« New York Passes Gay Rights Law | Main | "Discipline" versus Racism »
December 18, 2002
Lott to Frist? - Racism to Medical Fraud
A question to ask is how the GOP ended up with a stupid racist like Trent Lott as Majority Leader? Maybe it's because the backup bench of acceptable rightwingers are worse-- Nickles with his anti-civil rights record or McConnell's corporate whoring against campaign finance reform.
Which is as appropriate as having Trent Lott be their point man on civil rights.
Frist is literally the child of corporate medical fraud and union-busting. While he bills himself as a heart surgeon, his relevant position was as member of the family which founded what became the massive HCA/Columbia health care hospital chain. Bill Frist's personal stake in the family fortune is unknown exactly (in the tens of millions), but his brother's share according to Forbes is $950 million. See this older article about the family's role in HCA and GOP politics.
And how did HCA/Columbia get rich? Raiding nonprofit hospitals, dumping the poor previously served and turning them into profit mills for the family bottom line. See here. Oh yeah, and massive fraud against the Medicare system, a fact that led to a $745 million criminal fine against the company back in 2000. (See the update below for late-breaking news of a new massive settlement by HCA for fraud).
What was the nature of the fraud? The worst possible in corrupting the patient-client relationship to the point of endangering lives. Marc Gardner was a vice-president at HCA/Columbia where he says he "committed felonies every day." Here is a story on medicare fraud generally where Gardner described his role:
Marc Gardner, the former vice president of the country's largest chain of for-profit hospitals-the Columbia/HCA Health Care Corporation-recently broke the silence on what he called "an arrogant corporate culture in which meeting demands for profits became far more important than caring for patients or obeying the law." In a recent interview conducted by ABC News, Gardner said that doctors with the most patients were given paid positions as medical directors in Columbia hospitals. Columbia claimed that that these were legitimate compensation to doctors for their extra administrative work. However, according to Gardner, the payments were a way for hospitals to funnel illegal payments to doctors for sending their patients to Columbia hospitals. Not only were doctors paid for getting more patients, they were also paid for performing extraneous surgeries. In other words, the hospitals encouraged doctors to get more patients, offer more unnecessary hospitalization, and to perform more unnecessary surgeries.
The company also has a history of unionbusting against its employees. See this ruling by the National Labor Relations Board that HCA/Columbia engaged in illegal union-busting against workers in their hospitals. See the full decision of the NLRB in 2000.
For a more complete history of the HCA/Columbia story, see this timeline of the Columbia/HCA Rise and Fall.
This is the corporate culture within which Frist grew up and funded his political career.
Unsurprisingly, this is reflected in policy positions on behalf of corporate medicine, from opposing real health care reform to sponsoring the legislation on behalf of Eli Lilly to kill the ability of parents to sue the company for harm to their children from the drug Thimerosal. See Hesiod.
Trent Lott denied he personally participated in the racism of his youth, which of course he did, but Lott without question benefitted from it in pursuing his political career. Similarly, Frist would no doubt deny personal involvement in the pervasive corporate crime and fraud at HCA/Columbia, but his personal fortune that got him into the Senate derived from profits of that corporate abuse.
And, more importantly, just as Lott's policies on civil rights reflected his racist history, Frist's public policy of pimping for corporate medicine has reflected his family's corporate criminal background.
LATEBREAKING UPDATE: HCA has agreed to pay an additional $880 million dollars to the federal government over its long-running medical billing fraud. HCA would pay $630 million in fines and penalties to resolve all outstanding civil litigation with the Justice Department, the report said. It would pay another $250 million to the Medicare programme to resolve expense claims submitted by the company to the government.
Combined with its previous settlements, including its 2000 guilty plea to 14 felonies -- the company will pay a total of more than $1.7 billion in civil and criminal penalties, the most ever secured by federal prosecutors in a health care fraud case.
Addition: A couple of folks in comments were unsure what the crimes of HCA/Columbia had to do personally with Frist; well, where do you think his money comes from?
Frist was able to win election in his first campaign in 1994 as an unknown heart surgeon with no political experience because he could spend $3.7 million of his own money on his campaign, derived from his portion of the family HCA holdings. And when ones immediate family is embedded in corporate corruption and a culture of medical fraud, it is not unreasonable to suggest those values may rub off-- especially when the public policy of someone like Frist is in lockstep with the interests of his family corporation.
