September Soundings

Soak the rich! According to the Center for Responsive Politics, 92 percent of all political contributions of $1 million or more went to Democrats in the last election.

Socialist Britain has discovered an element missing from its system of universal health care: responsibility. According to the Guardian (June 3, 2003): "Smokers and overweight people will be asked to sign contracts with their doctors to agree to a programme to quit smoking and lose weight under radical plans being drawn up by the government. In an attempt to remind people of their own responsibilities, the health secretary, Alan Milburn, is examining plans for patients and doctors to agree to a formal programme to treatment."

So is Britain's nanny state going to make its largesse contingent on self-responsible behavior, like the private charities that preceded it? Of course not. "Labour sources insisted last night that the plan, outlined in a Labour party policy document as part of preparations for the next general election manifesto, did not mean patients would be denied treatment if they refused to sign up."

Well, if people do sign up, and then violate their contracts, will they be liable to a loss of benefits? Not at all. Would you let people die in the street? "Government sources made clear last night that it had no intention of forcing people to do anything and treatment would never be denied to people."

How then will these contracts create in a person the sense that he is responsible for his own medical care? They won't. They aren't supposed to. Responsibility in socialist Britain is not self-responsibility; it is social responsibility. Said a source in the Department of Health: "This is about reminding people that resources are finite. If they misuse them they are being denied to someone else." In other words, the nanny state's medical contract is meant to shame citizens. It will tell them not to waste their supper because people are starving in India.

Although our age thinks adults are incapable of governing their own lives, it manages to believe simultaneously that children are best left to their own devices. Doubtless, this weird reversal stems from our Romanticist and Rousseauean heritage, which places all trust in those who are "natural," such as savages, criminals, and kids. Consider, for example, the efforts being made to change New York City's failing educational system, as described by James Traub in "New York's New Approach," the New York Times, August 3, 2003.

"When Michael R. Bloomberg, the mayor of New York and an avowed traditionalist in matters of schooling, gained control over the city's famously fractious and diffusely organized school system, it appeared that one of the bastions of progressive thinking was about to fall.

"But it hasn't—quite the contrary. In January, Mayor Bloomberg's school chancellor, Joel I. Klein, announced that starting this fall all but the most successful schools in the city would adopt a uniform curriculum. The new math program . . . would emphasize understanding concepts rather than mastery of basic operations, and a 'balanced literacy' approach to reading and writing would focus more on children working among themselves than on direct instruction. . . . Here was a form of teaching that built on the child's innate knowledge and love of learning, required virtually no rote instruction and permitted children to acquire information and understanding as a painless byproduct of pleasurable activities."

People sometimes say, "You can't fight city hall." But not even the country's most powerful city hall can roll back a culture's philosophy.

Whom Do Americans Trust?

Question: "Now I am going to read you a list of institutions in American society. Please tell how much confidence you, yourself, have in each one—a great deal, quite a lot, some, or very little." The following percentages combine the percent who answered "a great deal" and the percent who answered "quite a lot."

The military: 82 %
The police: 61%
The presidency: 55%
Organized religion: 50%
Banks: 50%
The U.S. Supreme Court: 47%
The medical system: 44%
The public schools: 40%
Television news: 35%
Newspapers: 33%
Congress: 29%
The criminal justice system: 29%
Organized labor: 28%
Big business: 22%
HMOs: 17%

Source: "Military, Police Top Gallup's Annual Confidence in Institutions Poll," the Gallup Organization, June 19, 2003.