CC08 - Sex Selective Abortion

A Tool of Gendercide?

Recently, Mark Warawa, a backbencher of the governing Conservative Party of Canada, put forth a private member's bill in the House of Commons (M-408) asking the House to condemn sex-selective abortions.  Sex selective abortions, for the uninformed, is the act of terminating a pregnancy for no reason other than the sex of the fetus.

The rhetoric that is being used to support this motion is the idea that female fetuses are the primary target of sex selective abortion, and thus, as part of our society's focus on eliminating violence against women (since women are, apparently, the only members of society who should be exempt from violence), this should include the defense of female fetuses from the sexual violence of sex selective abortion.

Now, I will accept that there can be a cultural impetus for male preference when it comes to children, particularly in China and India, but I do not accept that this is a wildly practiced act in western countries and cultures.

However, as to be expected, the Opposition parties, the NDP and the Liberals, are slamming the motion as a 'back door attempt to reopen the abortion debate."

Now, there are two sides to this debate, and from where I'm standing, both sides are heavy on ideological rhetoric, short on reason, and seem to be missing a major point.

On the right, we have the Conservative back bencher who is advocating for the prohibition of sex selective abortion.  The justification being that sex selective abortion is used to discriminate against female fetuses and is, therefore, a kind of 'violence against women', something liberal western democracies seem rabid about preventing.

Now, there seems to be two schools of thought about this proposition, the first being that the motion is genuine, and is a sincere attempt to help prevent sexual discrimination against females.

This is something I must challenge, as I think the case has been made time and time again that the whole idea of preventing 'violence against women' or 'sexual discrimination against women' is inherently sexist and discriminatory by the very nature of the intent.  It can be argued and reasonably demonstrated that by advocating against "violence against women" or "sexual discrimination against women" one isn't interested in preventing violence or sexual discrimination in and of themselves, but instead ensuring that only men are the victims.  These positions are explicitly pro-female, and implicitly in support of violence and discrimination against males.

The second school of though about the back bencher's motion is that this is a sneaky attempt to get the foot in the door with banning abortion, and that using the "protect teh wimminz" hysteria as justification is simply a way to use emotion to blind people against the encroaching tyranny.

Again, I don't think this is a rational assumption either.  The idea that the government is just aching to stick its fingers into everyone's pregnancies and will use any means necessary to do so is hyperbolic and ridiculous.  The House isn't half filled with Snidely Whiplashes with dastardly plans.

I think it far more likely that the truth is somewhere in the middle, that abortion is seen by some on the right as a violation of a fetus' right to life and that sex selective abortion just adds bigotry into the mix.  Murder is bad enough, they seem to think, but sexual discrimination AND murder...that's a hate crime.

On the left, though, we have near unanimous opposition to the motion.  The opposition is based less on the principles involve, I think, than it is on simply political wrangling.  After all, the NDP wouldn't be a good opposition party if they ever agreed with the Government.

One group that is oddly opposed to the motion, though, are feminists, and this is where I think it gets really interesting.  One would think that they'd jump at the chance to support a motion that apparently is motivated by preventing violence against women, but they claim that the right of the woman to choose is absolute, even if it means that those women are choosing to sexually discriminate against female fetuses.  This ignores the whole issue of how choosing whether to have an abortion or not is a right that only women have, which inherently makes it sexually discriminatory, particularly when it's held to be 'absolute'.  I would go more indepth about that avenue of thought, though, but I don't think it's completely relevant to this issue.

A more sinister interpretation of the feminist position, though, isn't that sex selective abortion is abhorrent to them, and that they have to hold their nose when accepting it in order to support a woman's right to choose for herself.  Instead, consider that there are feminists (a quick browse through Radfemhub can easily support this point) who advocate for the eugenic cleansing of males from the populace, and the whole idea of sex selective abortion makes them giddy with glee.  If they cannot legislate a ban on male children overtly, then perhaps they can simply abort males into extinction.  Feminists who advocate for aborting male fetuses simply because they're male would be unable to do so if sex selective abortion was prohibited.  Sex selective abortion can be used as a tool for 'gender-cide', as Mark Warawa contends, but he seems to miss the point that male fetuses can (and presumably are) be aborted simply because they're male.

China and India may have a cultural bias against female children, but western society has a demonstrable ideological bias against males, and I think the concern over sex selective abortion being used as a tool to kill off female children misses half the problem.

CC07 - MRAs Behaving Badly

When Activism Gets Stupid

A few weeks ago, I challenged JtO, in a comment on one of his videos, to stop saying things with which I agree.  I think my exact phrase was "Dammit, JtO, why don't you ever say something I can disagree with?"  My point being that he usually speaks sense, and there is very little with which I could take issue in his positions.

Anyone who knows me personally will know that I love to debate issues, and I will point out any flaw I can find in any reasoning from any person who chooses to share his/her opinions.  To me, this is the way that I distinguish good information from bad, how I separate sound conclusions from unsound.  Any idea worth accepting is an idea worth challenging, and a major part of my character as a sceptic is to challenge ideas to which I'm exposed.

So, I tended to seek out questionable statements or conclusions made by JtO (and others, of course, I don't just pick on him.  I've rifled through the posts of GWW, RockingMrE, and TheIgnoredGender, among others, all looking for errors in reasoning that I could point out.  After all, any idea that cannot withstand some criticism, isn't worth accepting or believing in) over the dozens of videos and articles he's written.  And, like many of the other MRAs to whom I am subscribed, I've been unable to find any serious flaw in his reasoning or conclusions.  So, in a sideways compliment, I exclaimed "Why can't you ever say something I can disagree with?!"

