This health care article by Robert Samuelson is something every young person in America should read.  They won’t of course; young people don’t pay serious attention to politics, and that is one of the reasons that American social policy is increasingly rigged against them.  One of Samuelson’s key points is that the House bill

“mandates that health insurance premiums for older Americans be no more than twice the level of that for younger Americans. That’s much less than the actual health spending gap between young and old. Spending for those age 60 to 64 is four to five times greater than those 18 to 24. So, the young would overpay for insurance that—under the House bill—people must buy: Twenty-and thirty-somethings would subsidize premiums for fifty-and sixty-somethings. “

As Samuelson also points out, we don’t do car insurance this way.  Young drivers, especially males, have more accidents than middle aged ones, so young drivers pay much, much more for car insurance.  However, when it comes to health care, the plan is to intentionally overcharge young people to bring premiums down for their elders.

This health care scam would benefit me; I am one of those health-care guzzling geezers whose premiums would be shifted off to the gullible youth.  However, I think it’s obscene.  People in their twenties have enough trouble finding their footing in the job market and in a world that our educational system does little to prepare them for.  Overwhelming, people in their twenties earn less than most older folk, don’t have the savings we canny old folks have stashed away, and face the high costs of finishing their educations and starting up new households. Increasingly, they are also staggering under the weight of huge student loans.

As it now stands, young people are about to get hit with a new, government-mandated requirement that they buy health care — at prices artificially increased in order to subsidized the premiums of mostly wealthier middle aged people.  Sam the Official Intern at Team Mead is going to pay more on his insurance so that the CEO of this mighty enterprise can pay less.  If this plan takes hold and spreads through the economy as its proponents hope, graduate students will be paying higher insurance premiums so that tenured professors pay less.  Bank tellers will be paying higher premiums so that middle managers pay less. read more »

While flying back from the Aspen conference in Italy I came down with my second cold in a month.  In honor of that, and of this generally dark season, I offer another occasional poem, this one by Ezra Pound.

“Ancient Music”

Winter is icumen in,
Lhude sing Goddamm,
Raineth drop and staineth slop,
And how the wind doth ramm!
Sing: Goddamm.
Skiddeth bus and sloppeth us,
An ague hath my ham.
Freezeth river, turneth liver,
Damm you; Sing: Goddamm.

Goddamm, Goddamm, 'tis why I am, Goddamm,
So 'gainst the winter's balm.
Sing goddamm, damm, sing goddamm,
Sing goddamm, sing goddamm, DAMM.

Pound got the idea from one of the most famous middle English lyrics still floating around — a much more cheerful ode to summer (below).  If we can just hold out for five more months! (By the way, those funny little letters are called ‘thorns’ and should be pronounced as ‘th.’ It’s my personal theory, with no evidence whatever behind it, that the ‘y’ in phrases like ‘ye olde coffee shoppe’ is a broken thorn, and the phrase was originally intended to read ‘the’.  But what do I know?)

“Sumer Is Icumen In”

Svmer is icumen in
Lhude sing cuccu!
Groweþ sed and bloweþ med
and springþ þe wde nu.
Sing cuccu!

Awe bleteþ after lomb,
lhouþ after calue cu,
Bulluc sterteþ, bucke uerteþ.
Murie sing cuccu!
Cuccu, cuccu,
Wel singes þu cuccu.
ne swik þu nauer nu!

Sing cuccu nu, Sing cuccu!
Pes
Sing cuccu, Sing cuccu nu!

Over at the Arena on Politico.com they asked me to put in my two cents about the purloined emails from the global warming scientists.

I did; this could unfortunately be one of the stories of the year. Read it below:

When the ‘climategate’ story broke, I doubted that it would ultimately amount to much. Scientists are as nasty and conniving as other people; anybody who digs deep enough is likely to turn up some dirt. And I’m old fashioned enough to hate sneak thieves who pry into other peoples’ emails and publish them on-line. I’d like my private correspondence to stay private and believe other people deserve this as well.

But the story keeps growing. Laws may have been broken when it comes to the Freedom Of Information Act requests. “Lame” would be a charitable description of the defenses mounted by some of the scientists involved. And the scientists I’ve talked to about this, people who like me generally accept the IPCC position on climate change, have been more horrified by the revelations than I was. I’ve been learning a lot more about the low regard in which some hard scientists hold climatologists than I ever expected to hear.