Also, see Frist's rightwing voting record.
Posted by Nathan at December 18, 2002 01:38 AM
Trackback Pings
TrackBack URL for this entry:
http://www.nathannewman.org/cgi-bin/mt-tb.cgi/420
Listed below are links to weblogs that reference Lott to Frist? - Racism to Medical Fraud:
» RNC & Other Curious Events from Pacific Views
Hat tip to Atrios: I wasn't the only one who was utterly appalled by the Bush twins' ditzy, rude, and inappropriate comments at the convention last night. I quit watching after they publicly insulted their grandmother, and reading the rest... [Read More]
Tracked on May 1, 2005 04:21 AM
Comments
Great work. We'll have to strengthen some of the linlkages between family members, however. . . .
Posted by: Jeff at December 18, 2002 07:45 AM
How does one "raid" a non-profit hospital? With a pirate ship, flying the Jolly Roger? Does Frist wear an eyepatch, don a peg leg and shoulder-perched parrot, and cry "Argghhhh! Ye scurvy non-profit administrators, hand over the keys, or you'll sleep'n Davey Jones' locker!!!Argghhhh!" Sounds like a great Monty Python skit, but it is more likely that offers were made to non-profit administrators, and voluntarily accepted. I have no warm feelings for HMOs, which, of course, are the bastard children of government regulation of the health care industry, but Mr. Newman, your ridiculous use of rhetoric does nothing to strengthen your credibility, similar to how your credibility was weakened with your recent attribution to Republicans, and William Buckley in particular, a singular desire to make black people felons, which ignored the reality that Democrats have less ferquently voiced opposition to The War on Drugs, as Buckley has, which does more to stupidly felonize black people than anything else. You either don't know what you are talking about, or don't care about achieving any degree of accuracy.
Posted by: Will Allen at December 18, 2002 12:44 PM
+1 for Jeff's comment on Family connections.
I'd also like to see, if only for laugh values, some links to the most egregious Columbia/HCA's denials of any wrong-doing, which they have undoubtedly been producing these last few years.
And for completeness, some ratings on Frist from the AMA, etc. I know at least some of those groups will like him, so show them to, ok?
Posted by: Josh at December 18, 2002 12:56 PM
How does one "raid" a nonprofit. It's called bribery of the executives to betray their public trust. See this American Prospect article for some history:
While they have publicly claimed that for-profit status was necessary for expansion, insider executives have made millions of dollars converting nonprofits. The conversion of HealthNet, now called Health Systems International (HSI), shows one reason why top executives find the case for conversion so persuasive. When HealthNet converted in 1992, 33 executives purchased 20 percent of the company for just $1.5 million; as of April 1996, those shares were worth approximately $315 million. Roger Greaves, formerly co-CEO and cochairman, paid only $300,000 for shares that are now worth $31 million, a 10,000 percent gain.In the case of HCA, check out this part of the historical timeline about acquisitions and the accusations of illegal dealing.By moving their organization into the for-profit sector, the executives also typically get paid a lot more. In 1994 HSI paid its current CEO, Malik Hasan, $8.8 million; Foundation Health's chief executive received $13.7 million. In contrast, David Lawrence, the chairman of Kaiser Permanente, has a salary of $803,000 even though Kaiser, which remains nonprofit, is the nation's largest staff-model HMO (that is, with group medical practices staffed by its own doctors).
So waving Bill Buckley around on the one issue he dissents from most other non-libertarian conservatives is just the typical anecdotal approach conservatives use to make a case. The fact remains that Frist's family firm has been hit with $1.7 billion in fines for illegal medical fraud. And the firm has decades of history of, yes, raiding nonprofit medical centers through bribery of their executives that has undermined health care for the poor across the country.
Posted by: Nathan Newman at December 18, 2002 01:00 PM
Sure, Will, offers were made--offers that couldn't be refused because of the increasing commercialization and profit-driven nature of our country. You support this, right?