It seems he's taken that comment to heart.

Well, that's a little hubris on my part.  I don't know if he even reads my comments, or if he did/does, remembered that one in particular.  But, it seems that JtO has put forth something that I can actually oppose.

In his most recent video, he talks about how well the Men's Rights Movement in Vancouver is going, and how they're hosting an anti-misandry summit at the end of September that they're calling "Mancouver, 2012".  In this video, he refers to Christy Clark ejecting men from the political process (which I think is the far more pertinant issue) but only briefly.  The point of the video is to promote a petition from VancouverMRA (the activist group of which he is part) that asks the government to officially rename Vancouver to Mancouver.

Now, I'm a bit confused by this.  On one hand, if this is a publicity stunt designed to draw attention to the Man-couver 2012 summit, or simply satire made in response to some other undisclosed petition by feminists that is just as ridiculous, then it's pure genius.  However, when I asked him to clarify, and by his own statements in his comment section, JtO  continuously asserts that they're perfectly serious.  It's not a joke.  Men built Vancouver, and thus, it should be called Mancouver.

The snowball rolled on from there.  Calls for renaming cities all across this country, such as Manilton and Manmonton, and even the country itself, Manada, poured in.  It started getting silly and absurd, and through it all, JtO was asserting that they were perfectly serious.

Now, I don't know if by "perfectly serious" he means "completely legitimate".  He seems to accept that the premise of the whole thing is ridiculously silly, but when told so, he simply answered with "Yes, but have you signed the petition?"

Like I said earlier, there are only two options that I see, and at the risk of setting up a false dichotomy, I'm going to lay them out here.  If there's a third option, I wanna hear it, but these are the two that I see, and to me they're mutually exclusive.

The first possibility, is that he's being completely facetious, that this is a publicity stunt or satire designed to illustrate the absurdity of a similar petition or claim being made by another source (of which I am unaware).

The more I read through the comments section, the more I am inclined to believe this possibility.  As one of the comments stated "It's [the petition] a reminder to a flaming bigot that men built the city that has her in office."  I think, from context, that this commenter is referring not to the mayor of Vancouver, but the Premier, who, as I alluded to earlier, has been banning men, from other politicians all the way down to the serving and custodial staff, from her political meetings.

The second possibility is that he's dead serious, that he denies any role that women played in the development and sustenance of Vancouver as a city, and thus feels completely justified in demanding that it be renamed to reflect this.

When I challenged the absurdity of this assertion with the statement "Lets swap the roles and see if this is just as absurd. If feminists were to advocate renaming the city "Femcouver", would it still be justified? I think not." he replied, "Rename it Femcouver? Absurd, females didn't build the city."

In the end, it seems reasonably clear to me that this is a simple tongue in cheek action, that, despite his assertion to the contrary, isn't a serious initiative.  He doesn't honestly believe that Vancouver should be renamed Mancouver.

My issue with this whole endeavour, though, serious or satirical, is that it will likely jeopardise any credibility the MRM has.  The first petition to government from this group (to which I am privy) and it focuses on the arguably irrelevant detail of the city's name?  It makes us all look like fools.

I draw the analogy with the people who wanted french fries to be renamed "Freedom Fries" when France refused to support the US in war.  They were never taken seriously again, and I fear that this will be the future for MRAs if this plan goes on.

Even as a publicity stunt, this carries with it danger, I think.  If this draws people's attention to the MRM, even peripherally, do we really want this petition to be the first thing people learn about us?  It seems like all it will succeed in doing is making people think that if the name of the city is the biggest issue we care about, then we're not worth listening to anyway.

The issue doesn't stop there, either.  An MRA from Edmonton recently exclaimed excitement and glee to me about a news story on the CBC talking about how the Fringe Festival posters were 'vandalised' and 'defaced' with advertisements for the Edmonton MRA group.  While it means that the MRM is being talked about on the CBC, it also means that it's being associated with vandalism, no matter how benign.

Now, while the recent campaign of postering in Vancouver that resulted in a feminist assaulting a construction site safety officer didn't even make the back page of the community newsletter, the simple stickers used by the Edmonton group made it to the CBC.  Not to mention that the posters put up by both the Vancouver and Edmonton groups are regularly vandalised and defaced.  This goes to show that bad behaviour by feminists is ignored, but bad behaviour by anti-feminists is Front Page News™.  We're already fighting an uphill battle, in my view, after fifty years of feminist doctrine influencing public zeitgeist, and we need all the public goodwill we can get.  It seems to me that these initiatives, the petition to rename Vancouver, and the vandalism of unrelated advertisements in Edmonton, do nothing to further the goals of the MRM beyond garnering publicity, and that publicity is gained at what cost?

After all, how can we expect to be taken seriously or respected if we do not behave in a serious or respectable manner?  For us at this time, bad behaviour, even relatively harmless bad behaviour, has a disproportionately harmful effect that, in my opinion, far outweighs any benefit such behaviour may generate.

CC06 - Circumcision

Circumcision.  Particularly, infant circumcision.  That's right, this post is about the wilful mutilation of an infant's genitalia.

In late June of this year, a German court in Cologne declared that the act of circumcising infants was illegal and banned the practice.  This story was shared around the Men's Rights community to much celebration, such as the National Coalition for Men, because the wilful mutilation of a baby boy, against his will, is a perfect example of the misandry in society.

