One popular response in forums that discuss LOST is that the finale was “emotionally satisfying, but not intellectually satisfying,” which is a way of saying that people love LOST’s characters and are touched by seeing them “move on” but also people were fascinated by the seemingly purposeful inclusion of intricate mysteries and riddles which, in the end, to their profound disappointment, appear to have been little more than meaningless, arbitrary “props” intended to do not much more than “get a response.” Some would say they feel betrayed precisely because they took the writers more seriously than the writers took themselves about the content that was included. Cases can be (are being) made along these lines. For now, though, I’m focusing on one aspect of the finale, namely, the state of being of the characters who reunite at the very end. Are they dead or alive?

The real genius of the show is that it does, in fact, provide us with a basis for investigating this issue without spoon-feeding an answer to us.

The most widely accepted mystical interpretation of the LOST finale is, in fact, only an interpretation and I think one saturated with the confirmation bias of audience members whose preconceptions about an afterlife enable them to take the path of least resistance to “understanding” the finale.

But enjoying LOST has never been about taking the path of least resistance. As John Locke says oh-so-many seasons ago: “it’s never been easy.”

And so, with the caveat that I am still working this theory out and still have some significant issues with the storytelling, which I’ll talk about some other time, here’s how I arrive at the conclusion that our Losties are not dead and reunited in la-la land at the end of the show.

What Happened, Happened… But What Happened?
At the end of Season 5, our characters are in dire straits. The Dharma Initiative is on the verge of disturbing the Island’s energy source in such a way as to require them to construct a countermeasure which will ultimately lead to Flight 815 crashing. It seems that the Island’s protector, Jacob, in mostly indirect ways that preserve our central characters’ free will, has put them in a position to do something about this problem. Daniel Faraday explains to Jack that they perhaps by detonating a hydrogen bomb, he can save himself and his friends from the agony they endure in the timeline in which their plane crashes. At the very end of the Season 5 finale, Juliet detonates a massive bomb, and for the first time, the screen fades to white, with the LOST logo in black. In hindsight, we have reason to believe that this is a visual cue that signifies a major new development in the story.

And then Season 6 opens with two timelines. That’s pretty major!

In the original timeline, the members of the team who set off the bomb flash forward to the year 2007. The island is still there. It seems to them that their plan has failed. Unbeknownst to most of them, their actions have in fact created a new timeline, one in which their alternate selves will never crash. We know this because Juliet, who dies in her lover Sawyer’s arms early in the Season 6 premiere, appears to be hallucinating when she tells him they should get coffee sometime (“We could go dutch.”), when in fact she is doing something we’ve seen before, namely, consciousness time-shifting. In the episode, the Constant, we see Desmond struggle through moments in which his singular consciousness shifts between two alternate timelines, which leads exactly to moments like this, in which he finishes expressing a thought in one timeline that originated in another timeline. Later in the season premiere, Miles informs Sawyer that Juliet’s last thought was, “it worked.” Sawyer is confused by this (“What worked!?”), but we know what she meant.

Now, as an aside here, this sets up a terrible conundrum for the show. If the events Faraday and Jack and Juliet and everybody who helped them detonate Jughead at the end of Season 5 have already resulted in Success, then the unmistakeable conclusion is that nothing that our characters go through on the island throughout season 6 actually matters. Even worse, there is the inescapable notion of predetermination that comes from this bit of dialogue; the characters will seem to make choices but, in fact, the ending is already written. Yikes! What about free will?!? Is it only an illusion? How boring! The complaint that I’ve heard leveled against the writers repeatedly in recent months is that LOST appears to be “going through the motions.” Fair enough. And, for my part, I had a hard time detecting what was actually at stake in Season 6. But let’s leave all of this aside for the moment.

In the second timeline, flight 815 successfully lands in LA with all of our characters aboard and we see that the island is on the bottom of the ocean. In other words, it would appear that the plan has, in fact, worked. The island is not there to suck them back in. We’re supposed to believe that this is a good thing. Meanwhile, the characters appear to be a little bit confused or unsettled every time they see themselves in mirrors. They appear to be grasping for something just beyond their reach. We know now that they all feel that there is something significant that they have forgotten about their own lives. What they’re missing, in fact, are the memories associated with what happened after they crashed on the island.

By the time we get to the finale of Season 6, in the second timeline we’ve been watching the cosmic course corrections mentioned first by Eloise Widmore (several seasons earlier), Daniel Faraday’s mother. Characters who were together on flight 815 continually bump into one another. Eventually, in key moments, they remember the amazing events of their first timeline selves. I surmise that they are reacting to one another because in some magical sense, they love one another enough in the first timeline to have become “constants” to one another in the second timeline. How is this happening?

Is the second timeline a kind of purgatory, an afterlife waiting station? Are they remembering their lives from beyond the grave? Or, are they suddenly gaining awareness of the most significant experiences they shared together in an alternate timeline?

Back on the island in 2007 of LOST’s original timeline, Desmond uncorks the island, Jack and Kate kill the “evil” presence that resides in John Locke’s body, who I’ll call Smocke (Smoke monster plus Locke) borrowing the nickname from David Augustyn (a fierce critic of this show) and then Jack recorks the island, saving it from being destroyed. In the midst of his struggles with Smocke, Jack sustains a cut to his neck. The cut actually appears as a wound to Jack in the second timeline, which is ostensibly set in 2004, throughout the entire season. (I’ll have to rewatch the show to see if any other characters experience similar cross-timeline effects.) Apparently, what is happening in the first timeline is extremely important to outcomes in the second timeline. By what mechanism? The wounds appear when the Island’s light has been extinguished. The implication here is that Smocke’s destructive actions in one timeline span other timelines if the island ceases to be “functional.” Suddenly it’s not such a great thing that the island is underwater. If the island ceases to exist, flight 815 may not crash, but all life everywhere (in any and all timelines) will be subject to the whims of Smocke.

There is no entirely rational explanation of LOST. The show involves an Island which is some kind of magical entity. But there is an internal logic to this show, just as there is to Lord of the Rings. The ring has to be thrust into the fires of Mt. Doom. Those are the rules in that universe. In the LOST universe, some rules apply. The Island’s light has to be protected in order for humanity to have an opportunity to prove itself.

Sadly, this is simply not a very dramatic premise, which is to say it’s as dramatic as any deus ex machina device. But, it’s a premise nonetheless.

Why do the characters who detonate Jughead flash forward to 2007? If they’ve destroyed the island in the 1970s, how can they exist on it in 2007? The answer is given in Faraday’s explanation to Jack and Kate in Season 5’s episode 14 (and in even more detail in the deleted scene specific to this episode in which Faraday talks about diverting a stream). It’s not an exact and full answer, but it’s also not some idle speculation. Taken together with the consciousness-timeshifting, it is, in fact, a theoretical foundation that makes sense of Season 6. Faraday states that the past can’t be altered within a given timeline, but he also indicates that human action (free will, reasoning) still can make a difference. And so what happens when they blow up the bomb? In the original timeline, they are flashed forward to the post-crash timeframe of the island. They can’t escape their own timeline and their presence in the seventies was a function of “island” magic, so this simply has to be accepted as a brute fact— the island put them in the seventies and it can take them out of the seventies.

The other result is far more impressive, a brand new timeline is formed. It’s not one the Losties who created it are in or can detect except Juliet, before she dies, and Jack, before he dies. Here’s my take on that: At the very end, after the Island transports him out of the cave, when he’s dying in the same place where he woke up after the flight 815 crash in the first timeline, Jack looks up into the sky and sees the second timeline flight 815 flying overhead (the one that lands successfully in LA). He is not seeing Lapidus escape. That plane would be long gone. No, what he’s seeing is one side of his reward for saving the island. Poetic, right? In the second timeline, he experiences the other side of that reward, which is that he and some of his fellow crash survivors gain all of their memories of the experiences they shared on the island. Consciousness-shifting! Jack’s triumph over Smocke may not be the only thing that makes this possible. The fact that the most compassionate character on the show, Hurley, gains the ability to put his own Island powered rules in place probably plays a role in this mushy outcome, too. If Jack hadn’t killed Smocke and recorked the island and generally engaged in some self-sacrificial behavior (hey, I didn’t write this show!), then the reunion of the characters wouldn’t have been possible. Locke’s incredibly rapid post-spinal surgery healing is a function of the island being saved and the timelines converging through the heroic efforts of the Losties, mainly Jack.