Posted by: Mark Rogers at December 18, 2002 01:13 PM
Thanks for conceding the point, if only in a backhanded way. Offers were made and voluntarily accepted. If you believe crimes were committed in the acceptance of such offers, there are plenty of pure as the driven snow Democratic prosecutors available for producing indictments. As to waving things around, it was you who waved the assertion that Republicans, and Buckley in particular, have the singular desire to make black people felons, which ignored the evidence that the Democrats are far more monolithic in their support for the War on Drugs, which is the single greatest contributor to making black people felons, thus it can reasonably be said that it is Democrats who go to the greatest lengths to make black people felons. Which is it; you don't know what you are talking about, and don't care to simply admit the plain evidence which contradicts your ridiculous rhetoric, or you wish to simply smear your political opponents?
Posted by: Will Allen at December 18, 2002 01:24 PM
Frist would fit in great with the Bush regime-a corporate felon and whore just like the rest of them.
Posted by: tomtom at December 18, 2002 01:53 PM
Frist would fit in great with the Bush regime-a corporate felon and whore just like the rest of them.
Posted by: tomtom at December 18, 2002 01:53 PM
All this is of modest interest given that (1) it's mostly ancient news, and(2) Senator Frist's involvement is close to zilch. Talk about McCarthyism!!!!
Posted by: Jackson Price at December 18, 2002 04:29 PM
The issue isn't that crimes are committed per se, but the issue is that the directors of the non profits often betray the purpose of their mission as well as years of donors' goodwill who had thrown money at them. Because something is legal does not make it right, and definitely does not mean that characterizing them as 'raiding non-profits' is incorrect.
Posted by: Atrios at December 18, 2002 04:33 PM
I don't think the issue is irrelevant when he is the republican "go-to" man for everything having to do with the health care industry, which apparently having operated on people's hearts gives him divine knowledge about. He really should stay out of things which very directly affect the family fortune, but he doesn't.
Posted by: Atrios at December 18, 2002 04:37 PM
He used his position to leverage Columbia/HCA's quite effectively when the HMO battles were in full force. Bad enough for politicians to blur that line. Worse to do it to create dubious HMO superstructures. Worst of all, to do it For C/HCA, which is the big ol' bad boy of the bunch. Someone quite close to me used to be a high-level manager of one of their hospitals. She her tales of working at what was "basically a pyramid scheme" are most informative.
Posted by: carpeicthus at December 18, 2002 09:55 PM
Ah. So, according to Will Allen, there's absolutely nothing immoral about HCA/Columbia's takeovers of nonprofit hospitals for the purpose of throwing poor patients out on their ear, because the takeovers were instituted entirely through "voluntary" deals with the hospital executives (through effective bribery) and because that bribery was entirely legal. That is: (1) there are never any immoral laws, and (2) voluntary agreements between two people to harm a third are never immoral.
Well, this isn't really surprising; judging from my earlier encounters with Allen, he's definitely on the sizable nut fringe of the libertarian movement. Note that comment of his objecting to any "government regulation of the health care industry" -- which meshes nicely with his furious insistence on Brad DeLong's website that ALL income redistribution through taxes from the rich to the less rich is automatically (for some reason he could never explain) immoral. Which puts him very far to the Right of Milton Friedman.
Posted by: Bruce Moomaw at December 19, 2002 07:11 AM
Mr. Moomaw, you are a thug, who has consistently misrepresented my views, either out inability to read, or intellectual dishonesty. Now, before I stand accused of engaging in the ad hominem attacks that characterizes most of your writing, let me be specific to as to why you are a thug. You have plainly stated that, in you view, violence is legitimated whenever a majority decides it would like to have another entity's property, and the majority comes to the (self-serving) decision that the entity being coerced via implicit violence doesn't deserve to have the property more that those doing the taking, regardless of the fact the coerced entity originally gained that property via voluntary agreement. This is a common attitude among those who spend their lives in prison cells, which is why I attribute to you the thuggishness of the common mugger.
Now, as to my beliefs, which you have misrepresented. I do think some property transfers, enforced via state-sponsored violence, are legitimate when the absence of such transfers might lead to greater violence, particularly violence in it's most pernicious forms, anarchy or tyranny. Sorry, material desire, combined with the envious belief that some people have property that they don't deserve to have more than we do, just doesn't cut it, in terms of legitimating violence. The only legitimate use of violence is to reduce violence, and most coercive property transfers (baseball stadiums, ethanol subsidies, social security payments to those able to provide for their material needs without them, etc.),although probably not all, don't clear this bar.