It begins to look to me as if some of the world’s leading climate scientists have been caught pulling an ‘Acheson’. Dean Acheson said he had to be ‘clearer than truth’ about the Communist danger to get American public support for the Truman administration’s initial steps to contain the USSR; I think maybe some climate scientists have made the same call. Their motives may be noble (let’s stretch the truth to save the world) or mixed (and also keep those research grants flowing in); the consequences could be grave.

We live in an increasingly skeptical, populist political climate. It was already looking extremely unlikely that the Senate and the House could agree on a serious climate change bill next year. Now we could be going from slim to none.

The media is making a big mistake if it thinks ignoring this story will save cap-and-trade. Thorough and relentless investigative reporting is the only way to deal with this story now.

The signs are that President Obama is nearing an inflection point in foreign policy: a point where perceptions crystallize one way or the other.  Either he is a cool and calm genius, restoring order to an American foreign policy in crisis, or he is a well-intentioned bumbler, Jimmy Carter II.  Peggy Noonan, not surprisingly, makes this point in The Wall Street Journal.  As an old Reagan speechwriter, she was going to have her doubts about Obama come what may.

However, the Economist — which endorsed him — makes a similar point.  And worst of all, The New York Times blames Obama — correctly in my view — for screwing up the Middle East peace process.  And Peggy Noonan’s piece doesn’t rely on Republican hacks to make the point; she quotes Elizabeth Drew and my old friend and mentor Les Gelb.

Our president is in trouble at home and abroad.  And that isn’t good for anybody.

I’m hoping that he can turn this around.  A strong speech on Afghanistan next Tuesday will help.  Russia and China voted with the US and against Iran at the IAEA.  Sino-Russian backing for a strong sanctions package would be a feather in the president’s cap.  There may yet be a way to get the Middle East process back on track.  The carbon commitments he’s taking to Copenhagen have at least reduced the chance of a damaging fight with his friends in Europe.

But that hope is getting harder to sustain.   read more »

As I sit here courtesy of the Aspen Institute Italy at the official Team Mead Remote Roman Blogging Facility at the Parco dei Principi hotel, I can see the dome of St. Peter’s from my balcony beyond the Borghese Gardens overlooking the Old City.  Nice work if you can get it, although after almost two weeks on the road I am beginning to pine for the storied and exclusive residential borough of Queens.

Conferences are often dull; this one is better than most.  Last night CNN Senior Political Analyst Bill Schneider gave us a talk at a lavish dinner at the Gregorian Pontifical University down by the Trevi Fountain; Bill’s analysis was to the point and on the money.  A year in office, Obama remains almost as popular as he was on election day.  That’s no mean achievement considering the unemployment rate, and it’s a testimony to the hope that so many Americans have invested in this president.  However, the road ahead gets harder and the midterms look tough.

But pleasant as the conference and the surroundings are, my main feeling is one of unease.  We had another presentation by Richard Muller, one of America’s leading experts on science and politics, and author of the must-read book Physics for Future Presidents.  Regular readers of this blog know I’m skeptical that all the noise and activity about global warming is going to do much good; Muller made me feel even worse.  Apparently, even in the somewhat unlikely event that all the world’s countries honor the pledges they are making at Copenhagen, the impact on global warming will be something close to zilch. The good news according to Muller (who by the way basically accepts the IPCC take with a few cautions and caveats) is that there’s a non-trivial chance that the global warming problem could be less urgent than advertised.

We will find out; the world’s top political leaders and diplomats are going through a meaningless charade intended to make themselves look good while leaving the problem to sort itself out.

More and more I wonder if our experts and political classes are serious about anything.   read more »

Not surprisingly for Thanksgiving Day, I’ve got Turkey on my mind.

It’s not just me; Turkey could become a major issue in US-European relations.  I heard rumors in Berlin that President Obama surprised German Chancellor Angela Merkel by asking her why admitting Turkey into the EU is such a big deal for Germans.

