Healthcare Sadism — How Pain Solves Everything

For at least a decade, I equated cars with freedom.  When I had no car, life had little meaning.  The problem was that for most of the same decade, I lived below the poverty line.  I earned about $100 per month for getting my veins drained twice each week at the local plasma donor center.  Besides that, I worked at odd jobs and attended college.  My income was barely enough to pay rent, buy food and purchase gas.  I’m not sure why any girl would have gone out with me, especially since I was studying philosophy–not exactly considered to increase my earning potential.  Meager income meant an inferior car, and then only if I learned how to fix it.  Out if sheer necessity, I became a better than average mechanic.  I once fixed the alternator on my ’72 Mustang Grande with an athletic supporter.  I pity the poor man who inherited my car that was more duct tape than metal by the time I sold it.

But because of the pain, I can now fix cars.  The behavior that enabled my mechanical prowess was entirely motivated by pain.  Pain changes everything…often for the better.   Innovation is pain’s greatest byproduct.  Consider the following formula:

Opportunity = Number of users raised to the power of pain.  Or O = U^P.

The greater the number of users and the greater the pain, the greater the opportunity.  For example, several years ago celebrities started sporting sparkling white teeth.  This caused pain in non-celebrities, and there was a great surge in teeth whitening procedures.  You could go to your dentist, pay $500 and get your teeth bleached.  Once bleached, you would look a lot more like Brangelina and the pain would shift somewhere else.  Several marketers saw this as an opportunity precisely because the number of users had hit critical mass and they all felt the pain of white teeth envy.  The dirty little secret was that the $500 procedure at the dentist office cost the dentist about $15 in trays and peroxide gel.  Several, including Crest, came up with bleaching solutions that cut the cost of Brangelina teeth from $500 to about $30 for equal results. Where there is no pain, there is no innovation.  There are ways to force fake pain, but it is expensive to do so.  The Apollo missions, for example, were not motivated by the Opportunity/Pain formula (unless you count USSR envy as pain).

The pain formula works for cars, food, handguns, balloons, bikes, computers and about anything else.  Where there is a free market, it works.  That’s why it does not work with healthcare.  There is a free market with elective healthcare like LASIK, and breast augmentation.  With LASIK in particular, prices started at $3500 per eye at the beginning of LASIK popularity and has since dropped to $299 per eye today.  The formula worked.  Opportunity for physicians and researchers occurred because there were several users with the pain of impaired vision and who did not want to wear glasses.  One of the key reasons that it worked is that there was minimal government intrusion into the process.  Any further regulation or subsidy would have caused higher prices.

But in non-elective healthcare, every effort has been spent to reduce or eliminate pain.  The federal government currently deadens 47% of the healthcare pain.  Insurance companies issue policies that shift pain from office visits to monthly premiums.  The company you work for takes away more of the pain by subsidizing your healthcare.  The effect has been that the artificial reduction in pain has removed healthcare from any possibility of a market solution, which would be, by far, the best solution possible.  In fact, I believe that the current 16.6% of GDP now spent on healthcare would be reduced to around 7.5% if free markets would be allowed to govern.

The equation is irreparably impacted.  Opportunity suffers because the pain levels have been drastically reduced.  Sadly, The pain has only shifted and will reappear as deficit spending, higher taxes and other innovation killers.  “But,” you say, “I feel plenty of healthcare pain.”  No, you don’t.  When is the last time you asked your primary care physician about the cost of an office visit?  When is the last time you went healthcare shopping?  You don’t demand cheaper office visits because you have a co-pay or your visit is free because the government is paying for it.  If you were to feel the full pain of an office visit, the formula would kick in and opportunity would be created.  Some entrepreneur would figure out a way to to get you in and out of the office for a much lower cost than is currently being paid.  As people would begin to flock to that doctor, the rest would be forced to become more efficient as well.  Prices would come down for all office visits, or some doctors would advertise themselves as being a superior option and charge more than the others.  Either way, you win.