At the beginning of the July, John the Other, a well known Men's Rights Activist, a regular contributor to A Voice for Men, and a Vlogger on Youtube, posted an article titled "Promoting the Mutilation of Infants" about how a writer for the Huffington Post named Sheryl Saperia had authored an article in which she cavalierly declared that circumcision wasn't mutilation and that everyone needed to shut the hell up about it.  It was even titled "Male Circumcision is Not Mutilation.  Period." declaring before it even starts that anyone who opposes circumcision on the grounds that it's malicious and causes irreversible harm is just plain wrong.

The dictionary defines mutilation as "an act of physical injury that degrades the appearance or function of any living body."  Seems to me that circumcision does both.

Now, I don't read the Huffington Post, mostly because drivel like this is published by it, so I didn't know about this article until after JtO alluded to it in his article for AVfM.  So I looked it up, and immediately several things jumped out at me about it.

The first thing she declares is "neither the right to security of the person nor to gender equality should operate in such a way as to proscribe male circumcision on the grounds that it is comparable to the justifiably prohibited custom of female genital mutilation (FGM)."

There is so much wrong with this sentence, I don't even know where to start.  She is basically saying that cutting off the foreskin isn't anything like cutting off the labia, and therefore doesn't qualify as 'security of person'.  She also seems to say that gender equality doesn't apply because female circumcision is justifiably prohibited.  The implication, of course, being that male circumcision isn't justifiably prohibited.  Then, by using the term 'circumcision' for the male and 'mutilation' for the female, she immediately sets the tone for the whole article.  To her, male circumcision is clinical and sterile and medical, whereas female circumcision - ahem - I mean MUTILATION is violent and cruel and gratuitous.

She goes on to list how the WHO characterises the two surgical procedures, and how the WHO says female circumcision is so much worse than male circumcision.  She says that there's no strong medical evidence that shows male circumcision as harmful, and thus opposition to it is unjustifiable.  She says that Jews and Muslims must circumcise their sons by religious mandate.  She even compares the prevention of the circumcising of Jewish boys to genocide, which is patently absurd.

In the end, she makes a dozen or so arguments in favour of mutilating the penis of an infant only days after he is born, and every single one is based on negative reasoning.  She not once says why we should circumcise a boy, but instead lists dozens of reasons as to why we shouldn't not circumcise a boy, meaning that she holds no reasons to support circumcision beyond rebutting objections to it.

But every single one of her rebuttals misses the most important point, the point on which my personal objection to circumcision is based, and the point that shows the circumcision issue is paramount to the Men's Rights Movement.

Not once does she even consider whether the infant has the right to decide his own fate.

I made this argument in a forum in which JtO's original article was linked, stating that I was disgusted with how nearly every person who challenged the position that circumcision of infants was wrong did so from the perspective of "You can't oppose male circumcision on the grounds that female circumcision is bad, because they're different."

These people consistently seem to miss the point.  We oppose circumcision not because female circumcision is wrong, but because the infant doesn't choose it.

Let me say that again.  THE OPPOSITION TO CIRCUMCISION IS BASED ON THE FACT THAT THE INFANT ON WHOM IT'S INFLICTED DOES NOT CHOOSE IT.

But Sheryl Saperia doesn't see it that way.  She only sees circumcision as it relates to women, religion, or law, but never to the infant to whom the penis belongs.

Unfortunately, the MRM isn't free from this attitude either.  The following is a list of each argument I was presented in favour of circumcising male children by an MRA, and my associated rebuttal.

• Male circumcision is not mutilation, it's a simple procedure to enhance penis hygiene and to avoid foreskin complications. You cannot compare that to the horrible female genital mutilation which causes a life time of pain and an elimination of sexual pleasure. Rebuttal: Despite being demonstrably false, this argument is irrelevant. The opposition to circumcision isn't based on the alleged harm or benefit of circumcision.
• It is my right as a parent to choose for my son. Rebuttal: You do not have the right to make this decision for your child. By doing so you deny his humanity, his bodily sovereignty, and his will.
• Circumcision during the first week after birth is painless, and totally risk free if done at a hospital by a competent surgeon. Rebuttal: Again, this is an unproven hypothesis, in fact there's evidence to show that it is in fact quite painful, judging from how the child wails in sheer terror and agony during the procedure. Regardless of this fact, this argument is again irrelevant. The opposition to circumcision isn't based on how much pain it causes.
• Parents make decisions regarding medical treatment for their children all the time. It is part of their duty as responsible care givers. Parents authorize the administration of vaccinations and medicines to their children without their consent, authorize surgical procedures such as tonsillectomies and dental correction. Circumcision is no different. Rebuttal: This is where we wander into the argument for the relative harm and benefit of circumcision. The right of a parent to authorise surgical procedures to be done on their child is based only on correcting harm. The foreskin is not dangerous, it is not poisonous, and it will not cause the child adverse health effects any more than healthy tonsils will. Advocating circumcision on your son to prevent disease is like advocating a mastectomy for your daughter to prevent breast cancer. There is no need to excise healthy tissue.
• Denial of my right as a father to choose for my son is an example of the state taking away the rights of men. Rebuttal: The state taking away your right to choose is no different than you taking away your son's right to choose.
• I cut his nails, clean his hair, and brush his teeth. He cannot do it now, so I must do it for him. Rebuttal: The cutting of hair and fingernails and bathing and brushing of teeth are all maintenance procedures. Hair and fingernails grow back. Bathing and dental hygiene causes no harm. These are not comparable to the irreversible procedure such as circumcision.