Yes, the final scenes of LOST are set in a church featuring every religious symbol ever conceived (slight exaggeration) and what sounds like a hokus-pokus, soft-sell of death as “moving on” for righteous folks, complete with “Christian” opening a door at night and flooding a church with a white light for crying out loud. But do the final moments of LOST represent a tremendous dramatic opportunity squandered in favor of after-school-special sophomoric platitudes (“we all die sometime, kiddo.”) and an overdose of syrupy, slow-motion celebrity hugging, quite possibly B-roll footage shot after the ink dried on the actors’ lucrative contracts for Season 6? Too easy. And maybe the writers can be taken to task for leaving this ending open to such a simplistic conclusion, though many have and will continue to praise them for it.

I’m supposed to believe that Locke (who died in Season 5) and Jack, Juliet, Sayid, Sun, and Jin (who died in Season 6, and Boone (who died in Season 1) and Shannon…. and then Kate and Sawyer who presumably died long after leaving the island… their spirits are in an after-life that involves Jack performing surgery on Locke and Claire giving up her baby for adoption and Sun and Jin being pregnant but her being shot …

C’mon. Give me a break. If this interpretation were true, none of what happened to these characters in the Season 6 flash sideways mattered. I refuse to accept that.

No, I don’t think so. They are not all dead. Think about how macabre it would be if Sun and Jin had an exuberant response to Juliet telling them that their child is healthy after becoming aware that they were, in fact, in some kind of afterlife. I don’t believe it. But Adam, Jack’s talking to his dead father? No, Jack’s talking to the Island, which has animated his father for just this moment, the moment in which his original timeline consciousness inhabits his second timeline consciousness. Jack remembers dying, but he hasn’t died. Not in this timeline.

The opening scene of the LOST finale involves the delivery of a casket containing the body of Jack’s father. When the coffin is empty and Jack turns to face Christian, is he looking at his father’s ghost? No way. We’ve seen this before. The island is able to occupy the bodies of the dead. It has animated Jack’s father in order to help Jack let go. The hug they share is what was part of what was missing for Jack (closure with his dad) and part of what he needed in order to “move on.” With his LIFE. Not into some kind of afterlife.

And the dialogue between Christian and Jack supports this notion. Christian is very clear about everything being “real.” And he corrects Kate’s use of the word “leaving,” substituting instead the language, “moving on.” The second timeline versions of the characters, in many key respects, are still struggling in many ways. The Island/Hurley gives them memories which ought to serve them well as they “move on” with their lives reunited with the friends they made in the original timeline. It is Christian who returns to the Island/Light. Our Losties will live out the rest of their lives together. In the real world. Of this particular timeline.

The writers give us conventions within the show’s paradigm that enable us to reasonably conclude that the second timeline is of this Earth (as close as you can get to this in a show with a Smoke Monster). That’s my story and I’m sticking to it. Juliet wasn’t hallucinating about “the afterlife” or “purgatory.” She was glimpsing a moment in the second timeline, the one, as Christian/Island states, “they made so they could find each other.” They made it with Jughead— “made” in the sense of rendering something possible, not in the sense of designing a solution to a problem.

Okay, they meet in a church. But they’re there to be supportive of Jack, to whom they are indebted for making this entire second timeline possible, during his father’s funeral. The Losties saved the island; the island reciprocates by facilitating a consciousness-shift that restores their connections with one another.

Does a non-afterlife conclusion make up for the strangeness of Sayid’s response to Shannon? Maybe, a little. Maybe the only way to trigger Sayid’s awareness of his original timeline experiences was through Shannon. Nadia was never on the island in the original timeline, and in the second timeline, his relationship with Nadia was clearly something that he needed to “move on” from.

What about Locke waking up from surgery and saying to Jacke, “you don’t have a son”? This could just be Locke, I’ll get back to you on that one. Why is it so important that “only Claire” raise her son? Ummm…. Smocke is desperate to get off the island. What would have happened if he had escaped? How would his escape have affected the lives of other people? Why did he decide to fight Jack instead of make his getaway? That’s a strange choice for somebody whose raison d’etre is escape. Again, what was really at stake here? If he’d escaped, waouldn’t Smocke have just been another bad person in a world full of bad people? Because he is super-ultimate Evil? Even though the act which makes it possible for him to leave the Island (turning off the light) also appears to make him mortal? And Widmore? What the hell was his motivation?

Why does Eloise not want Desmond to take Daniel to the church to be with the others? Perhaps because she fears that the course-correcting would be accelerated and she wants him to have as much life as possible. Remember, in the second timeline, Ben and his father remember being on the island and leaving it (which they did right before Juliet set off the bomb). Eloise would then remember killing her own son. So, for obvious reasons, she’s protective of him. Why doesn’t Daniel “remember” when he interacts with Charlotte? Good question. Next!

People cite Ben not entering the church as an indication that he’s staying behind in purgatory while the rest of the Losties move on to something like heaven. I don’t read it that way. Ben has remembered what he did in the original timeline and I can think of several compelling reasons he would have to believe that he did not belong with these people.

Does a non-afterlife explanation of the finale make up for the fact that watching LOST often hurt throughout Season 6? Probably not. The redundancy of the actions and behaviors of the central characters was wearing me thin. And the revelations in the final season of LOST do not compensate for being led to believe that the mysterious riddles the LOST writers employed over the course of the show were meaningful and would be demonstrably linked to bonafide storytelling purposes. How do I feel about an ending that religious audience members are celebrating as an affirmation of faith-based interpretations of the show and its significance? Am I just striving to confirm my own biases? Hmm.

I loved this show more than most. I’m sad to see it go. And I’m secretly planning to give it a second viewing, start to finish, in a year or so.

I haven’t posted for a while. In late March I was putting the finishing touches on a complex video project, and then I was preparing taxes, and finally, on the eve of April 1st, my wife and I left town for a nine day vacation in Arizona.

That’s me on a jutting cliff at the Grand Canyon shot by my beloved from as close to the edge as she was willing to get. And here is a glimpse of what I was looking at when I wasn’t looking into the abyss.

Here are a few pictures from Antelope Canyon, which you can read about here. Fortunately our tour was scheduled midday, when the light accentuates the slot canyon’s breathtaking, naturally occurring colors and textures. I can’t wait to go back to this place.

If you know where to look, you’ll find bears in here!

One mile South of Antelope Canyon is a dirt road off of Rt.89 that leads to Horseshoe Bend. Fortunately I was ultimately approached by a man who had exactly the right ultra wide angle lens to capture this phenomenon. I traded my willingness to stand on the edge of a cliff and take this picture with his camera for his willingness to share the picture later.

On the way to and from these spectacles, we were amazed at the scenery.

Here are some shots from a late afternoon hike on the Boynton trail in Sedona. The rocks were glowing in the desert sun.

Sedona’s Brins Mesa trail.

We spent some time visiting with a dear friend and his delightful family who recently moved to Arizona from New York. They were gracious hosts, fed us amazing, homemade Chinese food, repelled insect attacks promptly and efficiently, extensively reviewed the advantages of living in AZ while surviving a visit from their first rattlesnake, and we can’t wait to visit them again.

They also introduced us to an arboretum the likes of which we’d never seen.

I wasn’t sure how my right knee would respond on this trip. But the weather was so perfect every single day, and the landscapes so alien and exciting, we ended up going on hiking excursions every single day.
I had to take a little longer to figure out how to climb in ways that my leg could handle and the physical exertion of coming down steep trails was painful. I’m definitely not fully recovered yet, but fortunately I was healthy enough to thoroughly enjoy being outside each day. I didn’t take a moment of it for granted.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Obama and and his team have been working overtime, hyperventilating about the virtues of their “healthcare plan,” the historic opportunity, how it’s all about “character, not costs.” Never mind that the country is insolvent and what that will mean at crunch time for patients. Never mind that the CBO report doesn’t take into account the hundreds of billions of dollars that were removed from the bill and made into their own separate bills to make the bigger bill appear fiscally sound. I hear Obama giving speeches and pep rallies that are awfully deceptive and impassioned, never a positive mix for libertylovers, in the midst of plenty of backroom arm-twisting and deal-making to ram this craptacular legislation through.