Example

Since my family has gone to a 10,000 deductible with no co-pay, our healthcare pain has increased, and our decisions have improved.  When one of our children had internal pain that lasted more than two weeks, we took him in to get looked at.  As I stood in line at the front desk, I noticed that I was the only one who was going to pay the full price for the visit.  When asked about insurance, two of the four people in front of me produced an insurance card and paid $20 and $25 respectively for the visit.  The other two were medicare patients.  None of the four asked about the cost of the visit.  When it was my turn, I handed the receptionist my insurance card.  She seemed to consider it for a moment then looked up at me as if to say, “wow, bummer for you.”  She asked how I would be paying for the visit and I told her I would be paying cash.  When I asked how much is was going to cost, she had no answer.  “We don’t know until we see what we need to do,” she said.  We waited in the lobby  for about 30 minutes then were called back into an exam room where we waited long enough to watch about 20 minutes of the movie, Dinosaur.  The attending physician’s assistant ordered a urine test to rule out a kidney infection then gave us referrals to get BOTH an x-ray and an ultrasound.

Here is the problem.  Had I been on a standard insurance plan or had I been government subsidized, I would have gone to the local clinic to get both the ultrasound AND the x-ray.  But since I am paying the full price for both, I asked which would be more likely to be revealing.  The PA asked why I cared.  I explained that since I was paying full price for both, I wanted to do each test in sequence.  If the first test revealed the problem, I would not have to pay for the second one.  The PA said, “well, your insurance should cover both.”  He did not know about my $10,000 deductible.  Think about that for a minute.  I was being advised to waste money at the insurance company’s expense…which ends up being at my expense with the next premium increase.  The price for the visit was $59 plus the cost of the urine test.

The great thing about markets is that you do not need to feel full pain for them to work.  You can still subsidize, but, in doing so, you should never take away the pain that will lead to efficient decisions.  To create a proper healthcare plan the sadist’s principle needs to be to be followed.

• Every healthcare decision MUST be made by people in pain

One such plan would look like this:

Every American can opt in to a $10,000 deductible insurance policy.  Where one cannot be afforded, it will be subsidized by state governments.  People pay full price for healthcare services.  For those that cannot afford the possibility of spending $10,000 per family, per year, the state, in keeping with the sadist’s principle offers a monthly subsidy of some amount based on need.  The subsidy is a monthly amount that, if it is not spent, 50% of the unspent money is pocketed by the family.  Every time the family has a healthcare need, they are asking questions about the price of visits, test probabilities, possible outcomes, etc.

A family of four that makes $35,000 per year would get a $500/month subsidy.  If they went an entire month without seeing a physician, they would pocket $250 cash.  If they exceeded the $500/month, they would have to pay the extra amount out-of-pocket.  If they reached the $10,000 within the year, the insurance would kick in and cover nearly all of the remaining costs for the year.  The critical point is that there would always be pain in healthcare decision making.

With the increase in pain, the OPPORTUNITY side of the equation would be enormous.  Where there is opportunity, prices go down and efficiencies improve.  Here are some sobering statistics.  This year, the federal government will spend, per person,

Per Capita Government Spending in the United States Fiscal Year 2010
	Government Pensions	$3,196 / person
	Government Health Care	+ $3,501 / person
	Government Education	+ $3,372 / person
	National Defense	+ $2,901 / person
	Government Welfare	+ $2,428 / person
	All Other Spending	+ $5,319 / person
	Total Government Spending	= $21,055 / person
	Federal Deficit	+ $5,035 / person

The $3501 healthcare money spent per year on each individual is enough to completely cover a healthy family of four, including premiums to cover the $10,000 deductible.  Most families will get no subsidy, which leaves more in the pot for needy families and will contribute to the reduction in the federal deficit.  Best of all, the market will work its magic and we will see an increase in efficiency and a decrease in prices as pain enables opportunity.