In the end, there is no good medical reason to circumcise an infant.  If there is ever a medical need to do so, it would occur after the fact, as a response to a medical need, not as a preventative measure.

But that's just medicine.  As Sheryl Saperia so eloquently stated in her article, there are religious reasons to circumcise baby boys.
In my mind, this is no reason.  Religious doctrine is rampant with illogical and harmful practices that are only done because "God Said So".  Again, for me, this comes down to choice.  Indoctrinating an infant into a religion is paramount to child abuse in my mind, and when that psychological abuse is coupled with physical harm, it becomes even more reprehensible.  If a child chooses to follow in his parent's religion, then he can choose the physical consequences of that decision at that time.  But responsible parents should be teaching their children HOW to think, not WHAT to think, and the same goes for choice.  Teach them HOW to choose, not WHAT to choose.

I've even heard many women support circumcision because they believe that a circumcised penis is prettier.  This is the truly offensive position.  Advocating for the mutilation of an infant for the purely aesthetic preference of women?  That's outrageous!  Consider if the roles were reversed, if we surgically altered our females at birth simply to make them more attractive to men.  Besides, Her Body, Her Choice applies for women.  Why not His Body, His Choice for men?

In the end, the issue of male circumcision (which should rightly be called male genital mutilation) is a central issue to Men's Rights Activists because it is the perfect example of how the rights of males are often routinely denied or ignored simply as a matter of course, and even some MRAs aren't immune to this bias, as demonstrated by the flawed assertions illustrated above.

What we must start asking ourselves, I think, is why we are so invested in the ritualistic mutilation of our baby boys.

I was going to end this post with a meme that I once saw that perfectly encapsulated this whole argument, but I can't find it, so instead I'll describe it.  It shows a picture of a baby boy strapped to a table with the shadow of a pair of scissors falling over his body.  The caption reads "His Human Rights Start When, Exactly?"

Exactly.

CC05 - The Sanctity of Marriage?

Who Has the Ultimate Authority to Sanction Marriage, the Church or the State?

I recently had a conversation with a woman on YouTube, who was asserting the position that the State cannot be trusted with maintaining the binding nature of marriage, and that the power to adjudicate marital matters needed to be returned to the Church.  The idea was that many of the issues that men face today in our gynocentric society when it comes to the forced breakup of their families was due to the fact that a secular system heavily influenced by feminsim was in control of marriage and its participants.

The idea that the marriage is a bad thing for men is a fairly new one.  The prevailing belief seems to be that men use marriage to take their women 'off the market', to reserve a uterus for the gestation of their future children.  Feminists would argue that marriage has long been a tool used by the "Patriarchy" to enslave women in a domestic setting.  Many second wave feminists openly declared that in order to truly liberate women, the idea of marriage had to be destroyed.

"The nuclear family must be destroyed... Whatever its ultimate meaning, the break-up of families now is an objectively revolutionary process." -- Linda Gordon

"We can't destroy the inequities between men and women until we destroy marriage." -- Robin Morgan

Feminist theory and how it's been put into practice has basically removed any benefit from marriage that men ever had, and the tool through which this destruction of the family has been wrought is the State and the Judiciary.  For men, becoming married is now essentially a "full risk, no reward" event.  It is no wonder that many men these days aren't interested in getting married these days.

In all secular countries, there are entire sections of legal code dedicated to adjudicating marriage.  Many of these laws have been designed specifically to remove any power men have in a marriage, the idea being that if the man has any power, then the woman must be oppressed.  While rational people understand that men and women compliment each other in a relationship, feminists in particular, and adjudicators in general, see the relationship as adversarial, in which one party is the submissive victim, and the other a domineering abuser.  And, let's be honest, men are usually painted as the domineering abuser.

Which brings us to the question, should the State remain the adjudicator of marital matters?  I would say...no.

This woman's suggestion was that if we returned the power to adjudicate marriages back to the theocrats, then women wouldn't be able to use the law to coerce money from their husband, and then toss them to the wind and deny them access to their children.  They wouldn't be allowed to seek a divorce simply because they were bored, as many women do these days.  There is very little risk for a woman seeking divorce, and many benefits, so when they tire of the man to whom they're wedded, they can simply say "I'm out", claim 'irrecocilable differences', and then take half his stuff, and half his paycheque and wander off to find a new, better man.  Having the Church in charge would 'fix' a lot of the issues that men are facing due to our legal system and family courts.

So then, should the Churches be back in charge?  To this, I also say no.  I mean, why swap one authoritarian overlord for another?

It seems obvious to me that the nature of a relationship is based on the people who participate in it.  Submitting to an outside authority for the validation of that relationship seems...superfluous to me.  All it can accomplish is detract from an already existing relationship.  Unless one's relationship conforms to the ideals of the authority to which one supplicates, one will invariably find denial and reproach regarding the nature of one's relationship from that authority.  Banning same sex marriages is a perfect example.  ANY authority beyond the people in the relationship has the potential to place limits on what can or cannot be a valid marriage.

When a marriage breaks down, it is then that authority to whom the ex-couple once again supplicates themselves in order for a 'final ruling' on the division of assets, etc., a situation that usually ends in the destruction of one of the parties.