If it doesn’t work out, that is, when its failures require politicians, once again, to take action, might the government “course correct” constructively? No. It won’t.

Social Security. Medicare and Medicaid. Prohibition. Public Education. How has the government responded to the “unintended consequences” of its interventionism except with more debt, more unsustainable and damaging intervention? Greece has reached the limits of its big government approach. California is bankrupt and will increasingly rely on the other 49 states to keep it afloat, and it will soon be joined by New York. The whole government-with-intricate-and-indecipherable-plans-to-help-everybody scam is plainly self-destructing around the globe. And in the midst of myriad culminations of ineptitude, here in the U.S.A., the State is delivering another massive entitlement program. It’s suicidally stupid. It’s inhumane. It’s corrupt.

It’s happening.

My Leftist friends, who happen to be among the most brilliant people I know otherwise, consistently make the classic and lethal mistake of assuming that society can be optimally planned by experts who, they assume, projecting their intelligence and good-heartedness, would be conscientious and diligent and wise in their allocations of resources and societal tweaking.

They underestimate or overlook the fact that a humane and prosperous society is an emergent order. It is produced by unrestrained human action, people serving their own interests by satisfying others via peaceful trades. Human action cannot be planned by anyone other than individuals without individuals being treated as if they’re not human, as if their free will doesn’t matter, as if they have no legitimate claims of ownership of their bodies, minds, and labor that can repel the demands of a community-interested State.

Attempts to impose plans, even the most well-intended, cannot work in the real world. Because of the State’s institutional incentives. Because of moral hazards and unintended consequences. Because of behavioral phenomena described by public choice theory. Because of the knowledge problem that no expert can surmount. Because of the broken window fallacy. Because of the tragedy of the commons. Indeed, because of the very nature of human beings.

My Leftist friends shake their brilliant heads at the idea that government should extract itself rather than further involve itself, and they characterize those who oppose government action as people who advocate “doing nothing” to address real problems.

As if all of the actions and interactions based on mutual consent undertaken by free people voluntarily every single day amount to nothing significant, even though their sum total is responsible for the amazingly diverse spectrum of opportunities and wealth individuals enjoy.

The current health care plan is yet another breathtaking encroachment of government into the sector of our economy that directly serves health and longevity. I hope against hope that it doesn’t pass. If it does, I hope the Supreme Court strikes down the constitutionality of the federal mandate that people buy health insurance, which is a thinly veiled tax that will hit poor people the hardest. I think it’s going to pass. And its failures, like those of the interventionist policies that have preceded it, will lay a foundation for more Statist meddling. And as more and more people will suffer needlessly as a result, I wonder when this organized crime syndicate deceptively referred to as government will be tolerated no longer. Very soon this new entitlement program will be perceived as indispensable, despite the fact that it is unsustainable. This isn’t going to end well. Legalizing human sacrifice never does.

America’s debt has reached levels guaranteed to cause problems, before the passage of this healthcare bill. The full effects of inflation await us. At what point will people’s faith in the cult of the omnipotent State turn to revulsion and finally rejection? When will the sweet-sounding claims of politicians be widely recognized as fraudulent, ahistorical, counterfactual? When will toleration for coercion and its cruel impact become intolerable to most people?

***

From an op-ed by Douglas Holtz-Eakin, former CBO Director, in the New York Times:

[How can it be that] a bill that would set up two new entitlement spending programs — health insurance subsidies and long-term health care benefits — would actually improve the nation’s bottom line.

Could this really be true? How can the budget office give a green light to a bill that commits the federal government to spending nearly $1 trillion more over the next 10 years?

The answer, unfortunately, is that the budget office is required to take written legislation at face value and not second-guess the plausibility of what it is handed. So fantasy in, fantasy out.

In reality, if you strip out all the gimmicks and budgetary games and rework the calculus, a wholly different picture emerges: The health care reform legislation would raise, not lower, federal deficits, by $562 billion.

Removing the unrealistic annual Medicare savings ($463 billion) and the stolen annual revenues from Social Security and long-term care insurance ($123 billion), and adding in the annual spending that so far is not accounted for ($114 billion) quickly generates additional deficits of $562 billion in the first 10 years. And the nation would be on the hook for two more entitlement programs rapidly expanding as far as the eye can see.

The bottom line is that Congress would spend a lot more; steal funds from education, Social Security and long-term care to cover the gap; and promise that future Congresses will make up for it by taxing more and spending less.

From CATO’s Michael Cannon:

Myth: The legislation would contain health care costs.

The Obama plan would increase health care costs for the simple reason that it would put millions more patients, plus doctors and insurers, in a position where they are spending the taxpayers’ money. That never produces frugality.

Its command-and-control approaches to cost containment have failed over and over in Medicare and Medicaid because they don’t change the incentives that encourage cost growth.

The only provision that would change incentives is the president’s proposed tax on the sick and others with high-cost health plans. But he appears ready to abandon that, anyway.

Stanford health economist Alain Enthoven writes, “The American people are being deceived.” The Senate bill would “do little or nothing to curb [health care] expenditures.”

Myth: This legislation would stop abusive insurance practices.

The Obama plan would encourage abusive insurance practices. Research by Obama adviser David Cutler shows that the plan’s price controls would force insurers who provide quality care for the sick into bankruptcy. Insurers would therefore use countless and covert means to deny care and avoid, mistreat and dump the sick.

Along the way, the legislation would shower private insurance companies with half a trillion dollars in government subsidies.

Myth: This isn’t a government takeover of health care.

This legislation would force all Americans to purchase health insurance coverage. Government would control what kind of insurance you purchase, where you purchase it, how much you pay and what kind of medical care you receive. Our health care sector would be “private” in name only.

Once government controls those decisions, there will be nothing left to socialize. Make no mistake — this is a vote on socialized medicine.

From reason.tv:

Click here to view the embedded video.

Nick Gillespie from reason.com:

[T]his doesn’t even represent a fundamental reform, one that would radically open up the health care industry to the sorts of personalized service and market competition that have actually driven costs down and services up in every other aspect of the economy that is not subject to huge amounts of cheap government money and subsidies (read: house prices and education, which along with health care tell you everything you need to know about what happens when the government gets overly involved in a given sector).

It’s also worth noting that a hunk a hunk a burning change is not included in this bill but is surely coming down the road. That’s the so-called “doc fix,” which routinely staves off cuts in Medicare reimbursements to physicians in the name of propping up one of the great boondoggles of the past 45 years. As Reason alum Ed Carson writes in Investors Business Daily:

The Sustainable Growth Rate imposes automatic cuts in Medicare payment rates to doctors.

For several years, fearing a revolt by doctors — and seniors — Congress has suspended those cuts. The original draft of the House health care bill included a permanent “doc fix.” But that ballooned deficits, so Democrats dropped it, even though everyone knows Congress isn’t going to slash doctors’ rates. The CBO has estimated a “doc fix” would cost $247 billion over 10 years.

As any number of really bad gamblers could tell you (but probably wouldn’t): You gotta spend money to lose money.

From biggovernment.com:

The Democrats and the White House are lost in a legislative “fog of war” right now. They are focused on twisting enough arms, offering jobs and negotiating specific “deals” (bribes) to get them to 216 votes. Their attention and energy is focused exclusively on a final vote in the House tonight. No one is looking even one minute beyond that horizon. They are like a general who pours all his reserves into taking a symbolic bridge, never realizing that his lines have already collapsed and his flanks have been turned. They may take the bridge and get to 216 votes. (I’ve learned to never bet against Congressional leadership and an Administration united for a single legislative victory. ) But, they have already lost the war. They have deluded themselves that if they can…just…get…this…bill…passed, the public’s anger and attention will subside, they can put health care ‘behind them’ and they can focus on other ‘popular’ measures that will shore up their election prospects in November.

What they don’t realize is that today’s vote isn’t the end, but just a new beginning in the debate over health care. Buckle up, because if they manage to cobble together enough votes to pass the Senate Health Bill today, we’re set for weeks and perhaps months of a constitutional and political crisis the likes of which we haven’t seen in our lifetimes.

