The Dish

The only tiny silver lining of my friend Chris Matthews’ decision to give hate-monger Ann Coulter a platform is that Elizabeth Edwards called in to confront her – in particular the callous way in which Coulter once spoke of Edwards’ dead son. Watch Coulter wither and flinch. It’s rare to see a simple confrontation on cable television of good versus evil. And it’s encouraging to see evil lose.

Get rid of it. My beard is coming along, though. Yesterday it forced a three-year old to point at me on the street and burst out laughing.

Poor Megan. WIki’s judgment:

In summary, despite these minor online whiffs, the subject of this article is non-notable.

You wait. McArdle will prove them wrong.

They engage in a subtler form of well-meant self-delusion, one that tends to inhibit human freedom at best and create statist nightmares at worst:

The problem with liberals is that they tend to think and have thought that human beings are autonomous creatures with ‘rights’; they tend to think that all people are inherently free and rational and are only being prevented from enjoying an enlightened existence – as defined by them – because of the burdens and constraints of tradition, history and religion; they tend to believe in the therapeutic use of the state for the purposes of social improvement and regard human nature as malleable and perfectible through the reordering of social norms and institutions.

Those Who In Elysian Fields Would Dwell
Do But Extend The Boundaries of Hell.

An informal study of the socioeconomic ramifications of social networking.

I found this discussion sane and helpful. A reader also writes:

I work on a project mapping our species’ ancestral migrations around the globe, using DNA as a guide. In my opinion, more interesting than the differences that we find in our genome (which are real) is the fact that our DNA shows that we are, in fact, more alike than previously thought. As recently as 40 years ago schoolchildren were being taught that human "races" developed independently on several continents – mongoloid, caucasoid, negroid, etc.

In fact, our DNA tells us a far more remarkable story.  Roughly 2,000 generations ago, the entirety of humanity was reduced to as few as 2,000 or so individuals living in Africa.  From that small group of survivors, who were living just 60,000 years ago, every human on earth is descended.  60,000 years is a blip on a glacial timescale.  As we migrated around the globe, we left little genetic footprints along the way that can be found in all of us – but all roads lead back to Africa just 60,000 years ago.

See this article from Vanity Fair by the Director of the project, called the Genographic Project, for more information. In fact, you can submit an anonymous sample via  cheek swab and get your own ancestor’s migratory route out of Africa – yes, it’s all non-profit and for scientific research.  Sorry to plug – but it’s relevant given the topic!

We are one but we are different. We should not be afraid of our differences.

They’re out there. Here’s a gruesome flash site celebrating terrorists and suicide bombers. Noah Schachtman comments. Dancho Danchev has a directory.

The presidential scholars who confronted the president on his authorization of torture explain why they did what they did – from CNN. It gives you hope. They have more courage than most of the Congress, and almost all the Republican candidates. A reader adds:

Not only do these Presidential Scholars have more courage, they’re more articulate than most members of Congress and the Administration. I’m saving the link for the times I get depressed about the future of my country. The kids are an inspiration.

I long for the next generation to assume power – here and in Iran.

I guess some readers are a little shocked by this statement:

I see no problem with the wealthy having access to better care than the less wealthy.

It seems to me that this is equivalent to saying: I see no problem with living in a free society. Even if Michael Moore achieved his dream of corralling us all into a British-style healthcare system, private medicine would still endure in America. In fact, you’d have to make it illegal to prevent the wealthy having access to better care, newer drugs, faster service, better doctors. I know some leftists would gladly prevent the successful from getting better healthcare, but it won’t happen in a free country.

So the choice we have is simply whether it’s better for the government to provide a basic safety net and let the private sector do the rest, or whether government should manage almost the entire healthcare sector as a public good and let the wealthy opt out if they wish. Either way, the wealthy get a better deal. That’s what happens in Britain: you get taxed to pay for mediocre, rationed healthcare, and then you have to pay privately if you actually want, say, an operation on time, or a procedure not yet planned for in the bureaucrats’ latest five-year plan. As I said, I don’t see a huge threat to good healthcare from a Romney-style reform, that tries to bring in more people into the system. I’d like to find ways to help many more of the working poor to afford insurance. But there’s a creeping logic here. Once the government concedes it has an obligation not only to provide healthcare for the truly needy, but for everyone, and everyone equally, the floodgates open. When the market for something is infinite – and who doesn’t want better and better health in an era of technological advance? – rationing is essential. Either the market rations it, or government does. I know which one I trust more.