The 'sanctity' of marriage is a fallacy, in my opinion.  Sanctity is subjective, and the only people who can declare the nature of their relationship as 'sacred' are the people involved in that relationship.  I think the only way we can honestly be fair about marriage is to remove ALL external authorities from the definition of marriage.

This is what I would propose:

We treat marriage like a business contract.  Each party involved agrees to a list of stipulations and obligations requested by the other(s), and offers a list of his/her own requests from them.  A clause is drawn up that outlines the penalties for failing to adhere to the agreement.  Hell, one could even put a time limit on the partnership.  The point is, that the people getting married are the ones who define the boundaries of their relationship, and they define the penalties for violating that contract.  That way we don't have to worry about the government dealing social issues like 'gay marriage' or 'polyamoury', or whatever the case may be.  And, to quote a YouTube comment: "As for Churches, Mosques, and Pirate Ships, their marriages should be ceremonial only."

In the end, I wouldn't want a government bureaucrat defining my relationship with my spouse(s) anymore than I would want a religious theocrat doing it.  The only people who should have the right to define my relationship should be me and my partner(s).

That being said, there are only two requirements that I would hold as essential prerequisites for these relationships.  All parties involved should be adults capable of giving informed consent, and they should be able to demonstrate said consent.  Other than that, leave the law out of it and let the people decide for themselves.

CC03 - Health Care

Why Health Care is Not a Right

You know, a few weeks ago I was challenged by a feminist to explain why "fair and equal health care" was not a right, mostly because I was arguing that women's insurance being more costly than men's in the US wasn't indicative of systemic gender discrimination. I thought about it and spent about an hour putting my thoughts into a reasonably coherent piece of reasoning.

However, it lead me to think about the nature of our health care system in Canada, about how, specifically, it was more restrictive and less respectful of our rights as citizens than a private system such as the US.

Now, before I get started, allow me to preface myself with a caveat. Socialised health care has benefits and drawbacks just as the private insurance model has benefits and draw backs, so this isn't going to be a "Capitalism > Socialism" rant.  Instead I'm going to try to illustrate how each system's priorities differ in such a way as to radically change the effective result of health care delivery.

Let's look first at the way Canada's health care system is structured. Basically the way it works is that doctors, nurses, orderlies, etc., are all public employees, paid for by the government. All costs associated with offering services are paid by the government through the use of taxpayer dollars or, depending on province, premiums paid by individual citizens. For the most part, what this means is that everyone is supposed to have the same access to health care facilities without concern for cost.

Hospitals, including machinery and equipment, are government owned, built and maintained at taxpayer expense. Doctors, nurses, orderlies, custodians, etc., are all public employees, hired and paid by the government. The health care system is, almost in its entirety, a government bureaucracy, where decisions about health care delivery is made by politicians and bureaucrats, instead of doctors and their patients.

The upside of this is that it ensures that there is SOME kind of health care system available to every citizen to meet his or her medical needs. The downside of this is that it's run from the top down, that decisions are made based on what is best for the government or society as a whole, rather than the patients as individuals.

Now, since this is a social system, and there's only so much money available to pay for services, the concept of a market economy system regulating the prices of health care services cannot work, since there's only one provider of service (the government). So, there's no marketplace within which prices are regulated.

Instead, the government decides how much it will pay for each specific kind of treatment. Usually, this formula is decided by committee, where many different people all debate on what a reasonable fee for each procedure might be, but, in the end, it is the government that decides how much each procedure will cost the system. Then, it uses a cookie cutter method of fitting each patient, regardless of his or her personal needs, into that specific 'mould' for each procedure. What ends up happening, is that the government decides how many of each procedure it can afford to pay for each year, and puts a limit on the number of those procedures that the public system will provide.

If the government decides it can only afford 1000 hip replacement surgeries in a year, and there are 1500 patients requiring hip replacement....well, you can see where we end up. Wait lists that are getting longer and longer as time goes by, simply because the government has artificially limited the number of available procedures.

Another big problem is the cost overrun. Because a socialised health care system has only a single health care provider, there is no competition to bring down prices or encourage innovation. The government just decides for what it will pay and that's the end of that. And, if you're not aware, in Canada, it is illegal to offer private medical services for anything the government is obligated by law to provide. The government basically has a monopoly on delivering health services.

So, consider again the hip replacements. Every year, there are 500 more people being denied services simply because the government decided not to (or is unable to) pay for any more procedures that year, but those patients have no other options within Canada. So, many of them go to the US, where services are paid for by the patients (or the patients' insurance).

Recently there's been a discussion, in Alberta at least, about whether we should be forcing our citizens to head to another country to pay for their medical care in a reasonable time frame. But, because it is illegal in this country to offer medical care that is supposed to be provided by the government, what option is left to the patient when that service is not being provided within a reasonable time frame?

There are currently two schools of thought. The first, often touted by supporters and proponents of socialised medicine, is that the patient should wait his or her damned turn, and that the government needs to ramp up spending in order to meet the demand.  If only we had more tax dollars to spend on health care.  Lets put in a fast food tax, a tax on pop, and raise the sin taxes even more on regulated products.  Then we'll have lots of money to spend on extra hip replacements.

The second, generally held by opponents of socialised medicine, is that those people, should they choose to, should be granted the option and the opportunity to purchase services outside of the public system, to help them maintain their own health at their volition.  If people are willing to pay out of their own pocket for fast, efficient, and effective health services, then why should we deny them that chance?  It will save the public system money, and shorten wait times, and we don't need more government to do it.

