealth through the creation of value. There ain’t no such thing as a free lunch, you only earn what you produce. So what exactly do insurance companies produce? Now let me be clear, I’m not in any way denigrating either our nation’s insurance companies or the people that work for them. They’re good people, and they provide an essential service – god knows somebody has to, and so far our government hasn’t stepped up to the plate. But it is important to remember that insurance companies do not produce a commodity. They do not manufacture what they sell on the assembly line, they do not grow it in the fields or dig it out of the ground. What they sell is risk – your risk, my risk. And where do they get it from?

Nowhere, it’s universal, it’s a natural phenomenon. Health risk can be harvested without leaving your desk. That’s fine, that’s all well and good. But now consider that in any given state, access to that infinitely public resource is wholly monopolized by only a handful of private companies! As a staunch believer in private property and free enterprise, I might find myself supporting a corporation that owned an absolute monopoly on the air we breathe, but I simply cannot justify supporting corporate hegemony over a generally-available class of decision-making that I wouldn’t normally allow to anyone not elected by and accountable to the American people.

We don’t do lynch-mobs. We don’t let private security firms declare war on other countries. Because we are conservative Libertarians, we make decisions for ourselves – and for those life-or-death decisions that citizens of a lawful society can’t make for themselves, we put them in the hands of a government that we elected.

Now, we hear a lot of arguments for a public insurance option that just leave us shaking our heads. We hear that healthcare is a human right, we hear that we have a social responsibility, we hear that we are our brothers’ keepers. But hey, we’re Libertarians, we’re used to having embarrassing political allies. Just remember – a grown-up doesn’t change his or her beliefs just out of spite for somebody else’s. We hold fast to our principles even if others stumble across the same conclusions by accident. Remember this: the public health insurance option is not about the poor and the downtrodden. It’s about me. Or, in your case, you.

In a society of laws, I can’t own every decision that might be made about my life – but by God, I can own the person who makes that decision.

Demand liberty. Demand your rights as an American and as a human being. Demand public health insurance.

Save The Planet: Beyond Thunderdome

As it turns out, Mel Gibson was right all along. Not about Jews starting wars – although Bibi Netanyahu does seem to be getting some ideas – but about a primal, fundamental, and ultimately stupid aspect of human nature. If you recall, before he became an unhinged, wild-eyed loner Mel was The Road Warrior: Mad Max Rockatansky. After various adventures in a hot, arid world-of-the-future, our eponymous hero catches up with the bad guy and chains him by his ankle to a car that’s just about to explode. Then he tosses him a hacksaw and walks off. The message: do something that hurts, or just wait for the situation to resolve itself.

Which brings us to the environment.

Now, my environmentalist chops are pretty limited. I eat cows at every opportunity, I’d drive a car if parking in DC weren’t such a nightmare, and I look at the world not as a vibrant, living meta-organism in harmony with itself and the cosmos but more as a big, fun rock that I happen to live on. However, I do help companies make smart investments in sustainable operations, and I do want the American government to protect this big, fun rock that I live on. Because I live on it.

Now, not only am I not much of an environmentalist, philosophically I’m pretty much a libertarian. I think that there are a few things that the government should concern itself with, and then pretty much butt out. I don’t think the government should own banks, and I don’t think the government should own car companies. But speaking of cars, and the companies that make them, and the companies that make other things: one thing I do think the American government should be doing is protecting me. Not from myself – I told you how much I like eating cows – but from the rest of the world: evildoers abroad, criminals at home, and anybody else who might be trying to make me dead.

When it comes to protecting Americans, in a lot of ways our government does a very good job. The British are coming? The British are going. Pearl Harbor? Hiroshima. Plane-bomb our buildings? We’ll invade two countries you don’t even live in. Ahem. The point is, if you’re a foreign bad guy you might as well tell Joe Pesci to go get his shoe-shine box: mess with us, and nightmares you never even had will give you their undivided attention. As far as protecting us against guns and bombs goes, Americans taxpayers bought a Cadillac with spinning rims and a piano lounge.

What about crime? Well, nobody’s going to say that our law enforcement system couldn’t use a tune-up, but I personally feel safe walking the streets at night. Being six-foot six and dressing like a vagrant might have something to do with that, but my point stands: our men and women in uniform, whether that uniform is blue or that sort of grayish-greenish color, are armed to the teeth with technology, modern weaponry, and a mandate to protect this citizen whenever he might need it.

Now, about the environment. And the conspicuous absence of guys with assault rifles poised to protect me from getting dunked in the Atlantic by my friendly neighborhood greenhouse gas producers. Hello? Little help? We are a nation of laws: you can’t pull a trigger that fires a bullet that hits me in the face, and you shouldn’t be able to turn my atmosphere into a magnifying glass aimed at my polar icecaps – at least, not without my government having something to say about it. Let me be absolutely clear: when it comes to my health and safety, I’m not interested in half-measures. I don’t want the Marines issuing speeding tickets to invading enemy tanks, and I don’t care to hear any belly-aching from our great nation’s great industries over regulations regarding how quickly they’re allowed to kill me.

It is the government’s job to protect us from those who would hurt us, even if those who would hurt us aren’t crazy about that idea. Whether it’s a mugger who’d rather take my wallet than get a job, or a manufacturer who’d rather play cheap-and-dirty than pay for the privilege of poisoning or drowning me, it’s not the government’s job to get his side of the story. I’ll leave the mode of enforcement up to the enforcers: crippling fines, arrests and prosecutions for CEOs, tactical Predator drone strikes – whatever works, I’m a pragmatist. But get … it … done.

A kinder, gentler Mel

Let me be clear: the people who run even our pollute-iest industries are not bad people. I work with them every day. I like them. We’re humans, we will do what works best for us right now. Harking back to Mad Max, that means we will sit around cuffed to a bomb complaining about how bad it would hurt to make some necessary cuts. That’s where our government needs to step up and grab the hacksaw. Trust me, we’ll be grateful eventually.

So hey, government: look, I’m not an environmentalist. I’m just a guy who lives near the ocean and can’t swim very well. I hope to have kids some day, and I hope NOT to have to explain to them why Atlantis USED to be a myth. That’s why our government needs to make sure that what works best for us right now isn’t going to be what kills us tomorrow, and it needs to do it with overwhelming force. Shock and awe, baby. We need to go green like we were storming Omaha Beach – and we need to do it before global warming actually puts a beach in Omaha. Don’t do it for Mother Earth. Don’t do it for our children’s children’s children. Don’t do it for the trees, don’t do it for the whales, don’t do it for the baby polar bears. Do it for me. That’s your job.