A society in which substantial numbers of people would face destruction absent transfers is a society in which anarchy or tyranny might plausibly threaten, so tranfers to people unable to meet their basic material needs via volunatry agreement are legitimate. Given that one of the poor's major health problems is morbid obesity (for the first time in human history), it can be said obtaining sufficient calories for comfort is a problem for an exceedingly small percentage of the people in this society. Obtaining shelter is a problem for a larger percentage, but it is a problem made hugely worse by state and local regulation of housing markets, which impedes growth in housing stock. Health care is a terrific conumdrum, given how the inevitable scarcity of any valuable good or service is exponentially worse when that good or service is dependent on cutting edge technology. Rationing of such goods and service will always occur, either by price, or restriction of supply by political bodies, which is why at one time therewere more MRI machines in the D.C. area than all of Canada. We use a mixture of price and govenment rationing (ever here of medicare cut-offs?), with decidedly mixed results. I never advocated a completely free market in health care services (again, you seem to have a reading comprehension problem), I merely commented that HMOs were created in the wake of government regulation of health care markets. If you think it a travesty that non-profits have been sold to HMOs, then work to get a law passed outlawing the practice, and in the meantime your anger is better directed at the non-profit administrators than it is at Bill Frist.
Posted by: Will Allen at December 19, 2002 11:26 AM
Progressive taxation, possed according to the Constitution, and by our elected legislators, is not, by definition, coercive.
A common wacko liberatarian fallacy.
As long as you agree with the political system's rules, and abide by them, it's voluntary taxation, and thus, not immoral [using liberatrian logic].
Anyone who does not wish to be subject to U.S. tax laws has an option...they can move elsewhere.
The fact that they don't, symbolizes their AGREEMENT to be taxed.
If you see yourself as being outside the obligations and benefits of our political system, then that's a different story.
But, you can't partake of the benefits of the systm, without contributing to your obligations to maintain it.
Either you abide by the electoral process, or you don't.
Posted by: Hesiod at December 19, 2002 04:25 PM
Geez, does it really need to be explained that all laws, and therefore all actions of the state, are coercive? Why does one suppose that the outputs of legislative bodies are called "laws", and not "suggestions", or "requests"? If laws were not, at base, coercive, we wouldn't have to pay for those charming buildings called prisons. The fundmental purpose of the state is to achieve a near-monopoly on violence, up to and including death, if lesser sanctions are resisted, and apply violence to people deemed legitimate targets. The primary question of of government, then, is what is one willing to kill for? Mr. Moomaw would approve killing to satisfy a property taker's sense that another person had property that he didn't, in the taker's estimation, deserve more than the taker. He believes this regardless if it is a the fact that the other person originally gained the property by voluntary agreeement, which, if it must be explained, means that no party faced implicit violence for declining to particiapte in the transaction. Tax laws, and how legislative bodies decide to allocate such taxes, are no different in regards to their coercive nature than any other law, so by your reasoning, Hesiod, the internment of Japanese citizens 60 years ago would have been entirely legitimate, as long as the internees had also been given the option of exile, since the actions were taken by legal means, approved by the Supreme Court. Sorry, legal legitimacy does not guarantee moral legitimacy, which is one thing that Mr. Moomaw was correct about.
Posted by: Will Allen at December 19, 2002 08:46 PM
"Tax laws, and how legislative bodies decide to allocate such taxes, are no different in regards to their coercive nature than any other law, so by your reasoning, Hesiod, the internment of Japanese citizens 60 years ago would have been entirely legitimate, as long as the internees had also been given the option of exile, since the actions were taken by legal means, approved by the Supreme Court. Sorry, legal legitimacy does not guarantee moral legitimacy, which is one thing that Mr. Moomaw was correct about."
Except, in the case of the Japanese internment, it was extra-constitutinal on its face. The Supreme Court allowed it, but it was directly inimical to explicit liberty protections in the Constitution.
Progressive taxation is explicitly ALLOWED by the constitution. EXPLICITLY.
