hi wavydog,
actually i often read george will and i find him generally trustworthy and always interesting.
but i find he usually speaks eloquently and brilliantly about unique principles. and i think that is also his downfall.
indeed, i often think about him as my example of a way of thinking that necessarily fails. because isolating principles removes a person from a reality in which principles compete and virtue is a compound made of many principles.
i say the same thing about a communist view, which also isolates and rarefies and elevates certain principles above all others. absolute equality is no better and no more practical than paying no regard to inequality.
individual principles, taken to extremes, cause awful hardship. the temperate zone exists between the poles.
so this is my notion as i apply it to the world as it flows past me. but in fact, it is not a preconceived notion. it was conceived from many years of my own observations. and the failings of the wisdoms i received.
i would not dispute the fact that tort law creates perverse disincentives and some bad results, by the way. it is ridiculous that starbucks has to caution every espresso drinker that their coffee is hot. the issue in this case is whether tort reform would make a material budgetary difference. The economics suggests not. knowing this fact, i would not propound it as an important solution to the healthcare issue.
but republicans seem to.
i wonder why.
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