Laura, You often force me to think about what I say. One day in some context or other I was badmouthing intellectuals, and you said, “I don’t understand why you talk negatively about intellectuals. You are an intellectual, aren’t you? You’re smart and well educated.” It stopped me short. I had to think about what I meant. I know that Webster doesn’t make this distinction, but when I use the term, and when I hear it used, the word “intellectual” carries a negative connotation.

To me, an intellectual is one who sees himself as superior to the masses. He thinks, because he is intelligent and well educated, it’s his duty to manage the herd. It’s like Cass Sunstein our Regulatory Tsar who says that most of us are Homer Simpsons, members of a bewildered herd. “A lot can be done to manipulate them, to tap into their fears and desires and use them to guide them.” They see themselves as caretakers of the masses. They teach us what to think, not how to think.

They probably would not come right out and say it, but they seem to think that the world needs leaders, kind of enlightened despots, to help us make better choices. . The problem, first of all, is that they are not God; they don’t understand the problem, and the solutions they devise almost always have unintended consequences. Farm subsidies intended to support the family farmer actually push the family farmer off the farm. Section 8 housing that doubled the cost of rentals.

The second problem is that there is nothing more dangerous than a man who thinks he knows what is best for us. Consider Mao, consider Hitler, consider Stalin. For the intellectual the problem is hubris. Great works of literature from every culture teach us the “pride goeth before the fall,” that power corrupts. The truth is we are all, the well educated, the blue collar worker, the homeless, all of us are God’s children, all of us are flawed, and that is why no one can be trusted to real power. We are all dealing with demons. and those demons feast on it. God’s purpose for us in life is that we learn to deal with our shortcomings, that we find grace and serenity by working through our vices.

We all make poor choices, that’s a given, but that’s what we need to do. It’s dealing with our poor choices that makes us stronger. More important than that, those poor choices teach us to be humble.

Rohm Emanuel: Never let crisis go to waste.

The bible of the left, Rules for Radicals, encourages liberals to never let a crisis go to waste. Use it to further political advantage. They are very good at that, the recent shooting in Arizona being the latest example of their dedication to Rohm Emanuel’s dictum. Consequently, rather than giving the country the time to mourn tragedy, they immediately try to use it to advance their political agenda.
They attacked Sarah Palin showing the pictures of the map which marked with crosshairs the elections critical for the Tea Parties to support. They failed, however, to show the map democrats produced for, I think, the 2008 election which also targeted important contests with cross-hairs.
They took aim at her “lock and load” metaphor suggesting it was incendiary language like that that incited violence, forgetting to mention that President Obama used much the same imagery: “"If they bring a knife to the fight, we bring a gun,” and “We talk to these folks, so we know whose ass to kick.” It was a democratic candidate who said he “wished people on the right would feel what it’s like to be shot,” and a liberal congresswoman who said, “It’s time to get out the pitchforks,” and Obama’s good friend and President of SEIU who said, we’ll fight them at the ballot box and if that doesn’t work we’ll get out the guns.
Google threats against G. W. Bush and you will find, not thousands, but millions of pictures that incite violence, Bush in the cross-hairs, Bush with a bullet hole in his head, Bush, his head severed from his body, blood gushing out from his neck. NBC ran a story illustrated by a picture of Bush with cross-hairs on his nose. A play ran on Broadway idolizing the idea of his execution
And Palin’s bull’s eye was not so much on Gifford; it was Arizona’s Grejalva that the Tea Parties were intent on replacing. Gifford is a blue-dog democrat, admired by the right for her moderate stand on economic issues, her strong support of gun rights, and for her tough stand on border security and immigration.
So, both left and right share a penchant for colorful metaphor, but let’s take a look at who the Arizona shooter was, certainly not a Palin admirer or a Fox News addict. His favorite books were The Communist Manifesto and Mein Kompf. He is anti-Constitution, anti-flag, and anti-religion.
Every time some maniac attempts an act of violence, the media drools and pants, hoping they can blame conservatives, making accusations they hope will stick. Most of these terrorists have no political affiliation; they are simply insane; however, if they do have a political affiliation it’s almost always on the radical left with the exception of the Unibomber, and The Oklahoma City Bomber.
We can start with the obvious and Bill Ayers using violence for political change. His SDS is still radical, storming the CATO institute in July of 2008. James Jay Lee, who took hostages at Discovery Channel, was a radical environmentalist. Joe Stack flew his plane into the IRS building, ranting and raving, quoting the Communist Manifesto. A liberal bit the finger off a man who disagreed with him on health care. Amy Bishop, an Obama supporter, murdered her coworkers. Liberals destroyed AM radio towers outside Seattle and burned down Hummer dealerships. An SEIU union thug beat up a black conservative who was selling American Flags at a Tea Party meeting. And it was the NAACP who said he deserved it because he wasn’t Black enough. When the G20 meets, it’s the radical left that causes chaos.
Let’s be frank. The left would like to see the country inflamed in class warfare. Saul Alinsky has taught them well that they need chaos to give them the excuse to bring down the hammer: better protection, fewer liberties, more government