Now, while there are advantages and disadvantages with both options, the pertinent issue in my mind is the personal freedom to choose one's own destiny that is being denied by the nature of Canada's health system.

Consider this: When you rely on the government for your health care, you are giving them the power to decide how your health will be treated.

It is their decision, not yours, what conditions you have that merit treatment.
It is their decision, not yours, when those treatments will be provided.
It is their decision, not yours, where and by whom those treatments will be provided.
It is their decision, not yours, because they are paying the bill.

Now, by preventing a second option to people who would rather keep the power to make decisions regarding their own health care by paying for their own needs, the socialised system is basically denying our citizens their right to self determination. We are being held completely at the whim and mercy of a government bureaucracy.

Now, proponents of socialised medicine will often becry the idea of allowing people to pay for their own health care as condoning or encouraging a 'two tiered health system', in which people who can afford to pay for their own health care go into one line, and those who are unwilling or unable to pay their own way go into another. The very idea that people be allowed to choose and pay for their own service based on what they are willing to spend is abhorrent to these people, mostly because it helps encourage the idea that a person does not NEED to rely on the government for everything.  They think that the end result will be a withered public system, starved for money and incapable of even treating a simple cut, where poor people are sent to die from infection because the rich people don't like them.  They think the private system will be opulent, and expensive, and "gold plated" (as is often a phrase I often hear in the media), where affluent people will go for medical services denied the plebes.  They think that it will help create, or cement, a class system in our country, a 'medical apartheid' (another phrase I've heard used in the media), where people will be denied service simply based on their income.

While this seems to be pretty obvious hyperbole, to me at least, systems like this are found throughout our society.  Only rich people get to drive expensive cars.  If you want a Ferrari, you have to pay for the Ferrari.  If you can't afford a Ferrari, you'll have to settle for a Toyota.  I don't think health care is any different.  Homes, cars, restaurants, computers, education; the higher the quality, the higher the cost.  The main difference between this scenario and the health care debate, though, is that the government subsidises health care, and the standard is set for quality.  The variable, unlike in real estate (which is value), is time.  So, you can either have an expensive private system that's high quality and quick, or an affordable public system that's high quality and slow.

Like industrialists are fond of saying: "Fast, Cheap, Good.  Pick two."

Back to our hypothetical.  Consider this: You have 1000 hip replacement surgeries available in one year through the public system, but you have 1500 patients needing the procedure. However, let us presume that there are three new private clinics, capable of doing 250 surgeries each, offering to do the same procedure for a reasonable personal cost, that 700 of the 1500 patients requiring the surgery are willing to spend. So, instead of having 1500 people in line for 1000 available spots, you now have 800 people in line for 1000 spots in the public system, and 700 people paying for one of 750 spots in the private clinics. So, with less demand on the public system, costs and wait times go down, service goes up, and anyone who is either unable or unwilling to buy their own health care out of pocket actually benefit from allowing the people who are to do so.  We've gone from a shortage of available spots (1500/1000) to a surplus (800/1000 + 700/750), simply by allowing those with the means and the will to purchase their services in a private clinic.  And the best part is that those dollars stay in Canada.

As it stand now, though, there is no second option, and everyone must stand in the same line, for a finite amount of services. Costs go up, quality goes down, and in the end, a purely public system is unsustainable, particularly now that our populace is aging into senior status. The older you are, the more your health costs increase, and the less you contribute to the tax base. 30 years ago this wasn't an issue, because there were far more working class people than seniors, and thus the system was solvent. But now it's the other way around, and there isn't the tax base to support the rapidly increasing costs associated with 40% of our population being of retirement age. So, a purely public system is unsustainable, and I would put forth, unjust as well.

Now, contrast this with the American system, which is much like a car insurance system. Each citizen can choose to pay (or not pay, at least until LOLBamaCare kicks in) an insurance company a regular fee in set intervals over time with the expectation that the company cover unexpected medical related costs in the future.

The HMO system in the USA used to be like car insurance, and was analogous with owning a car. You bought a car, you took out an insurance policy against that car in case of theft, collision, or meteor impact, such that if anything unexpected or catastrophic occurred, you were protected against the loss of the car. But, you were still expected to pay for fuel, and maintenance, and repairs on that car, to keep the car in good working condition, and to drive it safely, at the risk of voiding your insurance.

Now, the health care system in the US was much the same way. Each person was responsible for maintaining him- or herself in good health, and the insurance company was only expected to pay for catastrophic or unexpected medical costs, such as in cases of grievous injury or onset of disease. Going to see the doctor because you had the sniffles was something you paid for out of pocket, just like you paid for the fuel you put in your car.

But somewhere along the line, whether by design or demand, health insurance companies in the US became more and more responsible for paying for the maintenance of one's health, rather than to protect the patient against the costs of catastrophic injury or illness. I don't know how it happened, but I imagine it was something along the lines of an insurance company offering additional services as a way of enticing greater dues from its clients, or as a way to say "Look, we're better than that other guy, let us be your insurer", and after a while, the additional perks began to be seen as entitlements instead of added perks, until now we see any service taken on behalf of one's health as legitimate cause to bill the insurance company. We see the result of that with insurance companies scaling back what they're willing to pay for, and finding whatever reasons they can to deny clients benefits (usually after the fact).

