Christina’s Common Sense

To be accused of “McCarthyism” is among the highest criticisms a politician can receive. It carries with it connotations of wild-eyed Red-scare-era witch hunting. The expression, of course, finds its origin with the infamous Sen. Joseph McCarthy (R-WI) in the early 1950s. The typical History 101 story goes as follows: Joe McCarthy needed a reelection platform, so he decided to go after Reds in the American government. Of course there were none, and McCarthy drank himself to death a few years later.

If that’s what you thought, M Stanton Evans stands ready to tell you why it’s wrong. And he does a darn good job.

As I’ve said before, I always like to challenge conservative authors to convince my Liberal Hat of how wrong it is. Evans could do it. Not only could he do it, he did it splendidly. I cannot imagine the patience Evans must have had to go through all that information and distill it into a 600-page book. That may seem like a lot, but Evans gives about 1200 pages’ worth of information in those pages.

Don’t be fooled—the book is deep. I will probably have to read it a few more times before I can make total sense of it. Evans combs through an unbelievable number of documents and weaves them into a historical account that feels like a spy novel (which is basically what the Red Scare was). And if you had any doubts about the authenticity of Evans’ research, he fills up pages and pages with scans of unadulterated original documents proving the existence of not just communist sympathizers, but actual Red spies within the State Department.

So yes, Evans did convince my Liberal Hat that it had been wrong about Joe McCarthy all these years. I defy anyone to read this book and maintain with good conscience that the History 101 story about McCarthy is true. Evans also informed my Conservative Hat, which had a nagging suspicion that McCarthy may have been right after all (after all, anything accepted by the respected historical community it automatically deserves a second look). If you want the other side of what you learned in History 101, go read Blacklisted by History.

It seems like there’s an advocacy group for everything these days. Everything from disability to skin color runs to the government for money and advocacy. The blind are no different. Yesterday, a DC appeals court ruled that the government must redo paper currency so that blind people can identify what denomination of bill they are holding.

I know I’m going to come across as heartless and cruel here, but are blind people starving to death because they can’t figure out what bill they need to pay for their lunch? I sincerely doubt it. They’ve obviously figured something out. Beyond that, how much is this going to cost? I don’t have an exact figure, but it can’t be cheap. Can blind people not think of any way to design their own system for categorizing bills?

I’m sure they can. But we don’t live in a society where we do things ourselves anymore. We live in a society where we run to the government and hold the rest of the country hostage when things don’t go our way. The country is now going to have to spend billions of dollars to take care of something that can be taken care of without government help.

Loss of sight is a terrible thing to live with. But so’s a learning disability. I happen to have the latter. There are certain limitations that come with it. One of these is that I will probably never be able to balance my own checkbook. That stinks! But I’m not going to go to my bank and demand that they revamp their checkbook so my life can be easier. I use a calculator, or ask my parents for help. This is part of having my particular disability, and I’ve managed it without help from Uncle Sam. Is it impossible that blind people might be able to do the same?

I know what you were thinking: Since Sam Adams discontinued the freelancing program I’m finally going to shut my big mouth and leave you all alone. You thought wrong. I may be volunteer labor now, but I’m still going to maintain this blog as time permits.

Over the weekend, famous and infamous Massachusetts senator Ted Kennedy was diagnosed with brain cancer. Naturally this sparked some concern, even among evil and misanthropic Republicans such as Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-KY) who led a prayer meeting for Kennedy this morning. Of course questions abound: Is it fatal? How advanced is it? Whether or not the cancer is fatal, will the senator be able to serve?

I personally do not believe this is Ted Kennedy’s last stand. It can’t be! Kennedys don’t die of cancer. They die when people shoot them, or by playing flag football on skis, or when they mistake a lighthouse for a star and crash their airplane into it. Cancer would be far too mundane a way for a Kennedy to go out.

In all seriousness, however, this is going to cause quite a political shakeup even if Kennedy survives. He has basically run Massachusetts politics, and the US senate, for four decades. If Kennedy is no longer able to serve, it’s going to mark the end of a political era.

Also in all seriousness, I must now cement my status as an evil and misanthropic Republican by wishing the senator and his family all the best and remembering them in my prayers. Much as I despise Kennedy’s senatorial record, brain cancer is no small potatoes and this is going to be a hard time for the Kennedys and their friends.

The government has repeatedly demonstrated its incompetence to run anything. From car registration to education to its own (all too numerous) agencies, the government has done nothing but make life more complicated, more expensive, and lower in quality. Yet for some reason there seems to be this idea that when it comes to extending health coverage to every living human being in the country, government will miraculously be cured of its inherent flaws.

This notion, of course, has been proven wrong many times by our neighbors across the pond, who now have such a healthcare crisis that they are implementing steps to return to a more free market healthcare system.

The problems with British healthcare include do-it-yourself tooth extractions, critically ill patients being left in ambulance holding patterns while they wait for a doctor to become available, and mandating that patients discuss only one illness per visit. As if that weren’t enough proof, Canadians (who also have universal healthcare) are coming to the US to get the medicine they need—and some of them are suing their government to pick up the tab.

American healthcare is a mess. I won’t deny that. But we must not confuse the need to fix it with the idea that it is the government’s job to do so. How much would you trust a friend who kept letting you down? Better yet, how long would he be your friend? Not long, I’ll bet. So why do we trust the government when it keeps letting us down and its programs are shown not to work? I can’t see why. Our healthcare system needs help, but government action is demonstrably not the answer.

What would we ever do without the FDA?

If you’re a typical American, you probably think we’d all die. We need the FDA to approve drugs so they don’t kill us, right? If it was left to the drug companies they’d never test anything and we wouldn’t know if that bizarre vitamin concoction we just bought at Walgreen’s is safe or not.

To quote Capt. Teneal of MXC, “Well, you’re wrong.” The FDA is not keeping us safer. In fact it misses many side effects, some of them very dangerous, when approving drugs. In addition, the near decade it takes to put a drug through the federal bureaucracy leaves critically ill patients with fewer options. A drug that could save a cancer patient’s life is denied him because it’s only 6 years into the approval process. Honestly, if you were dying of cancer would you not take a drug that might kill you and instead live with cancer that will kill you? According to Mom and Dad Government, it’s better for you to die than take a chance on an unapproved drug.

The FDA is failing us. It’s that simple. We don’t need to reform it. We don’t need to fix it. We need to get rid of it. Doctors who make drugs aren’t going to stay in business very long if they make drugs that kill their customers. That’s bad business. Drugs that don’t work won’t stay on the market very long, just like cars and air conditioners and computers that don’t work. People stop buying them.

I admit some part of me’s a little nervous about leaving substances I put into my body to the market. But the government sure isn’t working. When something’s not working, you don’t keep doing it. You abandon it and try something else. The FDA’s not working. Let’s hang an “Out of business” sign on its door and try something else.