Who's your Doctor gonna be?

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Princess Doreen

The emergency rooms will be cleared out of those not having health insurance to be replaced by those who can't find a family practice doctor.

The creation and development of "family practice" doctors has been a problem in medicine for decades.

It has nothing to do with who is currently President of the US

[Princess Doreen]

Originally Posted by Riot

The creation and development of "family practice" doctors has been a problem in medicine for decades.

It has nothing to do with who is currently President of the US

It most certainly does. He's making the problem worse and eventually unfixable.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Princess Doreen

It most certainly does. He's making the problem worse and eventually unfixable.

Only in the minds of the paranoid and factually bereft.

And "he" isn't the one "making the problem worse" (your words, not mine), that would be the Senators and Representatives legally elected by your fellow citizens.

Your characterization of the complexities involved in having doctors available to treat the 330 million people of this country as "unfixable" and due to one person who was elected last fall as President of the United States is beyond ridiculous.

[Princess Doreen]

Originally Posted by Riot

Only in the minds of the paranoid and factually bereft.

When reason fails, go for the cheap shots.

[Riot]

Originally Posted by Princess Doreen

When reason fails, go for the cheap shots.

Just consider it, "a clue for you".

[Princess Doreen]

Originally Posted by Riot

Just consider it, "a clue for you".

Consider it considered and filed appropriately.

[GBBob]

Originally Posted by Princess Doreen

Consider it considered and filed appropriately.

Doreen..for someone who claims to be as learned and mature as you do, you still are just a typical Republican. And that is fine, but stop pretending to be holier than thou because you are a Republican...you still are no better than Pat Roberstson, Nascar69 or Sarah Palin..good luck

[brianwspencer]

Originally Posted by Cajungator26

Great post ... finally someone that gets it.

THIS is what brought you out of retirement?!?!

Originally Posted by Riot

Only in the minds of the paranoid and factually bereft.

Oh, such a familiar refrain.

[Riot]

Groupthink at National Review
April 23rd, 2010 at 12:32 pm by David Frum

How wonderful to return to a free country, I thought as I stepped off the plane from Beijing at Washington Dulles. No more censorship, no more official lies, no more kowtowing to high officials who gained power by their mindless repetition of party dogma…

Then alas I opened my browser and read the dump-on-Manzi comments on NRO’s The Corner. Manzi had deviated from the One Correct Way of Mark Levin Thought, and all his former colleagues had been summoned together to Denounce and Struggle Against Him.

Not one stood up to be counted in Manzi’s defense, not even colleagues whom Manzi might have had reason to regard as close personal friends. (Take a second to notice whose bylines are missing from yesterday’s discussions.)

What makes this episode all the more remarkable is that Manzi is actually a member of NR’s board of trustees – i.e., somebody who might claim a little more scope to speak his mind. But even for trustees, there are limits, and Manzi crossed them.

It’s important to understand what exactly the limit is.

Manzi could have safely disputed Levin’s claims on global warming if he had observed a couple of conditions. First, acknowledge Liberty and Tyranny as a good and important book. Second, acknowledge Levin’s “service” (i.e., leadership) of the conservative cause. Third, isolate criticisms to one particular finite point – avoid drawing any larger conclusions – and be sure to wrap any criticisms in a blanket of compliments. Just because one particular chapter happens to be slovenly, ignorant, and hysterical should not lead you to question the intellectual merit of the book as a whole.

Manzi negligently violated the rules, and the results are as you see.

The episode reminds me of a conversation I had with a friend a year ago, shortly after I published my piece on Rush Limbaugh in Newsweek. I won’t embarrass my friend by mentioning his name, but if I did, you’d certainly recognize it.

My friend: “You aren’t really mad at Rush Limbaugh you know.”

Me: “I’m not? I thought I was.”

My friend: “You’re not even mad at Fox News. You want to win elections, you know that the troops have to be mobilized, somebody has to get them fired up, and you don’t fire them up with Milton Friedman and James Q. Wilson. You are mad at the conservative intellectual elites. They’re the ones who are supposed to uphold intellectual standards, to sift actual facts from what you call ‘pretend information’. Rush Limbaugh isn’t any worse than he was 20 years ago. But 20 years ago, conservatism offered something more than Rush Limbaugh. Since then, the conservative elite has collapsed. Blame them, not talk radio.”

What happened to Manzi is a perfect illustration of this elite collapse.

Reading through the comments in the Corner, there’s no mistaking who’s in charge, who’s subservient. Two Corner contributors complained about Manzi’s “tone.” Levin is the most vituperative radio host this side of Mike Savage – but imagine anyone at The Corner complaining about Levin’s tone!

Conservatism has always had both elite and popular wings, and in the past they worked together productively. Fred Schwarz drew tens of thousands to his Christian Anti-Communist Crusade in the early 1960s, at the same time as Milton Friedman was publishing Capitalism and Freedom; F.A. Hayek, The Constitution of Liberty; and Edward Banfield, The Moral Basis of a Backward Society. Nobody however demanded that Milton Friedman hail Schwarz’s pamphlets as serious contributions to conservative thought, in the way that the Cornerites demand that Manzi kiss Levin’s ring.

It’s different now, to conservatism’s present shame and future detriment.