My experience with Canadian health care is certainly different from Adolf Blackburn’s (“Canadian System better than others” April 1, 2010). My experience suggests that the health care system there is a classic example of how badly governments manage enterprises of any kind, primarily because health decisions get all mixed up with other political issues. One minor example: a town on Vancouver Island lost its saw mill; and, although all the hospitals have brilliantly equipped laundry facilities, the health ministry makes all of them send their laundry to this somewhat inaccessible west island town to provide work for its inhabitants. Political decisions like that are made all across Canada. Patient care takes second chair.
My husband was a scaler who suffered a logging accident in 1985, breaking his back. He lay on the floor of his house living on heavy doses of narcotics for 3 months before they could free up the proper surgeon to attend him. You might suggest that that was ancient history and that BC has cleaned up its act since then, but two years ago my best friend, an osteoporosis victim, snapped her back and lay on a gurney in the hallway of the emergency room of the Nanaimo, BC hospital for 8 days before she was attended to.
More recently my husband suffered some stomach discomfort. The doctor suspected cancer, but my husband would have had to wait 3 months for a colonoscopy and knew that he would probably have to wait another 3 months at least to schedule the operation if he did indeed have cancer. Because a local surgeon had had a cancellation and could do surgery immediately, he opted to trust the diagnosis and they cut out three feet of his colon. He died of complications. Had he had the colonoscopy, they would have discovered that he had a ½ inch tumor that was very slow growing. He could have lived to 90 before it would have caused him any problem. His real problem: Diverticulitis.
And the problem is wide spread across Canada. When there is no more room in critical care units in Canadian hospitals, really critically ill patents, those with severe brain injuries, for example, bleeding in the brain, are whisked to operating rooms in the US. According to the Toronto Globe and Mail about 150 patients a year are sent to hospitals in Washington, Oregon, Michigan, and New York. “Some have languished for as long as eight hours in Canadian emergency wards while health-care workers scrambled to locate care.” Recently there was no room in neonatal center anywhere in Canada for the mother of quadruplets.
On my last trip south at the end of May, I stayed over in Victoria, BC, in order to catch an early boat. In my hotel room I watched a piece the evening news had video of a kid, head in a halo, heck in a brace, left leg bandaged and elevated. According to the reporter, he would have to wait 15 months for an MRI as everything in Canada was booked. I have since Googled, trying to find out how it was resolved, but I get no hits.
No one knows what the consequences of these delays are because no one has the right to review the evidence. I tried to get copies of my medical records as well as my husband’s, but was told that if my American doctors had any questions they could telephone. And the evidence is even more tightly held for patients treated out of country.
When asked if any patients transported to the United States had died, Mr. Jensen, spokesman for the Ontario Health Ministry, said the “ministry does not specifically record the outcomes of health services provided out of country.” The consequences of critically ill patents waiting that long for care are obvious, aren’t they?
Canada is a very wealthy country of under 40 million, rich in natural resources. Can you imagine the complications for a country of more nearly 400,000,000?”

My Open Letter to Karl Rove

Thank you for writing Courage and Consequence. We needed that. Many of us have lost faith in the political process. Your book renewed mine by helping me to recognize once again that politics in a democratic republic is necessarily messy. It also rekindled my respect for politics as “the great moving expression of our democracy.”
A distinct mark of your strength of character is that you were so openly able to accept responsibility for your mistakes. Some of your humorous stabs at Norwegians are so funny because they are so true. “Norwegians don’t dance, they twitch.” Painfully true. “The Norwegian who loved his wife so much he almost told her.” That was my father and my grandfather both of whom loved profoundly. I thought that ability to be self deprecating, that capacity to recognize personal failures might be distinctly Norwegian as well.
You also own up to mistakes made by Republicans who indulged in corrupt behavior and thus threw always their chance to make a real difference. It seems, however, that Republicans in general are philosophically more responsible, more principled. I think of Al Gore’s inability to stand firm on any issue, the way Reid and Obama sabotaged immigration reform and then railed about Republican racists, Kerry’s inability to clarify his many conflicting votes on Gulf issues. The liberal philosophy, that the end justifies the means, seems to erodes conviction and character which makes George W. Bush’s courage and character more startling by contrast.
I share your profound respect for George W. Bush. Truman said, “The buck stops here.” G.W. lived it. I especially respected him for accepting responsibility for the Katrina disaster when he could so easily have excoriated Mayor Nagin for refusing to comply with the National Hurricane center\s mandatory evacuation orders. He could have blamed Governor Blanco’s inability to make the decision about ceding control of the situation to the federal government. Instead he accepted full responsibly. I also respect both you and him for your ability to stand straight and tall in the midst of the political storms that raged around you.
The one measure I disagreed with GW on was the prescription drug program for seniors. I felt that wee seniors are enough of a burden on the federal budget, and that the program added unnecessarily to it. You hint that it didn’t. That it “used market forces to drive down the cost.” I hope that’s true, but I’ll have to do some more research to satisfy myself. After all, you are just a politician.
Thanks again for the book, for your dedication, for your work ethic. I’m exhausted!