In a matter of hours after House passage of the Senate Bill, the state of Virginia will file suit in federal court. The Commonwealth will be joined in the suit by a dozen other states. I expect a flood of additional lawsuits. The suits will be based on the provision that requires every American to purchase health insurance. (This is how the Dems ‘crack down’ on the insurance industry; by requiring everyone to buy its product?) Because this is an individual mandate, virtually every American has standing to file suit against this provision. Also, it is in direct conflict with state law in at least two states, Idaho and Virginia.

The economy is nowhere close to recovering and, in some places, may be getting worse. Millions of people have been unemployed for a very long time and untold millions more live in fear of it. Spending, deficits and debt have grown beyond the hypothetical world of economists and into a realm that the average person understands. Against this, the Democrats are now steaming towards the greatest expansion in government ever and, more importantly, into the part of our lives that commands our deepest fears, our health and mortality. That they have done so in an openly corrupt manner, with side deals, special exemptions, special interest favors and patronage (a judgeship, really?), betrays a contempt for the legislative and political process that is almost unfathomable. Worse, they raise the specter that the government is an interest, separate, distinct and opposed to the people.

The Democrats cannot do this. Sure, they may get the votes to pass the Senate bill tonight, but ultimately they will be defeated. A representative democracy cannot long endure a political class that is so out of touch with the populace.

Where is all of this leading? What are Obama’s intentions?

Thoughts and insights courtesy of Reason.tv.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Click here to view the embedded video.

Great points, right? Just basic math here, folks. The federal government is not solvent and current health care reform bills will only exacerbate the problem.

Of course, when the Republicans not too long ago held the commanding heights in Washington, what did they do about health care reform? Nothing. In fact, in cahoots with Democrats, they expanded the health care welfare state with the prescription drug benefit plan.

Foolish! Reckless! Destructive!

I’m sure there are some Democrats and Republicans who have always understood what Ryan is talking about now. They haven’t had enough pull to change the death spiral of deficit fueled government expansion, but every once in a while they have a chance to be heard and their plain common sense is a striking contrast to the deceptive soothsaying of typical politicians.

I’d like to believe that professional politicians in both parties are capable of learning from their mistakes. That said, for all of my life I’ve heard them talk about lowering taxes and decreasing government spending, and for all of my life the government has increased people’s overall tax burden and grown the national debt astronomically. Unsustainable debt sounds like an abstract condition that couldn’t possibly affect people’s lives. I wonder how many people living in Greece felt that way until recently.

After how much more time, after how many more examples of the blithering idiocy of central planning and the dismal effects of coercive interventionism, will people finally reject the absurdity of granting more control and power to Government in the name of “problem solving?”

Perhaps not much longer.

The LOST writers are juggling twenty pies right now, but I trust them to resolve the questions that matter most to me without making too much of a mess. That said, I’m fine with LOST wrapping up with dashes of clarity here and puddles of muddle there. Would any fan of this show be happy with a “man-behind-the-curtain” series of revelations? It seems apparent to me from the premiere (well, even before that, but the premiere confirms this I think) that we’re headed for a complex conclusion and one in which few if any of the characters emerge unscathed and the suspense of it all is gripping.

With all of the big picture issues that surround the LOST characters, despite how fascinating many of those are in and of themselves, the primary draw of this show is the realism of the main characters. The storytelling structure of this show has given us more insight into its main characters than any other television show has ever attempted. What I admire and appreciate most about LOST is the plausibility of the characters’ responses to their chaotic situations, their frustrating lapses and heroic choices, their meaningful emotional connections to each other and dysfunctional emotional behavior, too. So far, I believe the characters. They make sense to me. I like most of them. And I find myself rooting for them.

I’ve come to terms with and now appreciate the show’s blend of magical realism and science-fiction and humanism and (sometimes soapy) operatic romance. Clearly, things happen on this show that seem arbitrary and strange and for which no explanations will ever be forthcoming. Some people are upset by this. I used to be one of them, but I’m not any more. Maybe I’m at peace with the show’s absurdities because I was recently blindsided with an incredibly freaky injury that has fundamentally altered my lifestyle. I’ve also just been hit with a creepy, new, totally unjustifiable tax. Where did that come from? But then I’ve also had innumerable, unexpected positive experiences in my life that I would never have predicted and for which rational explanations would be somewhat forced. For example, the LOST-like chain of improbable but actual events that led to my parents falling in love and creating me and then to me and my wife meeting and falling in love and making our lives together.

So, as the final season of my favorite show launches, I am not preoccupied with the idea that the writers need to tie up every loose end or explain away every bizarre moment. I’d rather some things remain mysteries than have the writers contort the characters and plot in order to achieve a story that has no open questions.

Mysterious stuff happens in our lives all the time. I don’t believe in mystical stuff, and yet I marvel at the effects of freedom’s “invisible hand,” the splendid and surprising diversity of results produced by spontaneous, purposeful human action. There is a persuasive empirical basis for the theory of free markets, but that doesn’t make the design accomplishments of unplanned human behavior any less marvelous and unpredictable.

When I pause and think about what makes it possible for you and I to cook a meal in our homes using ingredients and tools and materials and energy sources and technologies from all over the country and even the planet that were developed over the course of centuries…. every single day of our lives we choose, for the most part, not to contemplate the wonders just under the surface of the ordinary. We have the luxury of not needing to know the answers to questions about how our televisions work, how natural gas flow to our stoves is safely maintained, how fresh blueberries from Chile are made available to me in the dead of Winter here in New York. We live in a magical world.

On the show, LOST, everything that is ordinary is also extraordinary. Nothing in LOST can be taken for granted. LOST’s exaggerations clarify the extraordinary nature of the experience of being human.

LOST also appeals to me by spotlighting the significance of circumstance and choice, by emphasizing the inextricability of context and individuality. In LOST, choices always matter, but reality cannot be outflanked. And given the exotic nature of “reality” on this show, the tension between what people choose to do and what the rules of the world in which they operate will permit to happen produces thrilling, heroic, and tragic results.

My overall impression of the Season 6 premiere is quite positive. I think they’re setting us up for a heartbreaking season. I would speculate that our favorite characters are going to pay a steep price in order to make it possible for them to lead “normal” lives in which they lose the knowledge or memory of the island and of one another. There may be serendipitous paths-crossings, which the audience will enjoy, like the scenes involving Locke and Jack and then Kate and Sawyer at the airport. Almost certainly, there will also be tragic outcomes, unintended consequences. The parallel storytelling that they’ve set up in this first episode is, I speculate, a way of showing us that the main characters’ heroic and misguided and successful and futile attempts to “do the right thing” and/or to escape one or more frying pans won’t render them immune to fire.

Or, I may be wrong. But I’m hooked. I love it. There are so very many ways to appreciate this show. Here is the first page of a lengthy thread about one possible grand unification theory that would explain what is happening on LOST, a theory originated by one bright and passionately devoted fan. It’s a tremendous creative accomplishment in and of itself, only one example of why it’s a thrill to be part of the community that is watching and thinking about LOST. Another example would be the friends with whom I laughed and exchanged mind-boggling notions during the premiere last night.

And though I can’t wait for next week, there’s something bittersweet about each episode bringing us closer to the end of this brilliant, televised novel.

The last week has been exciting for me.

It’s been almost two months since the second surgery on my right leg. Though my stamina is still low and there are lingering pain issues, I’m once again walking around without a cane. To be perfectly honest with you, the experience has been intoxicating.

This will probably wear off. I will grow accustomed to walking, and eventually, I’ll take it for granted. Never again quite as much as those of you do who have never lost the capacity to run, but, without a doubt, walking around will once again feel ordinary to me. So I’m enjoying this feeling while it lasts. I’m grateful for and loving every step I take these days.

My process of re-entering the world as a walking person has been largely about the humanizing and uplifting experience of trading.

Four days ago, I reactivated my gym membership and have visited twice. I’m sore everywhere, which has the unintended consequence of decreasing my sensitivity to issues specific to my right leg. It’s a tremendous relief to ache everywhere and, for moments, to imagine my whole body improving as opposed to my knee holding me back.