So, the Americans find themselves in the unenviable position of being at a loss for a decent health care system at all. Those who cannot or will not pay for health insurance are responsible for paying whatever costs may be associated with maintaining their health, but health care providers in the US are compelled by law to treat those without insurance despite the fact that they may not be able to cover the costs of their treatment. This tends to lead to huge costs for the hospitals as those who cannot or will not pay for insurance realise that they can still get services despite not being prepared to pay for them. The health providers offset this cost by increasing the charges they bill the insurance companies, which in turn, raised the premiums and decreases the services covered to those willing to pay for insurance. It is obvious that this situation is unsustainable, and also unjust, in that it forces responsible people to carry the cost of the irresponsible, and to force insurance companies to cut services wherever they can to make up the difference.

Now, if the Public system is unsustainable and unjust, and the Private system is unsustainable and unjust, what do we do?

Well, I think the first thing we must do is come to accept that health care is not a right, that it is a service.

Let me say that again.  THE PROVISION OF HEALTH CARE IS A SERVICE

It is a specialised, technical, and expensive service, yes, but a service nonetheless. We, as a society, do not have the right to health care. What we have, is the right to buy health care.  We cannot claim as our right the efforts, skills, time, and labour of other people.  Rights are held within ourselves.  We have the right to do things, or not do things, as we choose, but we can only choose for ourselves.  We cannot assume the right to make choices for other people.  The assertion that health care is a right, assumes we, as individuals, have the right to claim as our own, the efforts, skills, and labours of another person.  We have a word for when one person has the right to production of another; it's called serfdom, or indentured servitude.  Personally, I cannot abide any system that treats any of its members as a serfs, and health care delivery is no different

When talking about public vs private health care, we need to understand that each style of health care delivery has its benefits, and each style has its drawbacks.  Luckily for us, each style's benefits and drawbacks are complimentary to those of the other. So, instead of being of one or the other, we take the best of both and mixed them.  If we took the innovation and competition indicative of a private system, and combined it with a publicly funded insurance system, we'd have the best of both worlds.  Instead of having the government decide to which facility or personnel tax dollars go, they instead followed the patient, allowing the patient to decide which facility to use.  That would force the different providers to compete with each other for patronage of patients, and it would allow the patients to access needed services without too much concern for cost.

Alberta in the '90s under Premier Ralph Klein toyed with the idea of what was called a P3 system. P3 is an abbreviation for Private/Public Partnership. It suggested that health care could be privately delivered, like in the US, encouraging customer service, innovation, fair market value for services, and modifying supply to meet demand, while still being publicly funded, like in Canada, ensuring that all citizens would have access to health services.

Now we're kinda sitting in a limbo of that idea in Alberta. There are private clinics who offer services that the government is required to pay for, but they also offer non-publicly funded services to their members, who must pay a yearly fee to access those services. On average, these memberships cost about $600/yr, and entitle the member to health care services that are not traditionally covered by the public system, but for which there was no private health insurance option prior to this P3 innovation.

But to this day there is still rabid opposition to the idea of privately delivered health care, by socialist groups like "Friends of Medicare" and government unions like the Canadian Union of Public Employees (CUPE).  It kind of makes sense, too, when you consider how...invested these organisations are in a purely public system.  They claim to be concerned for the welfare of patients, but I think they're solely motivated by their own interests.  Which isn't a bad thing, to be certain; I just don't think that another person can be trusted to act in my interests if my interests conflict with his.  Better to allow me to act in my own interests, rather than rely on someone who may not share them.

In the end, I believe a privately delivered, publicly funded health care system is the best option we have available to us, and by what right do the proponents of a purely public system feel they can deny us the choice, option, and power to determine our health care on our own?

So, perhaps, my whole point is simply that regardless of whether one is a whole hearted supporter of socialised medicine or not, one does not have the right to decide for another person how (s)he will maintain his/her health, and by denying the private sector a place in health delivery, one does exactly that.

I may not have a right to health care, but I have a right to decide how to secure my own health care.

CC01 - Political Conservatism

What it Means to be Right-wing

You know, I quite often hear people talking about how conservatives are bad, or hateful, or mean, or incapable of compassion, or whatever happens to be the flavour of the day, without really understanding what conservatism really means. I often hear the phrase "right wing" used as a pejorative, as though it embodies all the evil in the world.

I just want to clear up a few misconceptions about what being conservative means, particularly in the context of being Canadian, and what characteristics can be attributed to being conservative, or to conservatism itself.

First off, let's address political conservatism. At its bare bones, conservatism is simply the resistance to change for simple sake of change. Colloquially, it can be summed up as "If it isn't broken, don't fix it." How this relates to a political position is simply that as governments evolve over time, they tend to get bigger, more invasive, more costly, and less efficient. Conservatives resist this tendency for growing government bureaucracy, and, if they can, force it back. The idea for this is simple: In nearly all cases, less government intervention is better than more government intervention.

I once had an argument with a friend of mine about the definition of right-wing and left-wing. Most people accept that right wing is conservative, and left wing is liberal, and for the most part, this is true. I don't like the word 'liberal', though, because 'liberal' has meant two distinctly different things over the course of political history. The first is what has been often referred to as classical liberalism, and the second is social liberalism.

Classic liberalism is predicated on the notion of personal liberty, that the individual should be granted the freedom to determine his or her own destiny without obligation and interference from a government body. This idea of liberalism grew out of the resistance to the monarchies of the 18th and 19th centuries. Most people in modern democracies will agree that classical liberalism is a staple for a just and productive society. Classic liberalism is concerned solely with a person's individual freedom to determine his or her own destiny. This is the main distinction between classic and social liberalism.