By choosing to LIVE under our laws, you AGREE to be subject to them. Period.
As an example, if you agree to play an organized sport...you agree to abide by it's rules, and be subject to the sport's rules.
To the extent that coercion is used to enforce those rules, it's coercion YOU HAVE ALREADY AGREED IS APPROPRIATE by your voluntary submission to those rules.
Moreover, it cannot be said that the Japanese internment was agreed to by the internees, because it was totally inimical, and heretofore unprecedented interpretation of the 14th and 15th amendments. It was not "part of the bargain."
Being taxed on your income...IS part of the bargain. It has been so for nearly 100 years. It's not a surprise interpretation of the Constitution by the Supreme Court.
It's not a "questionable" act by an overreaching government.
It's EXPLICITLY permitted by the Constituion.
Therefore, if you live here...you AGREE to be taxed. Period.
The only legitimate method for opposing the level and method of taxation is through electing representatives to change the underlying tax laws, or amending the Constitution.
But...to argue that those laws should be changed because they are "coercisive," is mere tautology, not logic. Moreover, to argue that they are "immoral," BECAUSE they are coercisive, is tautology by bootstrap. In essence, you are changing the definition to suit your argument, rather than making your argument fit the definition.
And, by definition, taxation based upon income isn't "coercisive," or "immoral because it's coercive."
Posted by: Hesiod at December 20, 2002 09:22 AM
"Tax laws, and how legislative bodies decide to allocate such taxes, are no different in regards to their coercive nature than any other law, so by your reasoning, Hesiod, the internment of Japanese citizens 60 years ago would have been entirely legitimate, as long as the internees had also been given the option of exile, since the actions were taken by legal means, approved by the Supreme Court. Sorry, legal legitimacy does not guarantee moral legitimacy, which is one thing that Mr. Moomaw was correct about."
Except, in the case of the Japanese internment, it was extra-constitutinal on its face. The Supreme Court allowed it, but it was directly inimical to explicit liberty protections in the Constitution.
Progressive taxation is explicitly ALLOWED by the constitution. EXPLICITLY.
By choosing to LIVE under our laws, you AGREE to be subject to them. Period.
As an example, if you agree to play an organized sport...you agree to abide by it's rules, and be subject to the sport's rules.
To the extent that coercion is used to enforce those rules, it's coercion YOU HAVE ALREADY AGREED IS APPROPRIATE by your voluntary submission to those rules.
Moreover, it cannot be said that the Japanese internment was agreed to by the internees, because it was totally inimical, and heretofore unprecedented interpretation of the 14th and 15th amendments. It was not "part of the bargain."
Being taxed on your income...IS part of the bargain. It has been so for nearly 100 years. It's not a surprise interpretation of the Constitution by the Supreme Court.
It's not a "questionable" act by an overreaching government.
It's EXPLICITLY permitted by the Constituion.
Therefore, if you live here...you AGREE to be taxed. Period.
The only legitimate method for opposing the level and method of taxation is through electing representatives to change the underlying tax laws, or amending the Constitution.
But...to argue that those laws should be changed because they are "coercisive," is mere tautology, not logic. Moreover, to argue that they are "immoral," BECAUSE they are coercisive, is tautology by bootstrap. In essence, you are changing the definition to suit your argument, rather than making your argument fit the definition.
And, by definition, taxation based upon income isn't "coercisive," or "immoral because it's coercive."
Posted by: Hesiod at December 20, 2002 09:22 AM
I never said any taxes, includung income taxes, were illegitimate, for to contend taxes to be illegitimate is to advocate anarchy, which I clearly said was one of the conditions that the state had a legitimate interest in preventing via coercive measures. It is what the modern state DOES with that tax revenue which is largely morally illegitimate, in that the state becomes a tool by which some entities use violence to obtain what they could not through voluntary agreement, not for any purpose related to preventing still greater forms of violence, particularly anarchy or tyranny, but to merely satisfy the violent taker's material desires. Thus, statists like yourself attack George Bush for all kinds of trivial nonsense, while largely overlooking his greatest flaw, which is the thuggish manner in which he obtained his fortune; using violent state power to obtain others' property, not for the purpose of preventing greater violence, but merely to satisfy his material desire. A huge percentage of what constitutes the activity of the modern state falls in this category, from ethanol subsidies, maintaining uneeded military bases, and yes, social security benefits to people who have the ability to obtain what they need for basic material comfort from their own resources or efforts. Sorry, to live off the coercively taken wages of others, when you have the ability to support yourself, either off your acumulated wealth, or by continuing to work, is just as thuggish as using eminent domain to take land for your private baseball stadium.
