First Contact – Part 27 – Good and Evil

Growing up I was fortunate to have had a loving father and mother. As a very young child I was sheltered from the complexities of the world. Therefore, my first exposure to Evil was when watching television. One of Mom’s, Dad’s, and my favorite TV shows was “The Rifleman”. This was about a single rifle-slinging dad (Chuck Conners as Lucas McCain) raising his son (Johnny Crawford as Mark McCain) while ranching in New Mexico during the latter half of the 19^th century. Watching “The Rifleman” was a special family occasion each week. Mom would pop popcorn beforehand, and we would eat it while engaged in the show. Sometimes after finishing my popcorn, I would sit on the floor and let my mom or dad comb my hair. This always felt really good for some reason. I can’t enjoy anyone doing this to me anymore because a comb doesn’t work well on a bald head.

In the show, Lucas was presented as having a high moral code and always exhibiting it to his son Mark. Most episodes involved an entanglement with shady characters if not downright outlaw vermin. There was one particular episode where the bad guys were really getting the upper hand on Lucas. I went ballistic, blessing out (in mild child language) the bad guys and wishing for Lucas to turn the tables on them. My mom and dad had to calm me down and remind me that what I was seeing wasn’t really happening; it was simply a staged TV show. I already knew that, of course, but the acting was so convincing I forgot it temporarily.

What was interesting about my interaction with “The Rifleman” was that I just intuitively knew that what the outlaws were doing was wrong and in need of correcting. I don’t think my parents told me I should be filled with righteous indignation over what they were doing. I just knew it. But of course “The Rifleman” was a work of fiction, and the authors could write the script in such a way as to clearly delineate the good guys from the bad.

Finding out that there were bad people in the world willing to bring harm to others for their own personal gain was devastating to me. I just couldn’t understand how anyone could bring themselves to harm others. It just simply didn’t make sense to me. But then I grew up.

As I have aged I have come to understand more about Good and Evil. And what I have come to understand is that oftentimes it is very difficult to distinguish between the two. This is because what is Good and what is Evil is totally dependent on each person’s individual viewpoint. Let me give you an example.

Back in the 1700’s, the American colonies were under the reign of the King of England. However, given the distance and the fact that the colonies were being taxed without having proper representation in Parliament, a number of colonists started pushing for independence. As tensions escalated on both sides, the situation eventually led to the writing of the Declaration of Independence and the fighting of the Revolutionary War. A lot of killing took place by both sides. Who was Good and who was Evil? Today we Americans tend to think of the revolutionaries as the Good and Righteous ones as they were fighting for their God given unalienable rights that the Brits were denying them. But the Brits believed that the King had the God given authority to rule his kingdom, and anyone who defied this authority was opposing God himself.

A similar thing can be seen in the modern day Arab / Israeli conflict, which now involves many different countries. The blame game can go very deep with one side saying they did so-and-so because the other side did thus-and-such. Then the other side blames their actions on previous actions of the former side. The blame continues to go further into the past until time blurs the lines between Good and Evil. Many years ago I read a book by President Jimmy Carter entitled “The Blood of Abraham”. I don’t remember much of what he said, but I do remember that he clearly showed how difficult the issue is given the extensive history of conflict. It kind of reminds me of the episode of “The Andy Griffith Show” entitled “A Feud is a Feud”. In this show, Andy comes up against two families that have been feuding for so long they couldn’t even remember what started the whole thing. Sometimes it seems that we just have to put the past in the past and negotiate a peace without regard to who did what in the past. I know this is easier said than done, but if both sides want peace it needs to happen. If only we had the equivalent of an Andy Taylor that could resolve the age old conflict as easily as he did in the TV show.

However, sometimes one or both sides don’t want peace. That’s the rub. This can especially be true if one or both sides believe that their opposition to their enemies is God ordained. There are apparently many people in the world that think that the God they believe in is inherently Good, regardless of what he does. This means that anything they believe God is telling them to do is also Good, regardless of how heinous it appears to outsiders. You see this in the Old Testament. God supposedly told Moses to lead his people into nations unprovoked and kill everyone, including the women and children and animals. These actions would be considered Evil if a nation did them of their own accord. Yet somehow if we are convinced that God was behind the actions, they suddenly become Good. The problem with this attitude is that it leaves Good people open to becoming Evil should a tyrant or dictator be able to convince them that the reprobate orders he is giving them are authorized by God himself.

I have been watching some documentaries about Adolf Hitler and his rise to power and his decline to destruction. It is said that Hitler believed his actions to be approved by God. After watching these documentaries I can certainly see why. Hitler was nearly killed by a mustard gas attack in World War I. Hitler was confronted by an Englishman who had him in his rifle sights, but didn’t feel right about killing a wounded unarmed enemy, so let him go. Upon becoming dictator, his own countrymen attempted to assassinate him several times, but fate didn’t allow it. I can easily see how he could come to think of himself as being invincible and protected by God, thus adding fuel to his mission. Yet the world now almost universally views Hitler as being the epitome of Evil. He’s the go-to person to compare someone else to when we want to decimate that person’s character. Yet, if indeed Hitler was taking his marching orders from God, he was really a Good and Righteous person. So, if everything God does is Good, the question becomes, “How do we know when a person is acting according to God’s will?” We certainly don’t want to cut short a God-ordained killing spree and thus find ourselves opposing God, would we?

I contend that any given action in a given situation is either Good or Evil or neutral or somewhere in between regardless of who perpetrates it, even God. If that is not true, then how can we with any certainty be able to condemn a person who performs a heinous act and then claims that he was only following the will of God?

