I just stopped by because I respect your "opposition" blog commenting. Like most partisans, you tend toward the sophistic from time to time, but you certainly face more than your share of sophistic rebuttals, so I won't begrudge you the occasional clever-if-not-precisely-true argument. At the very least, you limit yourself to cogent, well-reasoned argument the vast majority of the time, and this particular neocon, at least, appreciates it, even though I disagree with the vast majority of your foreign policy positions.

I respond to this particular post because I find it (okay, everything up to "wanker") either wholly unremarkable or disturbingly disingenuous. Take your pick.

I assume from your "wanker" comment that you think the "completely fair juxtaposition" you present is more than a little ironic. I'm guessing, therefore, that you don't think as I do; namely, that the two passages are not necessarily inconsistent. I agree that the juxtaposition is completely fair, because the two passages do not necessarily contradict one another. I bet that's not how you meant it.

But to get to a wankeresque ironic juxtaposition from the two passages you quote, you have to assume quite a lot. In fact, you pretty much have to assume what you're trying to prove. I take it that your argument can be summed up as follows: "It is disingenuous/immoral/evil defined for Bush to proclaim a vision of 'greater freedom from want and fear' that 'make[s] our society more prosperous and just and equal' while at the same time proposing for confirmation a potential HHS secretary who thinks we should cut Medicaid." We could quibble on semantics, but that's pretty close, isn't it?

But you're either assuming a conclusion with respect to the first excerpt, assuming a conclusion with respect to the second, or both. In other words, your irony works only if you either (1) assume that Bush didn't mean what he said (Bush is evil/his intentions are nefarious); (2) assume that Medicaid cuts are, by definition and without any possible qualification, inconsistent with commitment to the poor; or (3) both.

I'm hardly a Republican, although I don't really know what you call someone who voted for Bush, Feingold, and seven other Democrats in November besides schizophrenic. Still, I think you're not being terribly fair here on several fronts. First, reasonable minds can and do disagree on the best ways in which to "make our society more prosperous and just and equal." Although the tyranny of the anecdotal is a worthy foe, honest policy prescriptions cannot focus solely upon the inevitable negative effects a policy will have on some individual or group of individuals. Rather, policy must have as its primary goal the greater good. It is therefore not evil or disingenuous a priori to argue that a more prosperous, just, and equal society will result from the curtailment of social programs that potentially have the effect of limiting rather than creating opportunity. (Note: I don't agree with this proposition completely, but neither do I reject it as dishonest, evil, or masking some nefarious hidden agenda of unjust self-enrichment).

Second, Sec'y-designee Leavitt's comments may simply reflect fiscal reality, which would not in any way place them in conflict with the aspirations Bush offered in the first excerpt. Even if we can all agree that Medicaid is the niftiest program since [insert your favorite federal entitlement here], that we might not be able to fund it to the same extent it is currently funded hardly calls Bush's sincerity into question. I would LOVE to have a secure country overflowing with milk, honey, abundance, and free state-of-the-art healthcare for all. I'd also like a Ferrari Modena, a house in Aspen, and a private jet. But neither is going to happen. There will ALWAYS be resource constraints, there will always be scarcity, and there will therefore always be priorities. That you may not agree with the priorities Bush has set may make him (or you) wrong, but it makes neither of you wankers.

To be honest, I didn't put nearly as much thought into the post as you did into your comment ... just venting while in a bad mood.

But to answer your rebuttal, I simply don't believe that cutting people off from Medicare will make them better off, especially given the current spiraling cost of health care and the decline in real wages in the bottom quintile. All the hand-waving in the world about ownership and responsibility won't change that hard truth.

So when Bush says he's looking out for the weak and making our society more prosperous and just and equal by doing this kind of stuff to people who don't have the political clout to fight back, well then, yeah, he's being a wanker.

(a) I really didn't want to work yesterday afternoon. That's how you ended up with a dissertation. Apologies.

(b) I seem to be one of the (brilliant or misguided, take your pick) few who sees both sides of most debates as worthy of respect. During Clinton's eight years, I ran mostly in conservative circles (Texas will do that to you), and I found myself defending him incessantly from rightwing charges of evil, etc. Now I live in lovely, liberal Wisconsin, and find myself defending Bush from the same charges leveled by the other side. Part of my frustration is that many of these debates are quantitatively and qualitatively unwinnable. The world is not, despite the best efforts of our social scientists, empirically manageable. Your post seems to offer certainty of cause and effect or certainty of motivation that I simply cannot find in the available evidence.

It's absolutely no fun living in my world -- I sometimes think I'd enjoy the ease accompanying ideological certainty. But that isn't my lot in life. Instead, it's on to another day of "You make a good point, but"s for both sides of the aisle.

You're dealing with people who are unabashed and absolutely explicit in their goal of returning America to an imagined 19th century utopia. But guess what? Most Americans didn't really like it, which is why they agitated for change.

So that's one comment.

Secondly, there are, in fact, things we can manage empirically. Such as: are incomes in the bottom quintile rising in real terms are not? Are medical costs rising at an alarming rate or not? Given what we know about those trends, how likely is it that people cut off of Medicaid will be able to "own their own healthcare?" It's a sick joke.

Some Republicans are honest and good people, and yeah, I consider their arguments. But I don't see why these particular folks deserve the benefit of the doubt or my respect, frankly. I think that they're a bunch of liars and ideologues. These people get busted for falsehoods all the time (here's one example), and I'm not really interested in spending the time to take them seriously and figure out the "good parts" of their economic agenda.

It's not worth the effort.

typo.

I think he's just being a politician here. Politicians always claim that they'll help people that they don't really intend to help. For example, I don't think Kerry really intended to do anything about outsourcing. He just knew that the impression that he would played well among those who feared for their jobs.

So I do think wanker's a bit strong. At least in this case. :)

Here is some empirical support. (via TAPPED)