The Real Lance Brown

Paul Rosenberg posted on Fr33Agents about how libertarians (and any other group with a like viewpoint) make some basic group dynamic errors that serve to hold them back–the biggest being that they tend to communicate mostly within their own thought-circles.

I grew bored with the endless flow of philosophical and political cross-talk that seems to dominate most libertarian message boards and email lists. Most of it is about finding divisions in between people in the movement, rather than commonalities, which is not especially helpful if you’re trying to grow the movement into something stronger. And, as Rosenberg discusses in his post, navel-gazing over the views we already hold in common doesn’t help much either.

Cheap Talk & Group Dynamics: How Libertarians Fail.

I’m safe on board. Pull up the life rope – Roger Ebert’s Journal

Film critic Roger Ebert’s second blog post on health care reform has received almost 1000 comments; my comment is probably near the 600 zone. Here’s a direct link to my comment, but it’s copied below anyway. The more important place to start is Ebert’s post itself. He makes good points about having compassion for our fellow man, but like most folks who want to expand government, he appears to consider respecting individual liberty to be outside of the requirements of compassion and generosity. He seems to see the two forces as mutually exclusive, and is perfectly content to allow his version of compassion to override the freedom of everyone in the U.S..

As I point out in my comments, individual liberty and a compassionate society do not need to be mutually exclusive or competing things. There is another path, which would be pretty apparent if those desiring universal health care would give up their fixation on it having to be provided/guaranteed by government.

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Roger,

I must have missed the part where you explain why government has to be the vehicle through which we pursue the obviously-noble goal of ensuring that all have sufficient health care. Advocates of Obamacare are quick to speak of the moral imperative of compassion, but are willing to dispose of the moral imperative of individual liberty in pursuit of their goal.

If we’re talking about fulfilling our moral obligation to our fellow man–we owe him both compassion AND individual liberty. The dream of universal health care can be achieved without government mandates and without government takings. We don’t need to push each other around in order to do the right thing.

Instead of looking to follow in the rest of the world’s footsteps–which historically does not at all fit America’s profile–we should look to lead the world to a new and better way. Which is not just America’s profile, it’s our original purpose.

It’s odd how liberals have been allowed to take the moral high ground in this debate, when it would be clearly more moral to solve this problem without resorting to the use of force. Some nice side effects of doing so would be that it wouldn’t divide our country against itself, and it wouldn’t be dependent on the whims of voters or Congress or presidential administrations. But I wonder…it seems like a lot of folks in the current debate wouldn’t be satisfied somehow if we solved the problem without using government to push each other around.

There is a way for the health care solution to peacefully become a permanent part of our society’s fabric–but it requires stepping away from the insistence that “universal health care” = “universal health care provided by the government”.

A universal health care system which exists outside of government, in the voluntary sphere of society, is the true ideal, and we should not let the lazy half-step that is socialized medicine substitute for the genuinely ethical solution that we could achieve instead.

Once again, state licensing laws interfere with people trying to be a community. Thank God the state is there to step in and make sure we aren’t helping to watch each others’ kids, or run soup kitchens, or style people’s hair, without complying with myriad regulations and state and federal standards, and paying licensing and other fees.

Notable is the fact that to resolve the problem in this particular case, lawmakers are simply looking to fine-tune their arbitrary rules–not considering for a second the option of letting parents have the responsibility of determining where their children spend their time, and under whose care.

I’m given to wonder just how the human raced managed to survive all those many centuries without having the government in control of the babysitting industry.

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(Full story has been duplicated here for non-profit archival purposes; the original copy is here.)

State to mom: Stop baby-sitting neighbors’ kids

By JAMES PRICHARD
Associated Press Writer

IRVING TOWNSHIP, Mich. (AP) — Each day before the school bus comes to pick up the neighborhood’s children, Lisa Snyder did a favor for three of her fellow moms, welcoming their children into her home for about an hour before they left for school.

