November 6, 2009

Absolutes Only Halt Debate When They Meet with Intransigence

Justin Katz

I'm straining for a silver lining, to be sure, but Congressman Patrick Kennedy does offer the useful service, from time to time, of stating rhetoric that is sufficiently blunt to expose the error underneath. With reference to the fight he picked with the Catholic Church:

Kennedy also said that no group "is getting everything it wants" in the medical overhaul. The church "has every right to promote its position," he said, but if a group "seeks to impose absolutes on the debate, we are left standing idle instead of moving our nation forward."

That's only the case if those determining the course of the issue are intransigent in the face of the absolute. Every party to a negotiation has a bottom line that it will not cross; the process moves forward by determining the proximity to that line that other parties find tolerable.

This is even true of folks like me, whose bottom line is that the government should not be a significant force in the healthcare system. The way forward would be to figure out my determination of "significance" and explore alternate methods of achieving hoped-for ends. (That assumes, of course, that the hoped-for end isn't in actuality government ownership of the healthcare system, which is probably the case for more than a few healthcare "reform" advocates.)

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Mmmm, I wonder if Sen. Snowe thought her vote carefully when giving the nod for the Senate version of the bill...well, the bill as written at that time. She gave her vote in the interest of moving forward on the issue but also demonstratively echoed the 'no public option' sentiment of the general public.

Sen. Kennedy is not a solo Rhode Island trumpeter for a government healthcare program that WILL contain the public option.

Heard on radio this morning, Sen. Kennedy was asked, "If 100% of your constituents told you that they did not want the government healthcare plan, would you still vote for the bill?". His reply, "Yes".

So, I guess he should accuse himself of imposing an absolute on the debate.

In mathematical equations, all terms on the left side are equal to zero.

There's a parallel of terms here. Langevin, Reed, Whitehouse and Kennedy are on the left and they are equal to a big fat zero.

Posted by: Roland at November 6, 2009 10:56 AM
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