Bill Whittle

As some of you know, Bill Whittle will be coming to speak at SUU and UVU as my guest.  Find several of his links and videos below to get to know him better.   If you are a conservative, you will thank me for the introduction.  If you are a liberal who still believes in dialogue, you will appreciate the effort.  If you are a nanny state liberal, you will wish that I (and he) would just shut up and go away.  He will be at SUU on Thursday, April 8th at 5:00 PM in the Starlight room in the Sharwan Smith Center and at UVU on Friday, April 9th at 10:00 AM in the Lakeview Room (Library 4th Floor).   There will be a special student session at SUU at 2:30 on Thursday.  Contact me for details.  Wild horses couldn’t keep me away.

http://www.pjtv.com/video/Afterburner_with_Bill_Whittle/Dreams_and_Gratitude%2C_Not_Elitist_Attitude%2C_Are_the_Foundation_for_the_Land_of_the_Free/3248/

F-Bomb Decorum

Do all of you know why you were called into my office?

That’s right.  You see, we have a language standard here at the middle school.  Do you know why we have a standard?

No.  We have standards because we want to create a positive learning environment, and we cannot do that when offensive language is used.

Yes, I know you hear it everywhere.  Let me help you understand.  There may be places where talk like that is still not appropriate, but it is common.  It occurs among uneducated people, in crack houses, in locker rooms, on military ships and at seedy bars.  You will not hear it at church, at the symphony or in front of grandma.  If you are around something you respect, you will choose language fit for the occasion.  We require that you respect the learning environment at this school.  It will make for better learning which will improve your life in ways that you cannot see or even imagine.

Sure, an example might be, If you go the the Washington DC for a visit, and if you understand the significance of the history of the United States, you will show great reverence to what you see.  Do you remember the movie, Remember the Titans, when all the players walked through the graveyard?  That was a moment of reverence.  Vulgar language would have been very inappropriate in that moment.  It would have cheapened the experience for all involved, not just the vulgarian.

Sure, I think the White House qualifies as being worthy of reverence.

Yes, the former president did defile it, and he paid a dear price for doing so.  He might have gone down in history as one of the greats, but his lack of respect for his marriage, his high office and the White House itself will forever mar his presidency. He was the object of ridicule for years.

What about the current vice president?

He would not.  I don’t believe it.  He has respect for the constitutional process of making law.  He has respect for the President, his own office and the historic setting.

Okay, lets pull it up…

Wow!  Never mind, kids.  Just go back to class.

American DNA

In his post-Star Wars VI book series, The Thrawn Trilogy, Timothy Zahn introduces Admiral Thrawn as the heir to the empire (also the title of the first book in the series).

Thrawn does not possess the typical dark-side magic of his predecessors.  He is, however, a strategic and tactical military genius.  He is able to formulate battle plans by looking at the art generated by an opponent.  During battle preparation, he would pull up holograms of paintings, pottery, architecture and sculpture, and based on linearity, dimensionality, complexity and several other criteria, make battle plans and decisions.  I was always intrigued by the idea, but it is really no different than what is currently attempted by psychologists, only instead of using art to make causal predictions, they re-create a past and the interpretation of past events.  You can picture the prototypical psychoanalyst saying to a client, “Tell me about your mother….”  Societally, we have had no problem with this even though it implies determinism at the expense of free will.  What we hate is someone telling us that we are or will act a certain way because of our upbringing, ethnicity, education and any other descriptive life predicate, unless we are looking for an excuse for destructive behavior.  Then we claim victimhood.

On a scale of “hard-to-escape” influences, we rank physical DNA as the very hardest.  Large noses, flat feet, stubby fingers, fat thighs and narrow lips can all be surgically improved, but they will get passed on to future generations no matter how much money is spent on cosmetic surgery.  Next on the hard-to-escape influences scale is immediate family culture.  Although escapable to a degree, family styles and culture seem to be carried on for generations.  Easiest of all to escape is generational culture, right?