Mustafa Akyol has just published a remarkable article on Turkey in the Huriyet Daily News, an important English language daily newspaper that I check regularly to keep tabs on Turkish events.  This is as good a short summary of the state of liberty in Turkey today as you are likely find anywhere; although he’s sympathetic to the Islamist AK Party, Mustafa notes some of the worries that many friends of Turkey currently share about what seems like an increasing hunger to control the press on the part of the country’s prime minister.  Mustafa’s piece doesn’t deal with some of the other worries people have about Prime Minister Erdogan, including some over the top comments about Israel and Darfur that he’s made; still, Mustafa explains why in Turkey’s case the rise of an Islamist party has contributed to the strengthening of democracy — so far.

President Obama is right to press Europe on Turkey’s application to the EU.  France and Germany seem to be increasingly opposed to a Turkish presence in the 27-member country club.  When and if Europe shuts the door in Turkey’s face, or when the Turks conclude that the Europeans are no longer serious about pushing forward with negotiations, Turkey’s progress toward liberal democracy could well come to a halt, and the battle between Islamists and Kemalists that Mustafa describes could become extremely brutal — with neither side committed to democracy and peace with the west.

On this Thanksgiving Day, I remain grateful to Turkey for its many years of being a good neighbor to Europe and a faithful ally of the United States.  I am grateful for the democratic openings that Mustafa describes, and for the rise of a Turkish movement to re-examine troubling events in the past and to come to terms with them seriously and fairly.  I am hopeful about Turkey’s potential to bridge gaps between East and West, North and South, Europe and the Middle East, and I believe that Turkey has much to teach the world.

It’s a good thing President Obama is urging our European allies — friends again, thanks largely to President Obama’s still strong charisma over here — to take the steps will set Turkey irrevocably on the path to fulfilling its vocation to be a democratic builder in a dangerously divided world.

Peace at home, peace in the world: this was Kemal Ataturk’s summary of his aims.  His methods were sometimes less than inspiring, but Ataturk’s slogan makes more sense than ever today.  If we are to have that kind of world, Turkey needs to be in the EU.

My friend Steve Clemons has one of the most interesting blogs around; today I think he went off the rails with a post on a New York City $100 million stimulus project that has gone to a Chinese firm.  Even when he’s wrong, Steve is interesting.  This time, he’s very wrong — and wrong in a way that points to some of the problems that have derailed liberalism as America’s governing philosophy.

While recognizing the importance of US-China economic links, Steve thinks it’s a travesty that stimulus money, intended to provide jobs here at home, is being given to a Chinese firm. This is wrong on so many levels it is hard to know where to start.

But I’ll try.

First, I wonder if Steve has forgotten who is funding the massive deficit spending that is ‘paying’ for the stimulus.  Last time I looked, China was buying a lot of these bonds.  I’m not sure why the Chinese should be interested in funding a deficit while we discriminate against Chinese firms.  China won’t stop buying our bonds overnight, but this kind of provocation will increase China’s interest in changing the terms of the relationship and hasten the day when China takes some steps we won’t like. read more »

I’m finishing up a quick visit to Germany after the Turkey trip.  I stopped off in Hamburg to see Joe Joffe, another member of TAI’s editorial board, and met a group of his colleagues at Die Zeit.

The short take: Obama remains very popular in Germany, but people are less sure about America.  The question here is almost whether we Americans are worthy of a leader as wise and progressive as the one we have got.  One thing to remember: Germans don’t blame him for the economy as increasing numbers of Americans do. They judge him by his aspirations and by his evident, undoubted sincerity.

I’m not sure they will follow him where they don’t want to go.  The war in Afghanistan is much more unpopular here than it is back in the states; people tell me that the polls show 60% to 70% of the people don’t think Germans should be involved in the war.  Some Germans understand that this could be a problem for him — many Americans want to see whether Obama’s rock star appeal overseas can be translated into concrete help with some of the ugly chores on his to-do list.