Regulators who oversee child care, however, don’t see it as charity. Days after the start of the new school year, Snyder received a letter from the Michigan Department of Human Services warning her that if she continued, she’d be violating a law aimed at the operators of unlicensed day care centers.

“I was freaked out. I was blown away,” she said. “I got on the phone immediately, called my husband, then I called all the girls” – that is, the mothers whose kids she watches – “every one of them.”

Snyder’s predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.

Snyder’s predicament has led to a debate in Michigan about whether a law that says no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers needs to be changed. It also has irked parents who say they depend on such friendly offers to help them balance work and family.

On Tuesday, agency Director Ismael Ahmed said good neighbors should be allowed to help each other ensure their children are safe. Gov. Jennifer Granholm instructed Ahmed to work with the state Legislature to change the law, he said.

“Being a good neighbor means helping your neighbors who are in need,” Ahmed said in a written statement. “This could be as simple as providing a cup of sugar, monitoring their house while they’re on vacation or making sure their children are safe while they wait for the school bus.”

Snyder learned that the agency was responding to a neighbor’s complaint.

Granholm spokeswoman Liz Boyd said the agency was following standard procedure in its response. “But we feel this (law) really gets in the way of common sense,” Boyd said.

“We want to protect kids, but the law needs to be reasonable,” she said. “When the governor learned of this, she acted quickly and called the director personally to ask him to intervene.”

State Rep. Brian Calley, R-Portland, said he was working to draft legislation that would exempt situations like Snyder’s from coverage under Michigan’s current day care regulations.

The bill will make it clear that people who aren’t in business as day care providers don’t need to be licensed, Calley said.

“These are just kids that wait for the bus every morning,” he said. “This is not a day care.”

Snyder, 35, lives in a rural subdivision in Barry County’s Irving Township about 25 miles southeast of Grand Rapids. Her tidy, comfortable three-bedroom home is a designated school bus stop. The three neighbor children she watched – plus Snyder’s first-grader, Grace – attend school about six miles away in Middleville.

Snyder said she started watching the other children this school year to help her friends; they often baby-sit for each other during evenings and weekends.

After receiving the state agency’s letter, she said she called the agency and tried to explain that she wasn’t running a day care center or accepting money from her friends.

Under state law, no one may care for unrelated children in their home for more than four weeks each calendar year unless they are licensed day-care providers. Snyder said she stopped watching the other children immediately after receiving the letter, which was well within the four-week period.

“I’ve lived in this community for 35 years and everyone I know has done some form of this,” said Francie Brummel, 42, who would drop off her second-grade son, Colson, before heading to her job as deputy treasurer of the nearby city of Hastings.

Other moms say they regularly deal with similar situations.

Amy Cowan, 34, of Grosse Pointe Farms, a Detroit suburb, said she often takes turns with her sister, neighbor and friend watching each other’s children.

“The worst part of this whole thing, with the state of the economy … two parents have to work,” said Cowan, a corporate sales representative with a 5-year-old son and 11-month-old daughter. “When you throw in the fact that the state is getting involved, it gives women a hard time for going back to work.

“I applaud the lady who takes in her neighbors’ kids while they’re waiting for the bus. She’s enabling her peers to go to work and get a paycheck. The state should be thankful for that.”

Amy Maciaszek, 42, of McHenry, Ill., who works in direct sales, said she believes the state agency was “trying to be overprotective.”

“I think it does take a village and that’s the best way,” said Maciaszek, who has a 6-year-old boy and twin 3-year-old daughters. “Unfortunately you do have to be careful about that. These mothers are trying to do the right thing.”

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Associated Press writers Randi Goldberg Berris and David Runk in Detroit and Kathy Barks Hoffman in Lansing, Mich., contributed to this report.

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Tallahassee Democrat.

Once again, John Stossel slices and dices an issue and provides a very different perspective than what you normally see, in a brief, tightly-packed segment.

In this case, he takes on Obama’s health care plan, and the consequences of removing profit from the health care industry in Canada and Britain: