"nobody in this country is left to die on the emergency room floor because they don't have health insurance."

http://articles.latimes.com/2007/jun/02/...

"Ruptured bowel led to death in ER lobby

A 43-year-old woman who writhed in pain for 45 minutes on the emergency room lobby floor of Martin Luther King Jr.-Harbor Hospital died of a perforated bowel, the Los Angeles County coroner's office said late Friday."

This is getting tedious, folks.

"I wonder what constitutes a big government to you?"

Oh, let's say gov't expenditures at <10% of GDP.

"It seems you define it by suggest[sic] that it is over when a tyrant says it is."

If by "tyrant" you mean a century of policy by a range of democratically constituted governments operating with the consent of their respective citizenry, yes.

"Better yet, how can the anarchist, minarchist, conservative, liberal, statist, socialist, and marxist all have their ideal societies realized without resorting to violence against their neighbor?"

This is a red herring because the state, any state, is violence incarnate. Do we really need to go back to Hobbes? Or should we stop at 1848?

By any practical measure, the debate is settled, for there has not been an industrial state with anything remotely approaching small government for a century or more.

To be sure, people like us may bat the ball back and forth, but some also maintain that Marx's Revenge is just around the corner, a position equally divorced from reality.

PRG:"But how do we fairly and non-violently settle this very large disagreement?"

I would argue, sir, that it has been settled in the industrialized nations for more than a century!

You may rightly rail against the blunt instrument of state violence (although one wonders how many tax evaders--not deniers, mind you--have had their door kicked in by IRS SWAT teams in the middle of the night), but surely even you cannot deny that the lion's share of the wealth generated since 1790 has come as a result of public investments in transportation, sanitation & health, and education--including the state-supported institutions at which you were educated.

I should clarify: the ideas of which I speak belong to those who seek to establish some libertarian utopia free of 'collectivist' redistribution--and in so doing explicitly deny any responsibility to provide for their fellow citizens unfortunate enough to have been born in poverty. The idea that those who perform society's backbreaking scutwork should be left to their own devices is a morally repugnant nineteenth-century anachronism that does not merit serious consideration.

(What's more, they've the temerity to cite the bank bailouts as evidence of government malfeasance, as if it wasn't the result of allowing the banks the 'freedom' to innovate!)

I can't believe anyone bothered to argue with people whose ideas would result in the destruction of any modern industrialized society foolish enough to implement them--and for 170+ comments, no less!

Correcting factual errors is often rather useless, but all the same:

Walter Reed is a DoD hospital, not VA.
The VA consistently beats the private sector in patient and physician satisfaction.

Regarding the VA's HIV scare, I call your attention to our own Endoscopy Center hepatitis scandal last year. That case of negligence can hardly be said to impugn the very model of privately provided medical care, can it?

I'll not attempt to change anyone's mind about the efficiencies of publicly provided (or merely publicly insured, as in Medicare/Medicaid) health care--it's quite clear that no amount of evidence to the contrary will sway you. I do, however, take exception to those who attempt to use the VA as their political cudgel. Many veteran's organizations have worked hard to turn that institution into a model for coordinated, evidence-based care--care that in my personal experience has met or exceeded anything I've encountered in the private sector. Indeed, why would the more than 400,000 veterans who've applied--and been rejected for enrollment because their incomes were too high--queue up for a "failed" system?

You can't seriously believe that dismantling those settlements will pose an existential threat to Israel. If so, to what purpose does Israel maintain its nuclear arsenal? Those weapons and Israel's overwhelming conventional superiority should suffice as a guarantee of its continued existence.

So much of the commentary on Mr. Greenspun's article seems to stipulate some vague obligation for the US' continued subsidy for some ill-considered and religiously motivated settlement of the West Bank (biblical "Judea and Samaria). This is not clearly the case. Israel is free to advance its national interest as it sees fit; if a plurality of the Israeli electorate feels that annexation and settlement of "Judea and Samaria" advances those interests they are free to undertake the endeavor (although one wonders where the Arabs now in possession of the land will go--and how they will get there). They mustn't expect American taxpayers to underwrite such foolishness, however.

By all accounts, there is apparently a wider spectrum of opinions in Israel proper than would be apparent from the range of opinions that have appeared on the pages of the Sun.

"Any U.S. foreign policy in the region should recognize that Israeli interests must come first."

I don't know why this is so hard for people to understand. U.S. foreign policy must place U.S. interests first, even when they conflict with Israel's. The fact that Israel is "our only real ally in the Middle East" (a point Egypt and Jordan might dispute) doesn't seem to have stopped them from acting to contravene our interests when it has suited them. If Israel's vision of the future--as evidenced by their refusal to remove settlements they themselves have declared illegal--involves the settlement of everything between the Mediterranean and the Jordan River, so be it. We'll part ways and they can do it on their own dime.

"the most important result in the Mideast is Israel's long-term security as an independent and strong nation free from the threat of terrorist strikes and from annihilation by Iran's nuclear program."

This is a common mistake, sir. The most important result is the long-term security of the *United States*. The rhetoric and policy decisions of the American president must advance this goal. Therefore, when it is in US interests to help a nation we should do so. However, I have seen no convincing argument that the Israeli government's interests in expanding the territory under its control and preserving the demographics of its electorate are anything but a hindrance to our efforts to advance US interests and security.

The Cold War is long gone, and with it the need for a US proxy in the Levant. Partisans of the Abrahamic faiths have been killing each other for centuries and, to date, show no desire to stop (as demonstrated by the Israeli and Palestinian electorates) anytime soon. What benefits to us result from our sponsorship of Israel? What improvement in our position would result from withdrawing this support? These are the questions that should matter.