Hamburg is one of the most beautiful — and most bourgeois — of German cities; there are a lot of stately Buddenbrooks like homes stretching out from the city center and for some reason the sleek modern office buildings here and there blend in well.  Hamburg was always part of a liberal, pro-British, outward looking Hanseatic culture; it was a major media center in the West German era. It doesn’t take much to get Hamburgers to start telling Prussian and Bavarian jokes, like the one about two Bavarians and a Prussian in a beer hall.  The Bavarians were trying to do the traditional Bavarian thing, eating radishes and drinking beer, but in the summer humidity they couldn’t get the salt to come out of the salt shakers.  They were stuck with bland, insipid radishes; life was not good.

Then the Prussian came along and sat at the next table. read more »

Mars Bluff is a small town outside Florence, South Carolina, the town where all four of my grandparents lived for many years.  About fifty years ago it had its 15 minutes of fame when an atomic bomb fell out of an Air Force plane and exploded near the home of one Walter Gregg, injuring some of his family members and seriously damaging his house.  Fortunately the bomb wasn’t loaded; the nuclear part of the weapon was still on the plane.  Still, the explosion of the non-nuclear bits of the bomb created a mushroom cloud and left a sizable crater which you can still see today.  It remains the greatest tourist attraction in the whole of Mars Bluff.  Mr. Gregg went to his doctor, my grandfather, for treatment and spent the night at his house on Cherokee Road.

That’s pretty much it for Mars Bluff, South Carolina and for my family ties to the atom bomb; in Athens, Greece they have a Mars Hill or Areopagitica and it will likely be famous until the end of time.  It’s famous partly because it is the first place where the Christian faith and Greek philosophy met one another; the Apostle Paul was invited to deliver a speech in defense of this strange new faith to the scholars and philosophers who gathered there for debate.  That should be enough fame for any hill, but in addition John Milton named his pamphlet on the freedom of expression after the Athenian hill, and that pamphlet, published 365 years ago today, was no dud.

Areopagitica, as Milton called his pamphlet, was one of the most revolutionary documents ever penned.  Not only did Milton call for the end of prior censorship of printed materials in England, he rested his case on a new way of looking at dissent.

“Where there is much desire to learn,” wrote Milton, “there of necessity will be much arguing, much writing, many opinions; for opinion in good men is but knowledge in the making.”  Truth wasn’t an inheritance handed down from the past which we should maintain unchanged; it was something we had to discover by investigation and dispute.  Diversity of opinion wasn’t a sign of heresy and social breakdown; it was the sign of “the earnest and zealous thirst after knowledge and understanding which God hath stirred up in this city.”

Truth, he wrote, does not need the help of government censorship or official support. read more »

My recent trip to Turkey was an adventure in public diplomacy; I was in the country at the request of the State Department.  US diplomats abroad invite a variety of Americans to appear before foreign audiences for anything from jazz concerts and poetry readings to scientific presentations and talks on current events.  Wisely, the embassy had not asked me to give a jazz concert; I was there to talk about American foreign policy. An article in  Zaman, an English-language newspaper in Turkey, gives a reasonably accurate picture of what, from a Turkish point of view, were the main points made.

The remarks about Armenia, Israel and the PKK were in response to questions from the audience.  Most of my talk was actually about placing President Obama in the context of the history of American foreign policy, using the “four schools” framework in Special Providence as a way of comparing him to other American presidents.

These are non-partisan programs; I’d been to Turkey twice during the Bush administration (at a time when American foreign policy was much less popular in Turkey than it is now), and while I did not visit Turkey during the Clinton years I did speak in a number of other countries at the State Department’s request.  After 9/11 I volunteered to do more; since that time I’ve given talks like this in much of the Islamic world as well as in Europe and Asia.  Speaking in places like Peshawar, Beirut, Damascus and Baghdad hasn’t always been easy; my approach has been to try to explain American foreign policy rather than to criticize it.  When asked, I will explain what I think of particular policies, but in general I think it’s more useful for foreign audiences to hear an analysis than a critique of American foreign policy.  They can find plenty of criticisms on their own; I try to leave them with a sense of what the government is trying to do, how its policies fit into the historical sweep of American foreign policy, what kind of political support the policies enjoy at home, and what are the principal issues or events that might lead to a policy change.