How many generations does it take for ancestral behavior traits to wash out of a behavioral DNA pool?  Several, according to Malcolm Gladwell, author of Outliers, Tipping Point and Blink.  Gladwell claims that cultural DNA is relentless in its influence. Recently, PJTV’s Bill Whittle did a fantastic video segment on his own ancestry and its influence in his life.  Check it out HERE.

Assuming that there is generational directionality, this country stands unique among any other I can think of.  If you lived in France, England, Scotland, Germany or any other European country in the 18th century, America might have been an option for you if you fit the the criteria.  Here is the short list.

• You felt that there was little upward mobility in your current situation
• You felt oppressed (probably by government)
• You were ambitious
• You were willing to work hard and sacrifice

What was NOT required:

• Wealth
• Higher education
• Family Connections
• Political aspirations

Consider the Emma Lazarus poem placed the at base of the Statue of Liberty:

Not like the brazen giant of Greek fame,
With conquering limbs astride from land to land;
Here at our sea-washed, sunset gates shall stand
A mighty woman with a torch, whose flame
Is the imprisoned lighting, and her name
Mother of Exiles. From her beacon hand
Glows world-wide welcome; her mild eyes command
The air-bridged harbor that twin cities frame.
“Keep, ancient lands, your storied pomp!” cries she
With silent lips. “Give me your tired, your poor,
Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,
The wretched refuse of your teeming shore,
Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,
I lift my lamp beside the golden door”

Suppose that you had the chance to discover a new continent or large island and you wanted to populate it with the people who would give its inhabitants the best chance for prosperity and happiness.  Would you recruit the wealthy,  the scientists, the professors or the politicians? Who would even think of recruiting the homeless, the poor, the tempest tossed and the wretched refuse.  It sounds like a recipe for failure.  And yet, the key that makes it all work is the “yearning to breathe free” line.  Really, I can think of no better population strategy for our new civilization than to seek out those who yearn to “breathe free,” but that is not the topic of this post.

The result of Lady Liberty’s invitation is that there was a harvesting of freedom-loving masses from Europe to the United States (even before it existed as a country).  Europe may have seen this as a boon.  After all, the smart, educated, wealthy people, the politicians, actors, athletes, land owners and business leaders stayed and the lower classes left.  The great irony is that the freedom-loving attribute is by far the most successful prosperity promoting attribute.  Even education must play second fiddle to the love of freedom in the prosperity orchestra.

My argument is that freedom-loving genes are a part of our collective sociological DNA, much more so than you will find in Europe.  I also argue that freedom and equality, both noble pursuits, cannot co-exist.  They are sworn enemies and when one increases, the other necessarily diminishes.  So, in Europe, where there is less freedom-loving sociological DNA, you will see a more tepid response to efforts toward equality than you will in the United States.  This is, to a large degree, why there is so much resistance to universal healthcare in the US and so little of it in Europe.  If freedom and equality were placed at either end of a continuum, your average European is okay with the pendulum swinging much further to the equality side of the continuum than the average US citizen.

Introducing John Galt

Galt is Ayn Rand’s fictitious hero in Atlas Shrugged. He is Rand’s voice as she advocates her socio-philosophical Objectivism. In Atlas Shrugged, societal decline, as defined by Rand, led to a separation of people into two camps, the producers and the moochers. (SPOILER ALERT) Galt and others are star producers and, one by one, Galt recruits the remaining producers into a retreat from society at large in favor of a cloister-like enclave in the Colorado mountains. Once the producers are gone, the moochers self-destruct. “Going Galt” is the process of refusing to participate in a system where one is penalized for one’s virtue, which is production.

Galt Popularity

So why should we care about John Galt or Ayn Rand? The graph below shows how “John Galt” is trending as a Google search term.

Interestingly, the above graph shows trending among internet searchers in the United State.  Google Trends does not even have a graph for the search term “John Galt” from UK, French, German or any other European based internet searches.  Had Rand written Atlas Shrugged for a European market, she would have had a difficult time selling books in the thousands.

Rand and Galt are becoming more relevant mostly due to the wealth shift from producers to moochers..