Now, I happen to think that property transfers to people truly unable to provide their basic needs is legitimate, since a society in which substantial numbers of people were threatened with destruction due to being truly unable to provide for themselves is one in which the greater forms of violence, anarchy or tyranny might prevail. Fortunately, we have become so wealthy (as stated earlier, this is the first society in human history in which morbid obesity is a significant health problem for "the poor"), that a very low percentage of people are truly unable to meet their caloric needs, and obtaining shelter would be much easier if local and state regulation of housing markets did not impede the growth of housing stock. Medical care is admittedly a terrific conumdrum, due to the political problems of producing and distributing a valuable good or service that has the unavoidable problem of scarcity made greatly worse by it's dependence on cutting-edge technology. To treat the subject adequately requires several thousand word; probably not best for this forum.
Finally, it is always amusing to observe statists rely on Constitutionalism to legitimate the thuggish use of state power. Even if it is conceded that the Japanese internment was unconstitutional, which ignores the reality that whatever a majority of the Supreme Court allows, is , for practical purposes, legally legitimate, the document is itself infinitely malleable, through legally legitimate means, by sufficient majority will. Thus, by your reliance for moral legitimacy on a document that can be changed into anything by legally legitimate means, given sufficient majority will, you have asserted that if a Amendment was passed allowing the internment of ethnic groups, solely due to their ethnicity, it would be entirely morally legitimate, since it was entirely legally legitimate, as long as (given your previous statements regarding tax laws) the ethnic group was also given the option of exile. Sorry, the internment of ethnic groups, based solely on their ethnicity,is morally illegitimate, REGARDLESS of how large a majority supports it, and regardless of whether an Amendment was passed allowing it, just as grabbing other people's property for purely personal benefit, unrelated to the need to prevent anarchy or tyranny, is morally illegitimate, regardless of how large a majority supports that action.
In short, the majority cannot morally self-legitimate it's use of power, it can only do so legally, and to say otherwise is to advocate tyranny by majority. Now, granted, not all cases of illegitimate property grabbing are as obvious as baseball stadiums, or social security benefits to the materially comfortable, taken from the wages of minimum wage employees, so there is considerable room for legitimate debate as to what constitutes legitimate violent coercion by the state. However, to say that the state can legitimately, in the moral sense, do anything it wants, as long as a sufficient majority has explicitly advocated it in the Constitution, is merely advocacy of another form of tyranny.
Posted by: Will Allen at December 20, 2002 11:14 AM
Check out:
http://www.polarisinstitute.org/corp_profiles/public_service_gats/corp_profile_ps_hca.html
for a full profile of HCA's history of wrongdoing
Posted by: Sal at December 21, 2002 02:53 PM
Geez, just what we need -- a republican surgeon stitching up Lott's Southern Racism with corporate corruption.
Posted by: Lisa Casey at December 21, 2002 09:34 PM
Whew, reading Will Allen's impassioned "if only they'd listen to me" and "I'll show them" arguments is great fun. Defending the indefensible, with deceitfully constructed rationalization and fallacious reasoning, punctuated with the "ad hominem" rhetoric he claims to despise is wrong. Using others words without attribution is wrong. Mr Allen's faulty/incomplete philosophic grounding is not concealed by his zeal.
An ineluctable fact remains, there has never been a successful libertarian state, because there can not be. The greater good is not served best by the absence or even minimization of government. Every society, without exception understands this. All but the most unworldly,ivory tower dwelling or uninformed libertarian understands this
Any society that even finds itself in a position to debate the morality of imposing a baseball stadium on a group of landowners, has already found libertarianism a failure in the general, useful only in the limited specifics of contrasting views in an academic setting. Those who think otherwise, in my experience, do that thinking from a position of privilege and comfort, unencumbered by worries of keeping a roof over their heads, shoes on their feet, food on their tables.