Three days ago, I went for a walk to Safeguard Storage where my wife and I keep books and seasonal clothes. After picking up my warmest winter coat, I went to the front office and paid up for the next month. As I left, the facility’s supervisor wished me well: “Have a great day, Mr. Cohen.” I walked over to my gym, a New York Sports Club, the one where I got into shape for my wedding in 2004 and where I rebuilt my right leg in 2009, and was greeted by a friendly young guy: “Have a great workout!” As I was leaving, a trainer nodded in my direction, smiled, and said, “Come back soon.” I paid a visit to Marino’s, my  favorite local fishmonger: “Happy New Year! How’s your leg coming along. What can I get for you? Check out this magazine we were featured in. Have a great day!” And finally I stopped by a local grocer to pick up some oranges: “Thank you. Have a nice day.”

In the course of my days since, I’ve had the following experiences. The vendor through whom this site is hosted contacted me to make me aware of the fact that by migrating to a similar product, I could cut my monthly costs in half. In response to competition from Verizon, AT&T has reduced the cost of its iPhone Family Plan by at least $30 per month, without requiring me to sign a contract extension.

Two nights ago, I listed a camera lens for sale on craigslist. I sold it yesterday. Here is a dialogue snippet from my meeting with the stranger who bought my lens.

Buyer: “I’m thrilled that you kept this lens in such excellent condition. It looks brand new. Did you use it much?”
Me: “Yes, I used it quite a bit. But I know that eventually I’m going to want to buy new gear. I think of the condition of my current tools in terms of helping me offset future business costs. Being a good steward of my lenses is obviously in my best interests.”
Buyer: “Well, I thought your price was great based on the pictures of the lens you posted. But I was afraid that it wasn’t going to be as good in person. Thanks for being honest about it.”
Me: “I’m glad we’ve both won here.”
Buyer: “Contact me if you want to sell any of your other equipment before you list it.”
Me: “Sure. Have fun with your new lens.”

Today, after an early morning workout at the gym, I visited an Asian grocer, bought baby bok choy for $1.29 per pound, packages of dried kumquats and bean thread noodles and shitake mushrooms imported from Taiwan, and a spiny winter melon. Then, I had brunch with my wife and a good friend at a new neighborhood restaurant/bar that makes an incredible hamburger and serves a bottomless cup of rich, smooth coffee. Our waitress was attentive and friendly. We ate and laughed for a couple of hours, paid our bill gladly, and returned to our homes. Not before stopping at a Meditteranean Deli and picking up an amazing variety of olives.

I’m struck by the fact that all of the trading experiences I’ve described here are normal. Normal and, of course, taken for granted.

Of course, food from halfway around the world is available to me for a few dollars at a grocer down the street from me. Of course, the restaurant will coordinate the logistics of securing ingredients and preparing them in a manner I’ll consider delicious at a price affordable to me and profitable to them. Of course.

Trading activities and opportunities are unremarkable to the vast majority of people who live in America, but they are also exemplary of the experiences without which our lives would be impoverished and miserable. And therefore they are far from being “nothing special.” In fact, underlying all of my recent experiences, each of which are trades of one sort or another, is something vitally special. Something we’re all relying upon every day of our lives, which far too many of us recklessly treat as automatic, like walking, but which (it is clear from history books and today’s newspaper headlines) people neglect at their own peril.

I’m referring to the operating principle that makes peace possible and is responsible for actual measurable progress in human longevity and prosperity.

This special something is the idea that all human relationships (not including parent/adult-child relationships, which I’m going to have to address separately at some point) should only consist of voluntary exchanges of value based on mutual consent.

If a relationship between two people features only the consent of one of them, then it is not peaceful. Whatever benefits might flow to the person (or group or government) who imposes the relationship are produced by holding hostage the other participant’s life and freedom or by enslaving him outright or by degrading his humanity (ie, using him as if he is a resource instead of a person).

If a relationship between two people involves a one-way transfer of values as opposed to a voluntary exchange of values, then it is not peaceful and there is no hope for actual, measurable progress. There can be no progress in a society of parasites, only a race toward the consumption of all available resources before reaching some kind of cannibalistic apocalypse. There is no impetus to create value in such a context. A parasite has no incentive to trade, to engage in an exchange of values.

Wealth is created only when people reasonably expect to experience profitable (ie, mutually beneficial) relationships, that is, when they are free to enter into trades of their own choosing (trading our labor and expertise and knowledge and property according to our own preferences and priorities), responsible for offering persuasive value propositions to those who have what they want (as I did when I sold my lens), free to make mistakes and adapt (we do this every day, some better than others), free to learn and experiment (as I did when I bought Taiwanese kumquats… so many… possibilities!).

A whole world of traders is bound to be peaceful and destined to achieve advances in every imaginable peaceful endeavor.

Measurable human progress is produced by the drive to innovate and reduce costs and maximize profits that the opportunity to trade unleashes. Measurable human misery is produced by the behavior of those driven to control and restrict and prohibit peaceful human actions, who seek to institutionalize violations of mutual consent, who work to establish legal exceptions to voluntary behavior.

Not a day goes by when you and I are not beneficiaries of living in a society in which mutual consent and voluntary trade are fundamentally accepted rules. But too many of us appear to be blinded by the extraordinary range of advantages, conveniences, and pleasantnesses these moral rules generate, blinded to the lethal risks posed by permitting governments to tamper with such basic moral premises. Too many of us are blinded, as well, by the glorious and heart-rending appeal of the impossible, the alluring political promises of free lunches.

Why do we celebrate the idea of people receiving something for nothing? What is a politician’s free lunch promise if not a way of pretending that the person (or group of people) who has labored to provide for, prepare, and serve that “lunch” should be treated as a slave and compensated accordingly. What are the people who cheer and endorse such promises thinking? Are they preoccupied with charitable intentions? What a delusion! If charity isn’t freely exercised, then it’s not charity at all, and pretending it is, and then legally enforcing that pretense, amounts to nothing more than mimicking the worst rationalizations of criminals.

Why aren’t more of us more keenly aware of and insistent upon extending the benefits of trade to as many aspects of life as possible? Why do we insist on mutual consent and voluntary trading in our personal experiences but vote to empower the government to violate those rules?

It’s never too late to think about and appreciate the things we take for granted— walking and trading.

What do our global positioning system (GPS) coordinates have to do with our freedom to think and act uninterfered with by government?

In the early 21st century, life on Earth requires humans to comply with rules (or deal with the consequences of not complying with them), rules that vary substantively based on the laws enforced by the multitude of governments that preside over different parts of the planet. Where we live means that we will have to pay a certain percentage of our earnings to stay out of jail, that we will be allowed some forms of personal expression and recreational experience but denied others, that our peaceful choices may be regulated or restricted or prohibited. These are the conditions that we’re accustomed to. We are born into a world with established and powerful institutions authorized to scrutinize and interfere with our private and economic behavior. In some countries like China,  filmmakers like Dhondup Wangchen, whose stories expose statism’s impact on people, are incarcerated for years. In other countries like the United States of America, people like Ronald Sekul, adults who grow and sell plants to other adults, are exposed to the risk of losing all of their property, paying steep fines, and serving jail time.

We’ve been conditioned to accept as normal and somewhat inevitable the legal artifices that do, in fact, make our GPS coordinates so significant. But, thinking about it, do you think it’s normal or disturbingly arbitrary how you and fellow human beings are treated by governments all over the world?

It’s actually creepy that the physical location of human beings should result in some being more or less free than others. When you look at this picture…

… do you see any clues that would lead you to believe that your freedom is more or less in jeopardy based on where you live? You can’t. Only a political map would remind you of that man-made mess. Most of us probably can’t avoid thinking of “nations” when we look at a photo-realistic depiction of the Earth. But political borders are not really there when you see the world as it is, not when you look at it as its pictured above and not when you think of your daily social experiences. After watching the Earth spin once in its rotation, it would be “insane” to think to yourself…

“If I were to land on this planet in one place as opposed to another, in addition to contending with location-specific climate- and geography-based challenges, it is apparent (!) that I would also be more or less free from being interfered with at one intersection of latitude and longitude.”

We’re accustomed to our political maps, the lines that indicate where one set of rules ends and another begins, where particular groups of enforcers dominate, where some styles of coercion and other degrees of freedom and control prevail.

