by Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n
National Review Online<\/em><\/p>\n One of the most tired rhetorical tropes in Washington starts with, \u201cWe must . . . \u201d In the age of Obama, this is now usually followed by \u201cGet the cost of our health care under control,\u201d or \u201cInvest in the education of our youth,\u201d or \u201cSpend wisely.\u201d Such promises usually devolve into pleas for more money. They rarely explore how we ended up in the first place with such severe crises in health care and education \u2014 and with trillions in borrowing to spend trillions more that we do not have.<\/p>\n The cost of health care is spiraling out of control, and not just because the proverbial evil \u201cthey\u201d (fill in the blank: pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, medical corporations, trial lawyers, etc.) charge too much. Such profit-mongering entities may well gouge us, owing to a lack of competition, fear of lawsuits, or government mandates and interference. Yet the larger culprit is, of course, we the people. The cost of our health care is soaring because, to be frank, that health care is usually very good, and it does things routinely that almost no one else in the world contemplates \u2014 such as providing 83-year-olds with heart-valve replacements, 78-year-olds with hip and knee replacements, and those who drink, smoke, and are chronically obese with drugs and weekly doctor visits.<\/p>\n When I grew up in rural California in the 1960s, an obese uncle in his early 70s had \u201cheart trouble.\u201d That translated into some nitroglycerin tablets, and otherwise about the same regimen offered President Eisenhower after his in-office heart attack: Try to quit smoking, eat less, more bed rest \u2014 and good luck!<\/p>\n Forty years later, that same patient would have a bypass, and an expensive battery of medications and weekly follow-up doctor visits \u2014 and would make it not to 73 years old (as my uncle was when he died), but to 78 or 80, or even 90.<\/p>\n If we wish to get health-care costs under control, then we should at least be honest with the American people and admit that we are all paying a collective fortune largely for three reasons: (1) to keep functioning into their 60s those who drank, smoked, and ate too much and in a past era would have passed on at 60; (2) to give us all an extra three to five years of mobility and functionality after we reach 75; (3) to fit us up with IVs, feeding tubes, and respirators so that in our last six months of life we can die in a rest home or among machines and specialists in a hospital rather than in our own home with a few morphine tablets for pain and a bowl of soup with a straw on the nightstand.<\/p>\n My dentist warned me in 1962 to brush three times a day, since he could predict a depressing train of events to come for most of the more fortunate rural patients who could pay for his care: surely fillings in your 20s and 30s, hopefully caps in your 40s, maybe root canals and crowns in your 50s, and, unfortunately, false teeth after that. And now? We confidently expect all sorts of restorative dentistry and tooth implants to such a degree that the old common sight of a normal American middle-class fellow with a couple of missing teeth or even a shiny, crass glistening gold incisor is now the exception.<\/p>\n Again, health care is expensive because Americans, with some good reason, have decided that the ancient tragic view \u2014 we all age and break down, and pay for the sins of our 20s and 30s in our 50s and 60s \u2014 can at last be replaced by the therapeutic promise of vigor and health into our 80s.<\/p>\n What could be done? President Obama could try some honesty. Thus he might say, \u201cWe are spending hundreds of billions to keep us healthy, vital, and alive in ways unimaginable a few years ago. To keep our part of the bargain, we must then encourage the aging to remain active and working \u2014 and delay retirement. If we are living to 80 rather than 65, then surely we can start receiving Social Security benefits at 67 rather than at 62. What we save in postponed payouts can go to the greater cost of keeping us alive to 80.\u201d<\/p>\n President Obama also promises historic new rates of high-school and college graduation. Again, he seems to think the present problem is the absence of money \u2014 as if brilliant, gifted, and motivated young people are ending up at McDonald\u2019s rather than doing quantum physics because the bogeymen \u201cthey\u201d raised the bar and didn\u2019t give them enough college scholarship support.