I also work to clear up misconceptions.  You can’t please everybody and even with the best of intentions we are going to have problems abroad.  Especially during the Bush administration I felt that part of my job was to try to make sure that people only hated us for the ‘right’ reasons — that their objections to our policies were based on a clear understanding of what we were doing, not on conspiracy theories and rumors.  I also think it’s important for people whose lives have been affected (sometimes catastrophically, sometimes helpfully) by American foreign policy to have the chance to talk directly with an American about what happened, to express their feelings, and to ask some questions about why we did what we did.  That’s especially important in places like the Arab world where our footprint has been heavy and the results not always benign.  Sometimes my temper gets a bit frayed; speaking on American foreign policy in some parts of the world requires a lot of patient listening, and much of what you hear isn’t pleasant. read more »

The Archbishop of Canterbury and the Pope met in Rome this week and their spokesmen issued statements with the usual platitudes.  One thing they could do to benefit mankind: agree to a joint crackdown on appalling liturgical wear like the ones at Christopher Johnson’s website Bad Vestments. (Thanks to Glenn Reynolds the renowned Instapundit for this edifying link.)

The BBC is carrying a story today about a 400 pound bomb left at a police station in Northern Ireland, apparently by ‘dissident’ members of the IRA.  On the same night, there was a gun battle between the dissidents and the police. Fortunately the bomb only partially exploded and the damage was limited.

This is bad news for Northern Ireland, where many people hoped that the violence was fading away.  It is worse news for the Middle East; it underlines just how hard it’s going to be to get a lasting peace between the Israelis and the Palestinians.

Ireland was partitioned in 1922; most of the island became independent from Britain, with Ulster voted to stay in the UK.  That was 87 years ago next week; car bombs are still going off and armed gangs are still staging attacks.

On that schedule, if peace between Israel and the Palestinians is declared this year, terrorists will still be striking in the year 2086.  Frankly, I think that’s pretty likely.  The conflict between Palestinians and Israelis is even more bitter than the Anglo-Irish conflict was, and the issues are even harder to sort out.

This isn’t just an academic speculation.  The only reason most Israelis would favor making the concessions peace with Palestinians would require (dismantling settlements, dividing Jerusalem, giving diplomatic recognition to the Palestinian state) would be to increase Israel’s security.  But if ‘peace’ will be followed by 90 years of car bombs and gun battles anyway, why bother? read more »

I’m not sure what’s happening to the climate, but the controversy over global warming seems to be heating up.  The latest twist, an outcry over stolen emails that seem to document a nasty conspiracy among some climate scientists to silence and discredit their critics while manipulating evidence to strengthen the case for human responsibility for climate change, looks bad all around.  I’m as disgusted by people who steal and publicize private correspondence as I am by the behavior exposed in the emails.

As a Christian, I suppose I’m encouraged that modern science is providing us such vivid support for the truth of the basic Christian doctrine of Original Sin.  “We have all fallen short, we have all gone astray.”  Distinguished scientists turn out to be the same kind of conniving, egomaniacal backstabbers as the rest of us.

So far, the emails seem to say more about the moral character of individual scientists than about the science of climate change.  As I’ve written before in this blog, I have less doubt about the reality of climate change than I do about the ability of the world’s governments to agree on and implement effective action against it.

But there’s another observation to make here.  The scientists who are trying to isolate and discredit their opponents weren’t, I think, just doing it for the money and the prestige.  They genuinely believe (and they may well be right) that the fight against global warming is a fight to save the planet — to preserve billions of people against misery, to save human civilization, perhaps to save the human race.   When the stakes are so high, what’s wrong with a few ethical shortcuts?

When trying to build a public consensus in the United States for the struggle against communism, President Truman’s Secretary of State Dean Acheson made arguments which he later admitted were ‘clearer than truth.’  This, I think, is what the global warming scientists are trying to do.  They look around the world and see selfish politicians, selfish lobbyists, and stupid, inattentive voters.  Only by making the evidence clearer than truth can they hope to sway public opinion in time.

Ever since 1945, we have been living in an age of apocalypse.  Science-fiction catastrophes threaten us on every side from nuclear war to man-made pandemics to runaway global warming and others too numerous to name.  That list of potential catastrophes will only grow longer in this new century as the march of science and technology creates new and ingenious ways in which human beings can destroy themselves either by accident or on purpose.