And yet, even though this is all we’ve ever known, there’s something unnerving… genuinely counterintuitive… about the notion that a person’s particular location on the surface of the planet— that fact, all on its own— means that he or she is more or less free. Such a notion must discombobulate anyone who thinks about it at any length. How the heck does a person’s location on the planet relate in any way to his freedom? We all know that there is no GPS coordinate that has anything to do with a person’s right not to be interfered with. We have to remind ourselves of the convoluted legalistic schemes and bureaucratic regimes governments that make the world as it is, and we have to consider that simply because this has been the case for a long time does not mean that it is morally valid. It may be the case that we alter our behavior so that we can avoid fines and stay out of jail, but our compliance with coercive laws does not represent a form of agreement with them. There is no such thing as consent under duress, only life-preserving and freedom-retaining compliance.

GPS coordinates do make a difference, in some cases radical differences, to people’s ability to exercise their will. Should they? Is it a good thing that this is the case?

Does a person born in Beijing, as a demonstrable consequence of being born in that physical place, have less of a moral claim to a life uninterfered with by his State compared to a person born in New York? Of course not. That moral claim is available to all individuals regardless of what government they invoke it against, for it is itself the very moral foundation of government— protecting individuals from coercion. I have reached a point of profound skepticism about the feasibility of “limited government,” which has always sounded better in theories developed by classical liberals than it has worked out (can ever work out?) in practice. But I’ll say this.

As human beings are the same everywhere on this planet, so must governments everywhere be constitutionally prevented from interfering with or in any way plundering people’s voluntary, purposeful behavior and their social interactions based on mutual consent. There is no multicultural case for coercion. There is no case for coercion whatsoever. Forget the current political map, forget nation-states as we’ve known them. Consider the Earth as it is, and then think about human beings, in social settings, interacting with one another voluntarily and peacefully, sharing experiences, trading, working together. Why spoil this picture by then conjuring into the scene governments with the power to initiate force? Instead, imagine how governments everywhere ought to be in light of an understanding of human beings as they are.

Here’s what I mean. A government of, by, and for human beings (and no other government makes sense) must appreciate what human beings are.

Humans are sentient, carbon-based organisms, and like all living things, we are mortal. We only have so much time. Once we’re gone, we’ll never exist again. As humans, our distinct biochemical composition and our reliance on a certain atmospheric mix and nutritional intake require all of us to undertake the actions necessary for us to stay alive. But human beings must choose to do what it takes to survive. We are all unique individuals, genetically, intellectually and physically and in terms of our specifics of place and time. Our ability to think and exercise our will voluntarily is universal, but our choices belong to each of us alone, and we bear the responsibility for and must live with the consequences of our choices as individuals, first and foremost. Errors and mistakes are a natural part of our life experience, and some of us are better at processing specific kinds of information or are more socially adept or are more athletic or are less eloquent or are more trustworthy or are less inclined to violence…. what I’m driving it is that we are all the same bag of chemicals, but not one individual among us is, in fact, equal to any other.

Humans are all mortal, carbon-based beings, equipped with conceptual consciousness and free will, and all humans are individuals, each with its own distinct GPS coordinate, living and learning according to specifics of time and place and culture and family and genetic inheritance, universally free and universally unequal.

So, if humans all have the same basic capacities, but also are universally individualistic, then justice begins with the overall protection of the sphere of human action within which individuals pursue their purposes according to their unique capacities and situations in a voluntary and peaceful manner and justice ends with the punishment of coercion and fraud, which are the ways in some humans attempt to treat other humans as if they aren’t human beings, but instead merely means to their ends.

Not all obstacles to human action are thought up, proposed by, implemented, and enforced by human beings. There are natural external forces, such as gravity, that influence us every day. Natural law cannot be canceled, there are no exemptions from the effects of climate, geography, and tidal forces. There is no way for humans to thrive by evading the nature of the world as it is. Similarly, there is no way for human civilizations to thrive when governments pretend that human beings are natural resources, to be used as if they have no free will, as if their individual preferences or purposes or desires or imaginations or ambitions can be dictated or prohibited, as if their local knowledge is inferior to the priorities of a far-off bureaucrat. Enforcing laws that contradict the nature of the governed is as ineffective a spur to humanity’s social progress as ignoring the laws of the natural world would be to humanity’s technological progress. I previously posted that “Coercion Ain’t Ever Moral.” Well, it isn’t particularly practical either!

The circumstances of life on Earth today may incline us to say that the legal codes of countries determine how free we are, and there are obvious concrete ways in which this would seem to be the case. But humans are free before there are laws, as a function of our nature. So why are there so many governments pretending this is not the case? Who benefits from artificial borders separating us from each other, making it harder to communicate and trade as individuals without complying with costly and disruptive and unnecessary interference? Who benefits from perpetuating the notion that coercive laws are necessary and that governments are indispensable?

The disturbing legal limits that prevent humans from being as free as they are naturally entitled to be, like nation-states and political organizations, will seem absurd to some future civilization, whose participants will breathe a sigh of relief that they live in a world in which their freedom to think and act is the same regardless of where on Earth, or in the cosmos, they happen to be.

There already is a single-payer system in America. It’s called Medicare. Expanding Medicare is the new version of the public option. Medicare is bankrupting America. It’s delusional, immoral, and stupid to imagine that this is a good idea. Medicare is insolvent to the tune of thirty eight trillion dollars.

- $38,000,000,000,000.00

The Left have glommed onto the idea that federal mandates and a public option are good ideas. But the countries they most often cite as model health care policy examples— Canada, France, England, Germany— are all struggling with runaway, budget-busting health care costs. Expanding Medicare as a cost-control measure? To increase competition? The politicians promoting this deceitful policy and depicting their critics as inhumane are villains.

As long as most people remain insensitive to the basic incompatibility of coercive means with humanitarian ends, societies will be hijacked by manipulative politicians and consumed by destructive power struggles between groups determined to impose their preferences and priorities on others through the force of law.

Having humanitarian aspirations does not make using force to achieve them any less inhumane. Put another way, caring deeply about the education of children or the health care needs of poor people doesn’t justify acting like a careless bully on their behalf.

Furthermore, labeling as “moral” any laws that authorize seizing people’s wealth or exerting control over people’s lives if and when lawmakers’ stated intentions seem sincere and idealistic and are well-received by a majority of citizens is nothing less than an attempt to justify the unjustifiable.

At a minimum, the morality of a law consists of its rejection of coercive uses of force. When laws themselves become instruments of coercion, when people are interfered with or penalized by laws merely for undertaking peaceful and voluntary behavior, when people’s earnings and property are treated by the law as a resource that can be seized or controlled without their consent, then those laws no longer have any moral justification.

This is not to say that humanitarian goals are not worthwhile. Of course, they are. But declaring a noble goal doesn’t result in a moral blank check! No matter how well a bottle of wine goes with a particular meal, you’re not justified in stealing it to make the match. Today’s political partisans typically resist criticisms of their favorite projects by trumpeting the heartlessness of their opponents— “So-and-so doesn’t care about ____, how insensitive so-and-so is!”  But what of their own insensitivity to the dehumanizing havoc wrought by their policies in the service of those about whom they care?

What I’m hoping is that a critical mass of people will conclude in my lifetime that virtuous goals are simply unobtainable via coercive behavior or laws. One is as likely to arrive at a moral accomplishment via murder or rape as via a law that overlooks and undermines the humanity of a single person.

First and foremost and without exception, each and every law in a just society must preserve and uphold the equal claim of all individual human beings to the absolute and inalienable ownership of their bodies, their minds, and their property. Every law must implicitly or explicitly protect individuals as they exercise their free will in the peaceful and voluntary pursuits of their choosing.

Very many people disagree with me about this, profoundly. Their moral premise— “bullying is sometimes necessary”— is the predominant moral premise powering today’s laws. People who would never say that a crime is justified based on the perceived resilience of its victim will nonetheless muster the emotional distance and amorality required to argue that people who earn more should pay greater sums and additional fees and higher rates for no other reasons than that “they can afford it.” People who would never raise their voices to their neighbors will nonetheless vote to imprison neighbors who smoke a plant! People who would never ask to borrow money from their friends will nonetheless vote to increase the amount of their friends’ wealth that is seized under threat. People who would say, “two wrongs don’t make a right” to their children exercise political power in this delusional and hypocritical manner.