<\/p>\n More banality. The truth is quite different. First, too many of contemporary minority youth \u2014 the growing Hispanic and African-American underclass that may well soon make up 40 percent of our nation\u2019s student body \u2014 for a variety of reasons beyond the government\u2019s control (e.g., from inordinate patterns of illegitimacy; greater absence of two-parent families; above-average parental drug use, incarceration rates, and felony convictions; and a pervasive ethic of machismo that disdains \u201cacting white\u201d with your nose in a book), simply are not as competitive as other students in grade and high schools. In reaction, the good-hearted state, at the 11th hour of college entry, seeks to ensure an equality of result through affirmative action, set-asides, de facto quotas, and government subsidies. When poorly prepped minority students subsequently do not graduate from college at rates commensurate with other groups, the Left cries \u201cracism\u201d \u2014 and we are again back to asking for more money rather than a radical change of heart.<\/p>\n President Obama apparently cannot say, \u201cAmericans \u2014 each time you have a child out of wedlock, each time you take an illicit drug, each time you break the law or go to jail, each time you romanticize brutality rather than honor scholarship, each time you allege the racism of the others rather than look into your own soul, you do your own small part in ensuring that we might not educate your child as we should \u2014 no matter how many thousands of dollars we lavish upon him.\u201d<\/p>\n Second, for all American youth, too much government money, not too little, is pouring into education. From some 20 years\u2019 experience in higher public education in California, I have come to know a familiar student profile:<\/p>\n Age:<\/strong>\u00a018\u201330 Such students, in today\u2019s grade-inflated university, are able to get Cs and Bs for F and D work, to cobble together state and federal loans, student work assistance, and grants \u2014 and to delay growing up while they sleepwalk through a largely therapeutic curriculum. Eric Holder may call us cowards for not discussing race more openly, but if he were to examine the current class offerings at a California public university, or read the syllabi of the courses, he would quickly discover that race, class, and gender are the common themes \u2014 an approach designed to encourage grievance and separatism, which consumes precious student hours at the expense of real learning in the liberal arts and hard sciences.<\/p>\n If President Obama is serious about education, then he might also remonstrate with universities to bare their books, keep their costs below the rate of inflation, mandate a cutoff of student support after four years, insist that the BA or BS degree be contingent on some sort of final exit examination, re-examine tenure \u2014 and invest in vocational and trade schools rather than continue subsidizing community-studies, sociology, education, and physical-education degrees. One brilliant plumber, gifted carpenter, or adept auto mechanic does more for the American economy (and our collective values) than a dozen 20-something sociology majors in progress.<\/p>\n All government officials talk of spending wisely, but they never tell us the true extent of their financial malfeasance. Imagine if last week, in his address to Congress, President Obama had said something like the following: \u201cWe must cut spending, since the borrowed money must come from somewhere. Either we print more paper dollars, and eventually ruin the value of our currency in the manner now common in Zimbabwe or Argentina; or we continue to borrow from the Chinese, Japanese, and Europeans, and therefore mortgage both our honor and our autonomy; or, in the manner of War Bonds during the Second World War, we will have to ask you all to forgo stocks, 401(k)s, and real-estate investments, and instead each month, as part of your patriotic duty, buy U.S. government savings bonds that garner almost no interest, to subsidize our nation\u2019s lavish borrowing and spending.\u201d<\/p>\n Only that way could we have an honest national debate on whether the proposed high-speed rail between Vegas and LA is worth making Americans soon pay $10 for a Big Mac; or whether federally subsidized community organizing justifies more begging for help from the Communist government in Beijing; or whether we would all like to accept 0.05 interest on our government bonds to finance the mortgage bailout of those in arrears on their home debt.<\/p>\n In short, for each word devoted to spending, we need one word of honest exegesis about \u201cpaying for it.\u201d<\/p>\n For the last 20 years, all our presidents have talked much about health care, education, and spending, while saying little. Either they were not honest enough to tell us the truth \u2014 or they were convinced that, like children, we simply couldn\u2019t handle it if they did.<\/p>\n \u00a92009 Victor Davis Hanson<\/p>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Obama didn’t inven dishonesty in political discourse–but he has a talent for it. by Victor Davis Hanson National Review Online One of the most tired rhetorical tropes in Washington starts with, \u201cWe must . . . \u201d In the age of Obama, this is now usually followed by \u201cGet the cost of our health care […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_is_tweetstorm":false,"jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[723],"tags":[],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p466Sb-L7","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":6638,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/obama-heed-thyself\/","url_meta":{"origin":2921,"position":0},"title":"Obama, Heed Thyself","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 17, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"He used to know some important things. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 Republicans and Democrats are still name-calling in their arguments over the government shutdown, out-of-control federal spending, and the implementation of Obamacare. Yet if both sides would agree to just follow the earlier advice of President Obama,\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Debt and Deficits"","block_context":{"text":"Debt and Deficits","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/politics\/debt-and-deficits\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/3544735027_8a0ac7b28a-201x300.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":2806,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/nothing-new-under-the-sun\/","url_meta":{"origin":2921,"position":1},"title":"Nothing New Under the Sun","author":"victorhanson","date":"May 6, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson PJ Media The Same Old Equality of Result Rather than nitpick about Obama\u2019s envisioned brave new world, I think it wiser to see it in the larger context of age-old divides over the nature of Western democratic and liberal society. Nothing that we have seen proposed\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "May 2009"","block_context":{"text":"May 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/may-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1175,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/deficits-and-depression\/","url_meta":{"origin":2921,"position":2},"title":"Deficits and Depression","author":"victorhanson","date":"October 18, 2010","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services We will learn in November just how angry the public is about a lot of things, from higher taxes to massive unemployment. But the popular uproar pales in comparison to the sense of humiliation that we Americans are quite broke. In 2008, the\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "October 2010"","block_context":{"text":"October 2010","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2010\/october-2010\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":6858,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/the-obamacare-generation\/","url_meta":{"origin":2921,"position":3},"title":"The Obamacare Generation","author":"victorhanson","date":"December 19, 2013","format":false,"excerpt":"The ACA depends on Millennials picking up the tab -- as they already are for other entitlements -- in the midst of a bad economy. by Victor Davis Hanson \/\/\u00a0National Review Online\u00a0 There are all sorts of time bombs embedded within Obamacare. Will we force doctors to treat the millions\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "America's Future"","block_context":{"text":"America's Future","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/americas-future\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":2334,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/divine-debt-trumps-all\/","url_meta":{"origin":2921,"position":4},"title":"Divine Debt Trumps All","author":"victorhanson","date":"August 24, 2009","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services In Greek mythology, even Olympian gods and heroes were subject to a higher divine power known loosely as \"fate\" \u2014 an allotted\u00a0moira, or destiny, that could not be changed even by thunderbolt-throwing Zeus. In modern America, debt \u2014 whether national, state or trade\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "August 2009"","block_context":{"text":"August 2009","link":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/ahref=\/index.php\/categories\/angry-reader\/categorylink\/a\/archives\/2009\/august-2009\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":3463,"url":"https:\/\/victorhanson.com\/wordpress\/after-obama-the-deluge\/","url_meta":{"origin":2921,"position":5},"title":"After Obama, the Deluge","author":"victorhanson","date":"March 1, 2011","format":false,"excerpt":"by Victor Davis Hanson Tribune Media Services President Obama established a bipartisan debt-reduction commission \u2014 and then ignored its findings, which called for unpopular reductions in entitlements and across-the-board spending cuts. His first two budgets led to the largest deficits in US history. 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\nUnits enrolled:<\/strong>\u00a06\u20139
\nResidence:<\/strong>\u00a0Still at home
\nJob:<\/strong>\u00a020 hours a week at minimum wage to pay for car, insurance, video games, entertainment incidentals (but not rent, food, laundry, etc.)
\nMajor:<\/strong>\u00a0Either undeclared or changing
\nGoal:<\/strong>\u00a0Return to school every other semester, work part-time, party, and put off becoming autonomous<\/p><\/blockquote>\n