Social liberalism is less about liberty of the person, and more about the liberty of the state. Where classic liberalism advocates for individual's freedom FROM outside interference, and therefore is responsible for his/her own rise or fall, social liberalism advocates FOR outside interference, or, the freedom (or even obligation) OF the state to act on an individual's destiny, in order to support notions of social and economic justice and equality.

For the purposes of this discussion, I will be referring to social liberalism as progressivism to distinguish it from classical liberalism. Since both progressive and conservative ideologies have a basis in classical liberalism.

Now, the fallacy I often hear the most is that on the extreme right wing lies fascism, and that the more conservative one is, the closer to fascist ideology one becomes. This could not be further from the truth. The fact of the matter is that right wing ideology refers to the limiting and restraint of government size and power. The extreme right wing is anarchy, not fascism. Fascism, like communism, lies on the far left wing of the political spectrum. This is because the spectrum is used to describe relative strengths of governments. It scales from no government control at all (anarchy) on the right to absolute government control (despotism) on the left. Most classically liberal ideologies range somewhere in the middle, where the balance of power between the individual and the state varies.

The reason that fascism is not right wing is simply because a fascism is a dictatorship, a despotism lead by a single person. Fascism, a dictatorship, and communism, an oligarchy, are both extreme left wing ideologies. The only reason fascism is commonly believed to be right wing is because it was most often compared to communism in the past and fascism is to the right of communism on the spectrum. Fascism is right wing, but only of the extreme left. Fascism is still far left of all democracies, whether progressive OR conservative.

The other misconception about the right-wing/left-wing spectrum I often face is the idea that all right-wingers are religious zealots, and that all left-wingers are godless heathens. This is also quite far from the truth. In fact, political ideology and religious ideology are not related to one another at all. Most of the people I know who are religious are left wing progressives, and most atheists and agnostics I know are right wing conservatives. The point is that religion has very little effect on political ideology, at least from the perspective of a classic liberal democracy. There are theocracies around the world in which religion is a very large part of government policy, but in the western world, this is not the case.

This is not to say that there isn't a 'religious right', because there is, just as there's a 'religious left'. The distinction I'm trying to make is that there is no relationship between conservatives and theists. Not all conservatives are religious, and not all theists are conservative.

Alright, now that we have all that cleared out of the way, what constitutes a conservative political ideology? To answer this question, we must understand the purpose of government. Government, at its most simplistic, is a tool by which a society organises a defence against common threats. An anarchy is the complete lack of government, in which each person is completely responsible for his/her own welfare, protection, and production. As threats to groups of people emerge, a collective sense of well-being requires that they, as a group, organise a defence against those threats. The tool through which those defences are implemented is government. The earliest governments grew out of benevolent cooperation between individuals who shared common goals and threats.

In the modern age, a government serves to provide the protection and infrastructure required for an individual to dedicate his or her full attention to being a productive member of society. In general, we expect our governments to provide services such as military defence, policing, and utilities, usually under the rule of law. Where we often differ is on the less...mandatory services that a government can provide.

So, we finally come to what it means to be conservative. Quite simply, it means that any time we as a group, or a single individual, faces a threat that we/he/she cannot effective protect himself against, the government should be the last option when combating this threat. This is why you often see conservatives arguing against things like a social safety net, or increased public spending, or ever-expanding laws and powers for governments. It's not because we believe that there shouldn't be a social safety net, or welfare, or whatever. It's because we believe that it's better for the private sector to deal with issues if at all possible. The government should be the last resort.  Privately run charities can serve the needs of the less fortunate far better and more efficiently than can overreaching tax-funded government programmes.

This is why capitalism and socialism, while being mostly economic policies, are attached to right-wing and left-wing ideologies. Socialism is about government intervention in the economy, and capitalism is about economic development free from government interference. Progressives love socialism, because it protects individuals from misfortune at the cost of more government control in the individual lives of the citizenry, and conservatives love capitalism because it precludes the need for government control at all. An argument can be made that progressives prefer to use the government to deal with social issues because their ultimate goal is increasing government control on individual's lives. While there is certainly evidence to support this idea, I don't agree that it's the nature of all progressives to seek more government control simply for its own sake. I believe that they, for the most part, simply value social safety for the few more than political freedom for the many.

One last thing I would like to point out about being conservative. For the most part, conservatives tend to be open and honest about being conservative, and their first duty is to the truth. You will often see conservative columnists openly declare their bias in their issues, much as I will do below. Conservatives openly claim to be conservative, the implication being that opposition to their ideals is non-conservative, or progressive. Progressives, on the other hand, do not often claim to be progressive, they simply claim to be normal, the implication being that opposition to their beliefs is abnormal. Progressive ideology is inherently self righteous, assumed by progressives to be ethical and correct by default, and that the average person already believes in it. By contrast, conservative ideology instead realises that individuals have many different belief systems and conservatives seek instead to convince others of its merits. It's one of the reasons why progressives will often use emotional rather than rational arguments when advocating their positions. Of course, this is not a universal rule, as there are openly biased progressives and sneaky dishonest conservatives, but by and large it's the other way around. A progressive policy is often assumed as self-evident by its proponents and progressives often challenge opponents to their ideas to prove them wrong rather than bear the burden of proof themselves.

In future posts I will be discussing specific issues from a conservative perspective, but for now, I think I've said enough. I hope I've been able to help clear up some of the misconceptions about political conservatism.