As we move into this era, it’s going to be increasingly important to avoid the Achesonian temptation.  The problems we face are serious enough without over-hyping.  Letting the scientific consensus develop slowly while all objections are aired and all evidence sifted may slow down the process of policy change, but moving too quickly also has risks and costs.

So there are two lessons from this debacle.  One is that political and intellectual debate needs to be carried on in a spirit of scrupulous honesty; the other is that many emails should never be sent, and that all emails should be deleted.

Today we are commemorating (not, I think, celebrating) the anniversary of the first untethered hot air balloon flight in world history.  On November 21, 1783, two brave French adventurers rose into the heavens and were carried about nine miles across Paris in twenty five minutes.

A heroic feat, no doubt, but as I prepare this morning to fly from Izmir to Hamburg with a layover in Istanbul, I’m not sure that this whole manned flight thing is working out very well.  Each year air travel is more of an ordeal.  The seats are smaller, the planes are more congested, the security prodecures more invasive and time consuming.

I’ve flown several million miles in my life and what I’ve learned was well worth the effort and the expense.  I’ve lost track of the number of times that I’ve visited great world cities like London, Paris, Capetown, Istanbul, Singapore and beyond. The ability to travel repeatedly to different parts of the world has meant that I’ve been able to watch countries like Turkey, China, South Africa and Brazil change over time.

Rationally, I suppose I have to concede that air travel is a Good Thing, much as I dread my coming ordeal.  But I sometimes wonder whether I wouldn’t have learned more if intercontinental travel still went mostly by sea.  In the old days, it took weeks or even months to get from the United States to the rest of the world.  Even for wealthy people, a European tour was an important occasion, not the kind of routine schlep it is for businessmen and diplomats today.  And having invested so much time and effort to get to a place, you were more likely to try to get the most out of it once you arrived.  No sitting around in the hotel room watching Larry King on CNN; you were out making the best of your opportunities.

This morning I’ve been watching the day break over the harbor at Izmir.  Fishing boats are passing the narrow entrance of the horseshoe shaped bay into the Aegean; the proud Turkish flag is flying from a naval ship tied up in front of my hotel and used as a museum.  Palm trees stand alongside the corniche road that leads into the central city; the hills of Anatolia loom in the background.

In the old days, I don’t think I’d have come all the way to Izmir and stayed less than two days.  This city’s rich and sometimes tortured history would have demanded a closer, longer look.  As it is, I’ve given a couple of lectures, met some students and faculty, and had a long, interesting session on Turkish-American relations with a group of younger scholars who work in the area.

And now I’m flying out. Three airports, two flights and half a continent from southern Turkey to northern Germany.

I suppose that nine mile flight over Paris felt like an incredible adventure at the time, but these days while it may still take a miracle to get you to your destination on time, travel has mostly turned into a dull and horrible slog.

I’ve been back in Turkey for about thirty six hours, and I’m remembering all the reasons why I love this place.

There is, for one thing, the sour cherry juice, something that is everywhere in Turkey but rarely seen anywhere else.  You can get it on airplanes, at breakfast in my hotel, in kiosks at the airport and in soft drink machines here and there.  It’s often blended with apple juice and the sweet apple flavor somehow highlights the sour cherry taste.  There’s a restaurant on Second Avenue in New York that serves it; otherwise it’s strictly a Turkish delight.

But that’s not the only thing I love here.  I remember the evening I stood with my parents on a hilltop in Cappadocia; the sun was setting and the soft cries of the muezzins calling the faithful to prayer rose from village after village in the valleys below.  There are the mountains of the Black Sea coast, their slopes covered in hazelnut trees lower down; higher up there are lush alpine meadows with giant purple crocus flowers scattered here and there.  Cows in headdresses amble along the narrow mountain roads; there are aromatic breezes sweeping down hillsides covered with wild mint.

It was on my first trip in Turkey about twenty years ago that I began to realize what a special place this is.  I was driving my rented French car along a slick and winding road; an unmarked hairpin turn caught me driving at maybe 25 miles per hour.  The tires lost their grip on the road and the car sailed down the embankment into a muddy field.  The engine cut out and I sat there, hours from Istanbul, not speaking a word of Turkish, stuck in the mud with no idea what to do. read more »