The pendulum swing to the left or toward equality is going to meet with stiff and increasing resistance at least partially due to social DNA.  Consider California, arguably the most equal state in the union.  Demographically it is the least European state.

• 42.3% White (not including White Hispanic)
• 36.6% are Hispanic or Latino (of any race)
• 12.5% Asian
• 6.7% Black or African American
• 2.6% Multiracial
• 1.2% American Indian

Contrast that with Utah who’s population is nearly 92% posterity of European refuse.  Utah also leads the nation in Google searches for John Galt.  I have not looked at it very hard, but I suspect a statistical correlation between European populated states and those with more diverse demographics and equal versus free states.

Disclaimers

I make no value statements about the relative superiority of equal or free states.

I make no claim that any individual in particular will follow the inclinations of societal DNA.

Conclusion

I have made some broad assumptions here.  One reader pointed out that Maine and Rhode Island are equality trending states and yet very European.  Serious study would require definitions for equality and freedom.  It would take more work than I am willing to invest.  I wrote this to inspire thought and comments from you.  So, go ahead.  Tell me what you think.

Pelosi Logic

A summalogica follower recently sent in the following Nancy Pelosi quote to Dr. Logic.  Dr. Logic will review every submission and decide whether or not to do the analysis.  If analysis is done, Dr. Logic will publish the analysis on this site.  Please send all submissions to Drlogic@summalogica.com.  Here is the quote:

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

When this was submitted, the Doctor thought that it must have been quoted out-of-context.  The quote comes from,
“Pelosi Remarks at the 2010 Legislative Conference for National Association of Counties.” You can read the entire speech here. The paragraph preceding the quote reads,

“You’ve heard about the controversies within the bill, the process about the bill, one or the other.  But I don’t know if you have heard that it is legislation for the future, not just about health care for America, but about a healthier America, where preventive care is not something that you have to pay a deductible for or out of pocket.  Prevention, prevention, prevention—it’s about diet, not diabetes. It’s going to be very, very exciting.”

Because I’m sure this was said off-the-cuff, after all, no speech writer would be this careless, I will ignore its issues.  Now that you have context, here is the quote, again:

“But we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it, away from the fog of the controversy.”

Logic is but a small part of why this is disturbing.  The “fog of the controversy” is hardly the reason that “we need to pass it [healthcare legislation] to find out what’s in it.”  She is hoping that it is a box of chocolates and you never know what you are going to get…but it is chocolates and not guano, she will assure us.

Speaker Pelosi’s logical error is the Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc fallacy. Her assumption that the “fog of controversy” is the cause of the people’s inability to know what’s in the legislation shows her arrogant detachment from true causes.  The arrogance comes from the previous paragraph where, in condescending clairvoyance, she venerates the virtues of the measure that she can see clearly, even “very very” clearly, but that we, the fogged, the governed, will be unable to see.  Such is the condition of the governed.

Speaker Pelosi is correct in saying that, “we have to pass the bill so that you can find out what is in it.” The true reasons are that 1) it is a convoluted quagmire, a complex colossus of cryptic conundrums.

“Senate bill weighs in at 2,074 pages

In the Battle of the Health Bills, the Senate wins out, bulk-wise – weighing in at 2,074 pages.  The House health reform bill was a mere 1,990 pages when introduced.  That means the Senate bill — like the one in the House – runs more pages than War and Peace, and has nearly five times as many words as the Torah.  The table of contents alone is 14 pages.”

The second reason is that, no matter what, there will be vast, unintended consequences.

What if it were precisely the controversy that is lifting the fog of over 2000 pages and unknown consequences?