Many people tolerate the contradiction involved in helping (or serving) some by penalizing others. Based on their biases and preconceived notions, such people are apparently comfortable picking winners and losers, and using the brute force of law to enforce those preferences. There is a cost to this approach to politics that ought to be borne by those who perpetuate it, but which far too rarely is. That cost should be public shame. Shame not unlike that which tarnished the reputations of self-serving advocates of human slavery generations ago. To be clear, the moment a person supports threatening to fine or imprison people who do not comply with laws that compel them to support projects they would never voluntarily support, they’ve crossed a line that not only denies them the option of honestly claiming a moral high ground, but also should hurt their reputation.

Say what you will, Mr. and Ms. Advocate of Well-Intended, High-Minded Coercive Public Policy, about why you think taking from some to help others will achieve worthwhile goals. But don’t cloak your bullying behavior in some twisted dialect of morality. You surrendered the actual moral high ground as soon as you pulled out the “gun” you’re relying upon to impose your will.

I am sometimes frustrated by the alarming absence of a moral component to the typical libertarian’s critique of contemporary politics. Yes, absolutely, there are empirical data, economic insights, and historical references that support resistance to allowing the State to gain greater control of the economy or intrude in our personal lives. Yes, central planning and regulation and taxation are devastating practical failures for a variety of reasons worth examining and pointing out to others  But they should be expressed in addition to a moral rebuttal, not instead of one.

There is something macabre about engaging in a conversation about the practical problems with government intervention without ever pointing out how morally outrageous it is in the first place. People who believe in the benevolence of increasingly powerful government often respond to technical critiques (“it’ll never work because…”) by falling back on their moral pretenses (“but it’s the right thing to do!”). No, actually, it isn’t. The moral option ain’t ever coercion. That epically mistaken presumption has to be abandoned and the laws derived from it must be abolished.

What other hope is there for a humane world than the widespread adoption, culturally and legally, of the moral premise that initiating force against anyone for any reason is unjustifiable?

So, this is my first ever blog post without screws and plates in my right knee. All of that hardware was successfully removed Monday morning between 11am and 1pm. I emerged from  surgery overwhelmed by pain, spent about five hours in a recovery room on heavy medication (percocet and toradol), managed to regain my wits and muster strength enough to get home Monday evening by about 6:45. Since then, I’ve been managing the pain with far less powerful medication (tramadol). Yesterday, I took myself off tramadol because I was starting to feel light-headed and nauseated, usually within an hour or so of my next dose, which made me want to take the medication sooner. I didn’t like where that was heading. As before, I’m more inclined to feel pain than to feel out of control of my mind. Since yesterday afternoon, I’m relying on a megadose of Tylenol to take the edge off.

Fortunately, the surgery went well. Technically, the surgeon accomplished the two primary goals: the hardware has been removed and he cut out all of the scar tissue he could find. Also, I don’t appear to have an infection, a debilitating problem that came up for both Peyton Manning and Tom Brady after their knee surgeries. This is all good and should result in my being more comfortable in general and having slightly improved range of motion (I was already nearly back to normal).

Unfortunately, the surgeon discovered that my knee joint as a whole has not and will not completely heal.  Although the bone has healed extremely well, the demoralizing truth is that my meniscus has made very little progress, so little that the joint cannot sustain most of my cherished pre-surgery activities. Running is not going to be an option. Nor jumping rope. Walking up and down stairs may become slightly more comfortable than it is now, but probably will always hurt a little. I have a permanently impaired knee. Although I’m open to the possibility of medical marvels that may help me at some point in the future, realistically, I’ve run for the last time.

This is crushing news. I really love being a runner. This development has stunned me.

I knew a full comeback would be difficult, but I had not accepted seriously the idea that it might be impossible for me to ever run again at all. It’s a shock, especially in light of my surgeon’s optimism up to this point.

Alas, TANSTAAFL applies, as it always does.

This coming Monday, a significant chapter in the saga of my comeback from a catastrophic knee injury will come to a close. I’m scheduled for surgery on the morning of November 23rd to fix issues with my kneecap and my quadricep tendon, remove scar tissue, and take out the nine screws and two plates installed on November 14th, 2008 to artfully and ingeniously restructure my knee.

These days, it hurts when I go up or down stairs and generally when I push off of my right leg with anything more than the effort needed to walk. It is possible that after this surgery my pain will lessen, if not entirely go away. But I’ve learned how to live with a certain amount of general pain in my leg, and though I’d obviously be happier without it, I have other priorities.

My main hope is that after this surgery I will be able to jump, jog, and run, if not as powerfully or quickly as I once could, at least functionally. Right now, the act of starting to run or jump results in nerve-rattling pain and my knee buckles. Essentially, there is a final measure of progress in my rehabilitation that simply isn’t possible with all of the hardware and scar tissue gumming up the works. So, I can’t help but feel like I’m approaching a moment of truth. After giving my body about one month to regenerate bone mass, it’s possible that I will be able to run around a little, which would be the outcome I’ve been working towards since starting my rehabilitation in February.

Possible? Probable? My surgeon isn’t saying. The only certainty is that leaving in the hardware limits my recovery potential. So, I’m going for it, come what may.

I have faith that I’ll be running around in 2010. Faith not of the jumping-to-conclusions-that-make-no-sense-based-on-revelations-that-make-no-sense variety, but faith of the ‘confidence and optimism’ sort.

I am so very ready to start a new chapter.

Anita Dunn contends:

“”The use of the phrase ‘favorite political philosophers’ was intended as irony, but clearly the effort fell flat — at least with a certain Fox commentator whose sense of irony may be missing.”

I don’t detect any irony in the video. She is lying. Lying about her appreciation… of Mao. Mao!?!?!?!?

The mainstream media response to this? Nonexistent. I found out about it from a friend’s blog (ht: Patrick Stephens).

I don’t know that much about Beck and I find his histrionics off-putting. But he’s asking questions and talking about issues that nobody else is touching, and his overall perspective— profound skepticism regarding government power— is the proper one for any serious journalistic endeavor.

Recently, the White House has sought to marginalize Fox News Channel, not a little ironic in light of its policy of “engagement” with tyrannical regimes. The Obama Administration should fire Anita Dunn and mainstream media outlets should refuse to bend to the despicable pressure the Obama Administration is placing on them to function as megaphones and mouthpieces of its policies.

Now that he has the award, how will President Obama endeavor to earn it?

“I do not view it as a recognition of my own accomplishments. But rather as an affirmation of American leadership. … I will accept this award as a call to action.”

A call to act… in what way? By doing more of what apparently landed him the honor in the first place? According to the Nobel people, he won the award for his:

“Extraordinary efforts to strengthen international diplomacy and cooperation between peoples.”

Snubbing the Dali Lama so that he can cooperate better with China. A blasé response to the recent corrupt Iranian election, subsequent brutal suppression of protesters and overt threats to Israel so that he can cooperate better with the fanatical Ahmadinejad. Foisting higher prices for tires on American consumers and threatening to start a protectionist trade war by punishing Chinese manufacturers with tariffs so that he can cooperate better with American labor unions. Giving speeches throughout Europe that apologize for America’s arrogance and praises their cradle-to-grave welfare statism, and asking for Europe’s government to spend money they don’t have and being rebuffed. A UN initiative jointly sponsored with Egypt that ostensibly promotes free speech but includes ominous provisions criminalizing “hate speech” which the U.S. does not currently do because of our troublesome First Amendment liberties. We’re still in Iraq and it appears Obama is about to increase our military role in Afghanistan, where he continues to authorize the torching of villages’ harvested opium poppy without paying compensation. Closing Guantanamo (eventually), but retaining the practice of extraordinary rendition.

Hmmm.

Meanwhile, here at home, Obama has throttled up socializing medicine, which amounts to accelerating a process already underway (see W.’s prescription drug benefit plan), and he’s turned over massive amounts of wealth to large corporations, nearly quadrupling last year’s deficit to over $1,400,000,000,000.00, which is a kind of homage to W. Where’s the transparency Obama promised? Congressional bills are still loaded with pork. Where’s the propriety and fiscal responsibility he promised? Why is his White House embracing the executive privileges he criticized during his campaign? Warrantless wiretapping, Mr. President? Why can’t he muster the courage to stand up for equal rights for gay people? He laughed… laughed… when asked if he might address the fact that hundreds of thousands of Americans are rotting in jail because of draconian drug prohibition laws?