Posted by: pragmat at December 23, 2002 12:33 PM
In my experience, those who make assertions not supported by evidence or logical reasoning are intellectually dishonest people with whom it is pointless to engage in dialogue. If you have something to say beyond your unsupported assertions, feel free to produce it.
Posted by: Will Allen at December 23, 2002 12:48 PM
Ahh Mr. Allen, denying facts by labeling them as unsupported assertions is not argument. The simplest, most obvious refutation would be to name one libertarian success story, only one is required to obviate the absolute in my "assertion"
As to the personal comment, your appraisal of my honesty has no bearing on my statement's truthfulness(herring, anyone? red herring?)
What is pointless, Mr Allen is engaging in dialog with an individual who tries to engage in legitimate debate using illegitimate means, who confuses logical reasoning with self-serving rationalizing.
Who uses syllogism to avoid ideas, rather than examin them, then calls it persuasion.
As to your experience? The quality and originality of your argument, the spirit with which you engage others, and the persuasiveness of your conclusions says enough.
Posted by: pragmat at December 23, 2002 04:04 PM
I should have added that in addition to making unsupported assertions, you also erected strawmen, with remarks that implied that I supported an absence of government or a libertarian state. Given that I clearly stated that I believed some state-sanctioned coercive property transfers were morally legitimate, your remarks are pointless, unless "libertarian" is defined in such a manner that most people who label themselves as "libertarian" would reject the title. Similarly, a strawman is erected with the comments about people who have food on their table, etc., ad nauseum, since I clearly stated the necessity of assisting those unable to meet those needs. Also, you attribute to me "self serving rationalizing" despite knowing exactly nothing about my personal circumstances. Given that one cannot know what serves another individual without knowing that person's circumstances, you have made yet another pointless remark, while ironically engaging in the the sort ad hominem techniques you attribute to others. My remarks regarding intellectual honesty were directed at the practice of making unsupported assertions. If the practice is stopped, the remarks are withdrawn. So far, you have written nothing that specifically addresses what you seem object to in what I have written. I am only responding out of curiosity; if you don't have anything specific to say, why bother saying anything?
Posted by: Will Allen at December 23, 2002 05:29 PM
An ineluctable fact remains, there has never been a successful libertarian state, because there can not be.
There might not have ever been a successful libertarian state, but there is a state where libertarianism seems to be the predominant philosophy.
It's called Somalia. Perhaps Mr. Allen should put his money where his mouth is and book himself (and his complete collection of Ayn Rand's scribblings) a one-ticket to Mogadishu.
Posted by: Father O'Blivion at December 25, 2002 12:17 AM
Does fighting titanic battles with strawmen ever become tiresome? To posit a world in which the only two alternatives are either a society in which the state has no legitimate limits to the exercise of power, given sufficient majority will, which is what Hesiod proposed above, or a society that approximates a state of nature, like the Good Father ridiculously puts forth, is so simple minded that one suspects that people who do so are merely attempting to avoid thinking. No Father, if you actually read what I wrote, instead of frothing at the mouth, I have no objection to a state which secures peace and civility, and your pointlesss remarks about Rand aside, I even support state-sanctioned property transfers to those unable to secure basic material needs through voluntary exchange. Now, pick the straw out of your hair, and please, don't bother replying unless you actually address something I wrote, instead of ranting about the output of your fevered imaginations.
Posted by: Will Allen at December 26, 2002 10:35 AM
Does fighting titanic battles with strawmen ever become tiresome? To posit a world in which the only two alternatives are either a society in which the state has no legitimate limits to the exercise of power, given sufficient majority will, which is what Hesiod proposed above, or a society that approximates a state of nature, like the Good Father ridiculously puts forth, is so simple minded that one suspects that people who do so are merely attempting to avoid thinking. No Father, if you actually read what I wrote, instead of frothing at the mouth, I have no objection to a state which secures peace and civility, and your pointlesss remarks about Rand aside, I even support state-sanctioned property transfers to those unable to secure basic material needs through voluntary exchange. Now, pick the straw out of your hair, and please, don't bother replying unless you actually address something I wrote, instead of ranting about the output of your fevered imaginations.
Posted by: Will Allen at December 26, 2002 10:35 AM