Dr. Logic does not care for politics.  He wishes to expose and educate all who suffer from logical angst without regard for party, preference, or persuasion.  Please submit the statements you wish to analyze to drlogic@summalogica.com

Reid’s Rhetorical Roast and Why Washington Needs a Logic Lesson

By way of introduction, Senator Bunning is standing in the way of passing a temporary bill that would keep unemployment and other benefits active for a temporary period of time until a permanent measure can be passed. There was a previous vote for a procedure called PAYGO which would require that any bill that required funding would have to be paid for instead of being passed on to our future, that of our children and that of our grandchildren in the form of deficit spending and greater debt. Most of the drunken sailors and prostitutes in the house and senate agreed, probably out of political expediency, that the PAYGO idea at least gave the appearance of spending restraint and voted in favor. When the temporary bill came up, Bunning held their feet to the fire and invoked the PAYGO requirement. It was not well received. Here was dad taking away the credit cards that had been maxed out. The spoiled teens cried, “have you no heart?”

Because I cannot find a transcript of the exchange, I have included a time line sequence for the events as they occur in the video. Please pause the video when each time point arrives and read the discussion for that time point. Of special note, Reid, compared to Bunning, is a far superior orator, but logic is another matter. Reid is strong on pathos and ethos. If logos were king, Reid would have to be drawn and quartered.

9:10 — Red Herring Fallacy. He is deflecting the argument from whether or not there is a violation of PAYGO to “He made it personal.”

9:32 — Modal Scope Fallacy. The argument is that, “Any bill that receives 70 senate votes must be non-partisan. This bill received 70 votes, therefore this bill is non-partisan.” The problem occurs in the first premise. Bunning just got through explaining that a very partisan bill may get some republican votes, in this case around 9 out of 40, due to a political move by Reid called cloture. The logical problem is the scope of the implied word “any,” and in the definition of non-partisan. In the narrowest scope of non-partisan, one Republican vote is enough to receive the ‘non partisan’ label. In the broadest definition, non-partisan would imply significant (probably better than 50%) buy-in from both parties. Reid obviously chose the narrow scope and in so doing committed the modal scope fallacy.

9:42 — Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc. Reid assumes the cause of the receipt of 70 votes on the mentioned bill is that the “bill will do great things for America.” This one is practically laughable. There are so many political maneuvers and back room (enter the prostitutes) deals in the senate, that a bill may receive 70 votes and only be good for, say, Senator Byrd’s state and bad for the rest of the country, but because Byrd was able to cut deals, a bill passes. For a review of Post Hoc Ergo Proctor Hoc, see the following video.

10:00 — Red Herring. Although Bunning opened the door on this one, Reid is evading the core argument and issue which is adherence to PAYGO.

10:31 — This is not a fallacy, but it is Reid’s second slip in which he starts to call it what it is, ‘partisan,’ then corrects himself.

10:43 — Red Herring. The bill Reid mentions is not the one that Bunning has the PAYGO issue with.

10:58 — Denying the Antecedent. Reid’s argument is, “If Y votes for Z, then Y will want to abide by Z. Bunning did not vote for Z, therefore, Bunning does not want to abide by Z. The form is,

If p then q

Not p, therefore not q.

11:30 — Red Herring. Reid is trying to deflect and distract the matter at hand which is, “Should PAYGO apply to the temporary bill in question?”

11:42 — Straw Man Argument/Red Herring/Poisoning the Well/Tu Quoque. I have to admit the masterful rhetorical Reid move here. For the last 2 – 3 minutes he has set up a straw man argument in an attempt to discredit (well poisoning), by distraction (red herring), by saying that Bunning is a hypocrite too (tu quoque). I did not know until this video just how good Reid is at pathos and ethos. I stand in disgusted awe (akin to discovering a six ft high pile of elephant dung “dude, you gotta see this!”).

11:49 — Another classic rhetorical ploy. Not sure what to call this one…but it works. He just got through calling Bunning a hypocrite then denies doing it.

12:09 — Red Herring. Bunning’s historical facts are not at issue here.

13:25 — Argumentum ad Misericordium/Argumentum ad Superbiam. Bunning is so typical of Republican offerings. The weight of logic is clearly on their side, but the presentations are pins and pokers. He had a great opportunity here to spank Reid and couldn’t or wouldn’t.