But he’s a very charismatic deliverer of speeches.

According to the Nobel people, “His diplomacy is founded in the concept that those who are to lead the world must do so on the basis of values and attitudes that are shared by the majority of the world’s population.”

Grandiose, partisan gobbledegook.

The values and attitudes shared by the majority of the world’s population are clear enough to anyone to be a “foundation?” W. used to talk about the universal value of individual freedom. Is that what they mean? What  exactly do they mean? What should a world leader do when the majority of the world wants stuff or services that infringe on individual liberties? On what basis must the President of the United States lead… the world?

He was basically given the prize for his stated intentions, and their own intentions are all that mattered to them that gave it. For those of us who live in and care about the real world, it’s a disheartening spectacle.

Although most people find racism and sexism intolerable in practice, many of these same people don’t consciously reject racism’s and sexism’s theoretical foundations on principle, which tragically leads them to unwittingly abet the same kind of irrational, collectivist, dehumanizing persecution they believe they have forsworn.

The belief that it is possible to infer the moral worth of a person solely based on skin color or annual income or gender is as irrational as the behavior that it produces is reprehensible. Although our society has made tremendous progress on racism and sexism, income bracket bigotry is the law of the land:

In 2007, the top-earning 25 percent of taxpayers (AGI over $66,532) earned 68.7 percent of the nation’s income, but they paid more than four out of every five dollars collected by the federal income tax (86.6 percent). The top 1 percent of taxpayers (Adjusted Gross Income [AGI] over $410,096) earned approximately 22.8 percent of the nation’s income (as defined by AGI), yet paid 40.4 percent of all federal income taxes. That means the top 1 percent of tax returns paid more in federal individual income taxes than the bottom 95 percent of tax returns.

Income bracket bigotry is the unreasonable assertion that a person increases his moral liability with each additional dollar he earns, and therefore, the more a person earns, the less a person should be permitted to keep. Many people accept the notion that higher tax rates are justified by higher earnings without thinking about it. So widely accepted and deeply seated is this prejudice that it does not strike most people as controversial. People who are otherwise compassionate and reasonable regard annual income as an acceptable basis for legal discrimination.

If you think that a law that targets a minority with higher tax rates is wrong unless that minority has an annual income that you consider too high, then you’re an income bracket bigot. If you’re thinking, “But rich people can afford higher taxes,” well, would you say of a black man working on a plantation, “He’s young and strong, quite capable of working as a slave,” or would you say of a woman, “Her capacity to give birth is more important than her freedom to choose to do so?”  You have capacities, such as natural talents and learned skills. Would you object to my citing some or all of them as reasons to compel you to act against your will or to pay me a percentage of your income?

The fourteenth amendment to the U.S. Constitution explicitly forbids states from making or enforcing laws that deny any person “equal protection of the laws.” We are all citizens, but the presumption of innocence does not apply to all of us equally; some of us have to pay more of some of the dollars we earn merely to avoid fines and stay out of jail.

Ignorance powers every form of bigotry. Income bracket bigots contend that there is only so much wealth to go around and assert that the high annual incomes of some deprive other people of their fair share. Many people believe that this obsolete, “wealth is a zero-sum game” Marxist demagoguery amounts to sound reasoning. It doesn’t.

Yes, if I drink your milkshake without your consent, then I have increased my wealth by depriving you of yours. But that scenario is more precisely analogous to the effect of an income bracket bigot’s progressive income tax system (ie, robbing Peter to pay Paul) than it is to the way most people earn their annual incomes. Most people trade their labor to people able and willing to compensate them for it.  When people trade voluntarily, the party receiving money and the party receiving a good or service both become wealthier. Income bracket bigots don’t understand this. If you accept my bid for your milkshake, at the end of the trade we both end up wealthier. And if you sell one milkshake for $10 or one hundred million milkshakes for $3 each, you are no more or less entitled to the first or last dollar exchanged. There is no rational basis for saying that laws should treat the first dollar differently than the three hundred millionth dollar.

Income bracket bigotry is an article of faith among American Leftists, but even they sense the need to justify themselves, which they do by referring to social justice, the ideal of an egalitarian society achieved by social engineers through mechanisms like a graduated income tax. But this vestigial, magical thinking does not correspond to reality. No societies were ever poorer than those that empowered bureaucrats to redistribute wealth coercively, nor were any crueler, more oppressive, or deadlier.

On the other hand, the greatest wealth accrues to the greatest number of people as a result of voluntary trading, not as a result of coercive redistribution.  The incentives that prevail in markets result in more goods and more services becoming more affordable to the greatest possible number of people.

The historical record and empirical evidence in support of the theory of free market capitalism are as irrefutable as the data which support the theory of evolution and the theory of relativity. Why do so many people ignore and resist and demonize a theory which accurately describes how creativity, productivity, and prosperity arise in societies that promote voluntary, peaceful, purposeful, individual human action?

Americans are currently bearing the brunt of their government’s gargantuan involuntary wealth transfers to failed firms in the automotive and financial industries, as well as ongoing massive subsidies to agricultural, health insurance, pharmaceutical, and energy companies. Corporate welfare and laws that grant some companies advantages over others are disgraceful and should all be illegal. Many people mistakenly interpret alliances of government and business as “capitalism,” and insofar as that is the definition they are operating on, they are right to protest it. However, most people still earn money without the benefit of government subsidies or protectionist laws. Most people I know believe people ought to pay higher tax rates on higher incomes. Why?

Because they are consumed by a bigotry against wealth creators, blinded by prejudice.

Bigots are as much strangers to their own humanity as they are to the humanity of others. The determinism inherent in bigotry— trait X leads directly to moral position Y— renders people unthinking, uncaring automatons.

If a person’s annual income does not result from coercion or fraud, that is, if his annual income is derived from peaceful, voluntary exchanges with honest parties based on mutual consent, then what is the nature of the process that leads to the conclusion that such income should be subject to legal discrimination, legal predation, legal extortion?

When a society already morally disapproves of a race or a gender or a sexual preference or a scientific inquiry or an entrepreneur’s success, but is more inclined to wield power over others than commit genocide, its bigotry rises to the surface at the margins. The bigoted rationale that leads to allowing gays in the military as long as they pretend to be straight, the lynching of outspoken people who belong to an ethnic minority, the censorship of scientific knowledge that contradicts religious dogma, and the stoning to death of women who show their faces in public also results in higher tax rates on higher incomes.

There is a great scene in Inherit the Wind that comes to mind. Courtesy of YouTube, here it is:

“There is no way to administer a wicked law impartially.”

Although the play is ostensibly about the responses of a heroic few to a law banning the teaching of evolution, it is also addresses the threat to human civilization of faith-based attitudes, ideals, and laws. By definition, prejudice is a leap of faith, an unreasonable conclusion, an empirically false proposition elevated to authoritative revelation. Societies that tolerate faith-based laws are bound to use people’s peaceful behavior as a basis for brutalizing or plundering or killing them. Though income bracket bigotry most directly penalizes success, depriving people of means to grow their businesses and invest in others, and often leading them to depart for other states (including other countries) whose governments will respect their equality before the law, Truth, Justice and Progress are its most tragic casualties. What kinds of reforms are likely to prevail in a society that tolerates income bracket bigotry?

The U.S. is in the middle of an economic crisis built on decades of faith-based public policy, a situation only exacerbated by the American Left’s income bracket bigotry. President Obama’s response to the status quo? More status quo. Higher taxes on top annual incomes. (For the record, Republicans had six years to undo income bracket bigotry and did nothing.)

What minority wouldn’t do everything within its power to shield itself from its government’s increasingly hostile response to its law-abiding behavior? Why do tax revenues increase when tax rates are lower? What is the fate of a society that discriminates against its most successful entrepreneurs?

Imagine if Obama heeded Dr. King’s wisdom and abolished the ruinous laws prejudiced against wealth creation and economic growth. Wouldn’t that be the morally right thing to do? Wouldn’t that be truly progressive?