Some people are very good at obfuscation. They can say one thing while secretly doing another. Hitler and his propagandist, Joseph Goebbels, were extremely good at this, presenting an appealing image of the future Fuehrer while planning something more sinister. Many of the politicians in the US are good at obfuscation also. They speak one way to one group and another way to another group, then perhaps do neither when it’s time to vote. Can you tell I am cynical?

So, how does one properly determine what Good and Evil are? Who decides? What is appropriate for our government to do about it? To my way of thinking, the only thing the government should have the power to do is prevent or punish Evil, not force us to do Good. So, what is Evil? This is a difficult question since it is highly dependent on circumstances, but I can answer generally. Basically, Evil should be considered to be using unprovoked force against other people. Everyone should be free to live their own lives without interference from others except in the case where that person wants to use his freedom to limit yours. In other words, your freedom to move your fist ends at my face. Obviously, there are more than 50 shades of grey when it comes to this general rule, but that is why we have courts. Facts are gathered and a reasoned conclusion should be reached about a person’s guilt or innocence.

Hey, it’s not a perfect system, but neither are we perfect people.

Free Health Care For Everybody

In the January 30, 2012 issue of our local newspaper, the TimesDaily, there was a photo of some graffiti left by an Occupy Oakland participant in California. The graffiti consisted of the exact words I used for the title of this post: “Free Health Care For Everybody.” Now who could disagree with that statement? Everybody likes free stuff, and given how expensive healthcare can be these days, getting it free would be a great money saver.

So, how do we start? What plans must we put in place to make this worthwhile venture a success? Well, a good place to start would be to ask doctors to quit charging for their services. Most of the cost of healthcare most likely resides here since millions of people visit doctors of one type or another every day. I suspect that they will object to this and try to convince us of how expensive it was to attend medical school, how much money it takes to rent a space for their practice, and how they must pay for equipment, utilities, malpractice insurance, staff salaries and benefits, and a myriad of other things. Well, don’t be fooled. Healthcare is too important a commodity to be left to the vagaries of a free market with the greedy doctors trying to actually make a profit. But we can expect most if not all doctors to claim that supporting their families is more important to them than helping the rest of us. So, we must be prepared to force them to provide their services without recompense.

The same will have to be applied to hospitals and all the people that work for them. And let’s not forget about all those pharmaceutical companies. We will have to forcefully make it known that we still expect them to spend billions of dollars developing new lifesaving drugs, but provide those drugs at no cost to the public.

We can expect retaliation from all these medical professionals in the form of strongly urging the rest of us to provide our services to them for free also. They’ll probably say something like, “Food is just as important to a person’s health as is medical care. Since we don’t have any money, and we need food to survive, we should have our food provided for free. And while we are at it, we also need housing and transportation. So, give us these things also.” No matter how logical their arguments may be, we must stand strong and insist that they pay us for the goods and services we provide while they continue to provide their services at no cost to us.

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Well, as you can hopefully tell, I’m being facetious. There isn’t any such thing as FREE healthcare. And for that matter, there is no such thing as having any goods or services that cost nothing. What the Occupy Oakland graffiti writer really means is “free healthcare for me at somebody else’s expense.” So, how would that work?

There have been many methods suggested for how to provide universal healthcare within the US. Some methods are already being used in other countries. But the bottom line for all of these methods is that some people pay nothing, some pay less than the cost of the services provided to them, some pay the same as the cost of the services provided to them, and some pay more than the cost of the services provided to them. So, it ends up being a great deal for some and a terrible one for others.

You might ask, “Isn’t that exactly the same result people get when buying insurance?” And indeed, the answer is “Yes.” Insurance is one of those strange commodities that people purchase with the hope of NEVER getting their money back. But, there is one major difference. Insurance is voluntary; a government program is not. There has been a lot of controversy lately about the Constitutionality of an individual mandate for health insurance. In other words, is it Constitutional for the federal government to force all individual citizens to purchase some form of health insurance?

I personally believe that it is extremely UN-Constitutional for the federal government to force its citizens to buy ANYTHING, including health insurance. But even if it were Constitutional, I believe it can ultimately lead to some very bad consequences, such as taking away many of the freedoms we currently enjoy. It may take many years for the problems to manifest themselves to an unacceptable level, just as communism took many years before it failed in the Soviet Union. However, I believe the problems will eventually come.

Suppose we implement a healthcare plan here in the US that provides all people with any medical services they need at any time. Almost immediately all of those expensive procedures that people chose not to have done due to the cost will be scheduled. Over time, as more and more procedures are done, the authorities will begin to see that there is more money being spent than being taken in. Choices will have to be made. Charge everybody more for their “insurance,” or cut costs in some way. Most likely both will occur. They will begin paying doctors and hospitals and drug companies less for their goods and services. This will cause some on the edge to go out of business, and it will most likely affect people in rural areas the most. Eventually, the feds will begin to realize that they cannot cut payments anymore and will try to ration care to cut costs. This will upset many people who will have to forego medical procedures that could help them. Additionally, the feds will also realize that many of the procedures that people are getting relate to bad lifestyle choices. They will begin pushing for regulations on a number of different fronts. Some of these would be: smoking, fat and sugar intake, alcohol consumption, and the amount of exercise people are getting. So, little by little our healthcare will dwindle as our lifestyle choices become more and more regulated. In other words, we will become less free.

When people buy insurance, they do so with the knowledge that certain activities on their part can lead to their insurance costing more than another person’s. For instance, if a person is a smoker, they will pay more. If they are overweight and already have high blood pressure and high glucose levels, they’ll pay more. If they are into extreme sports, they’ll pay more. But the individual’s lifestyle choices remain his or her choice. On the other hand, the tendency for government plans is for the leaders to begin mandating actions rather than charge people differently according to risk.

So, which would you rather have? Freedom or “free” healthcare? I’m afraid the evidence points to a fact that many simply refuse to accept: WE CAN’T HAVE BOTH.