14:58 — Bunning undercuts his own argument here. He let Reid distract him from the issue. Here is my recommendation for Bunning, Bunning approaches the podium laughing and clapping. “Nice speech, Senator. You have talked about everything except the issue which is, “Do you plan on honoring your PAYGO vote for this bill or not? Wait, did I say ‘honor?’ I meant to say, will you be able to find the political expediency and enough excuses necessary to ignore PAYGO?”

15:49 — Red Herring

16:16 — Straw Man. Very nice rhetorical move. Reid repositions Bunning’s argument from, “There is a pattern of congressional behavior of passing bills then ignoring them. This one, due to its nature to control spending, will get ignored also. Therefore I will not vote for it.” To, “Bunning has acted as judge, and jury against the Senate by condemning the senators for acting badly in advance of their actions.” Interesting that Bunning was prophetic.

16:34 — Red Herring. What a partisan hack! Although he is right about Clinton and Bush, he just couldn’t resist furthering the deception that, somehow, current democrats care about paying down the debt that they have allowed to explode. I really have to chuckle.

16:56 — Tu Quque

Oh, a world without logical restraint. If it were not so damaging, it would make for great satire.

Greek Riots and Don Gale’s Deseret News Piece

The failure of liberalism and socialism is on display in Greece at the moment. They have created a behemoth entitlement public class that now faces the grim reality of vast cuts, layoffs and future pain. They are not at the end of their painful road yet. Things will get far worse before they get better. As you watch the following video, notice the American parallels. Notice where Greeks place the blame. Notice how many other countries are nearing crisis. Finally, notice deficit spending as a % of GDP. FYI, America’s is 10.6%. It was 1.2% three years ago.

Your Horoscope:

Pain and Suffering

Maybe I’m Chicken Little. G. Don Gale thinks so. He wrote an opinion piece for the Deseret News in Salt Lake City, Utah. Mr. Gale has planted his head firmly in the sand…and his logic is bad. Here is the article with analysis.

Some of my best friends attend tea parties. They’re good people. I would never question their intelligence, their sincerity or their patriotism.

But they remind me of my father in his 90s. He didn’t like daylight saving time. We would invite him to dinner.

“What time?” he asked.

“Six o’clock.”

“Is that my time or dummy time?”

Dad was a good man. The best. I would never question his intelligence, or his sincerity, or his patriotism.

In his prime, Dad would not have concerned himself with “dummy time.” He was busy with his work, his family, his many hobbies, being a good citizen and keeping informed about events of the day. But as he grew older, he grew more crotchety. He lost his companion of 60-plus years. His comfortable life unraveled a bit. He occasionally let slip long-dormant Marine language. And he began to complain about this and that — something he rarely did before. He came up with the term “dummy time” as a focus of his disenchantment with the way things were going.

In his best days, Dad would never have been part of the tea party movement. At the time, he railed against the John Birch Society, a tea party precursor. Logical Fallacy Watch:  The fallacy is the use of Guilt by Association. The burden of proof is on Mr. Gale to show how the John Birch Society is related to the Tea Party.

I don’t know what he might have done had tea parties come along during his crotchety years. In any case, I would not have considered him any less intelligent, sincere or patriotic.

I feel the same about tea party patriots. They’re intelligent, sincere and patriotic … but a little too crotchety. Anything they don’t like is “dummy time.” Logical Fallacy Watch: Weak Analogy.

A is like B.
B has property P.
Therefore, A has property P.
(Where the analogy between A and B is weak.)

In this case, A is the stupidity of daylight savings time and B is the stupidity of unprecedented deficit spending. Apples to apples Mr. Gale? A is merely annoying. B contributes to riots and hosts of other maladies.

One thing I do know is that Dad would have resented the tea party crowd for naming their movement after the Boston Tea Party of 1773. Dad was an amateur historian, and he took umbrage when modern pampered patriots compared themselves with patriots of the American Revolution.
Interesting that Mr Gale points out a weak analogy within one second of committing one.

I don’t know as much about history as my father did, but I share his resentment of comparisons to the Boston Tea Party. No one in the modern movement is risking his or her life … or even his or her Social Security benefits. They aren’t demonstrating against an oppressive foreign king; they’re demonstrating against their neighbors — the people of America who elect thoughtful citizens to represent them in Washington. Tea party believers are not complaining about taxes that support a distant king but about taxes that pay our soldiers, educate our children, build our highways, punish lawbreakers and subsidize protesters’ own health care protection. Logical Fallacy Watch: Straw Man Argument. A straw man argument restates your opponent’s position in a weakened form them attacks it. Tea party protestation is not about, “taxes that pay our soldiers, educate our children, build our highways, punish lawbreakers and subsidize protesters’ own health care protection.” It is about irresponsible, out of control spending that makes America vulnerable on several fronts and burdens our children and grand children with heavy debt so that we can maintain entitlement lifestyles. Every family in America now carries $500,000 in debt burden. Mr. Gale won’t be around to pay it, so why should he care?

It seems more appropriate to compare today’s tea parties with the Mad Hatter’s tea party in “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland.” Alice stumbles onto a tea party where the Mad Hatter, the March Hare and a Dormouse are perpetually at tea because it’s always six o’clock — tea time. The Mad Hatter’s watch tells only the day, but the watch doesn’t work because it’s stuffed with butter. The March Hare dips the watch in tea and plays tricks with the English language. Today’s Mad Hatter is a voice on the radio. His watch is stuck on 1910 because it’s stuffed with vitriolic corrosion. The March Hare is the speaker of the day, playing tricks with language and spouting mostly nonsense. And the Dormouse is the gullible footstool — poked and prodded by the hatter and the hare into believing tales more fictional than factual.

Alice, of course, is the intruder … which means everyone who disagrees. When she makes a comment or asks a question, the radio mad hatter tells her to be quiet, just as the original Mad Hatter insists, “Then you shouldn’t talk,” simply because Alice begins a sentence with: “I don’t think …” At that point, Alice gets up and leaves the perpetual tea party. But as she looks back, she sees the Mad Hatter and the March Hare trying to stuff the Dormouse into the teapot. Not a logical fallacy, but hilarious! It describes so many Liberal/Socialist aims. “The debate is over on climate change.” “All that needs to be said on health care has been said.” Mad Hatter for sure.

So what are we to make of these modern tea parties? Not much … except to hope the Mad Hatter and the March Hare don’t succeed in stuffing the Dormouse into the teapot. After all, the Dormouse is a friend of ours – intelligent, sincere and patriotic.

I’m still too involved with life, family, friends and education to focus much attention on “dummy time.” And despite what the Mad Hatter of the airwaves may say, that doesn’t make me less intelligent, sincere or patriotic than my tea party friends.

I happen to agree with some of Mr. Gale’s assessment of talk radio Nyquil, but his tea party assessment reminds me of another adorable piece of fiction, Pollyanna.

Outstanding Lincoln Quotes

My recent reading of civil war history has given me a greater (if that’s possible) appreciation for Lincoln.  It’s astonishing that the NC Board of Education wants him eliminated from US history curricula.  Here are some profound and fantastic quotes as presented by Bill Whittle of PJTV.

“How many legs does a dog have if you call the tail a leg?  Four.  Calling a tail a leg, doesn’t make it a leg.”

“If I had eight hours to chop down a tree, I’d spend six hours sharpening my ax.”

“I’m a firm believer in the people.  If given the truth, they can be depended upon to meet any national crisis.  The great point is to bring them the real facts.”

“We are not enemies, but friends.  We must not be enemies.  Though passion may have strained, it must not break the bonds of our affection.  The mystic cords of memory stretching from every battlefield and patriot grave to every living heart and hearthstone all over this broad land will yet swell the chorus of the union when again touched as surely they will be by the better angels of our nature.”

Amen!