A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Tea Party Protest

In a week packed with grim and depressing news concerning a horrific murder at Yale and a string of ill-behaved celebrities making regrettable comments on national television, it is entirely possible that you didn't hear very much about the large, anti-Obama "tea party" rally that took place last Saturday in our nation's capital. Most major media outlets didn't exactly strain their personnel budgets to send extra reporters to the National Mall to chronicle something as boring as a demonstration against deficit spending and nationalized health care. (For the record, I was not in attendance myself; even I have better things to do on a Saturday.)

And so, unless you live in the Washington area, it's even less likely that you heard much about an interesting little aftershock to the tea party that surfaced a few days later. Republican Congressman Kevin Brady of Texas, a prominent organizer of the event, had the temerity to criticize the Washington Metrorail system for not providing more train service to accommodate demonstrators protesting excessive government spending. If you noticed a strange, sputtering noise late Wednesday afternoon, it was probably half a million Washington liberals collectively choking on fury mingled with glee when the story broke.

In a letter to Metro, Brady had this to say:

“These individuals came all the way from Southeast Texas to protest the excessive spending and growing government intrusion by the 111th Congress and the new Obama administration,” These participants, whose tax dollars were used to create and maintain this public transit system, were frustrated and disappointed that our nation’s capital did not make a great effort to simply provide a basic level of transit for them.”

Washington liberals (perhaps it would be simpler and equally accurate to say "Washingtonians") promptly had a field day with this apparent hypocrisy concerning their subway system. Here's a tiny sample of the 690 or so comments on the Wall Street Journal's report of the story (all spellings quoted verbatim):

RealityCheck wrote: "... the Tea Party protesters were protesting against goverment spending and any sort of public good only to find out Public transit was lacking..IT’S NOT SARCASM IT’S IRONY"

MehNeh wrote: "Really teabaggers? Now you’re complaining that there wasn’t adequate government spending on public transit when you needed it? Grow up. Government isn’t some toy that you get to play with whenever you want and refuse to share with all the other kids."

urizon wrote: "It’s a typical right-wing tactic to defund a socialt service to the point where it becomes dysfunctional, and then complain about how government isn’t working."

And much, much more in the same vein. Meanwhile, every political conversation I've overheard in the past few days has followed the same basic script, tinged with the same barely contained joy that these so-called fiscal conservative protesters have inadvertently outed themselves as lovers of government who just won't pony up the tax dollars to pay for it.

But before you rush to join the hypocrisy-fest, I ask you only to consider a very quick thought experiment. Suppose for a moment that, after the protest, Rep. Brady had written a public letter to the Metro commissioner praising the excellent service Metro had provided for him and his fellow protesters, and thanking Metro for the extra train cars that were made available for the event.

Now try to imagine liberals' reaction.

Why, it would be ... wait for it ...

Almost exactly the same! Change a few words, and it would become "How DARE these so-called fiscal conservatives protest government spending and then turn around and sing the praises of a government service? Don't these idiots know where the money for Metro trains comes from!? What a bunch of hypocrites! They LOVE Metro, but they don't want to pay taxes to fund it!"

If you say something that invites intense criticism from opponents, and then you turn around and say the exact opposite, and receive the same exact criticism, that's when you know you just can't win. It's also when you know you're up against an opponent who decided you were wrong before you even opened your mouth.

The fact that the tea party rally was a protest against government spending on health insurance, not a protest of government spending on subways, evidently makes no difference to liberals who have suddenly lost their enthusiasm for mass protest movements. If you are unwilling to recognize the basic validity of opinions you do not share, why bother with facts?

Paging Dr. Adams

Arguing in defense of a troop of British garrison soldiers on trial for firing into a crowd of violent Bostonians in 1770, a young and ambitious lawyer named John Adams famously reminded a hostile colonial jury that "facts are stubborn things; and whatever may be our wishes, our inclinations, or the dictates of our passion, they cannot alter the state of facts and evidence." The soldiers had, Adams argued, acted in self defense when a mob of hundreds of taunting dock workers and teenagers assaulted a sentry with clubs and pelted his comrades with ice and oyster shells. Despite populist anger throughout the colonies, and newspaper headlines decrying a "Boston Massacre," Adams won the case, and the soldiers went free.

Two and a half centuries later, facts are still stubborn things. Somebody kindly remind liberal Democrats crusading for public health care.

In the wake of August's town hall protests and Barack Obama's collapsing job approval polls, his core constituency is sounding a bit rattled, as if they can't quite comprehend the sudden outburst of anger provoked by Congress' attempt to pass a trillion-dollar health care overhaul this summer.

November 2008 was the month of murky nostrums about that most meaningless of political rallying cries, change. August 2009 was the month those vague promises of change crystallized into tangible alterations to our society. The transition was sobering, and bewildering, for Democrats who interpreted their electoral victory as a mandate to enact radical reforms, rather than a warning of what happens to dominant political parties that stray too far from the American mainstream.

None of which is to say health care reform has run aground and foundered. With so much of his dwindling political capital invested in this fight, I expect Obama and his congressional allies will salvage some sort of reform, probably in the form of new regulation for the insurance industry, and maybe more. But liberals' cornerstone reform, a publicly run insurance plan open to all, is in actual doubt for the first time since Obama came to office. Democrats everywhere are waking up in cold sweats from nightmares that it's 1994 all over again, when another young, charismatic Democratic president's campaign for public health insurance failed and ushered in 12 years of Republican congressional majorities.

So I suppose certain liberals can be forgiven if at the moment their defenses of ObamaCare sound a little strained. But what I will not under any circumstances forgive are arguments in favor of a gradual government takeover of an entire industry that rest on completely false premises.

So far, my favorite such argument is, hands-down, that presented last Wednesday by Thomas Frank, the Wall Street Journal's token liberal op-ed writer (who never answered my e-mail from last year). Health care must be provided by government, Frank bluntly asserts, because health is a "public good," not some sort of individual condition controlled by individuals. After pointing out that many of the present problems with health care in this country stem from government meddling and (incredibly) using that as an argument for more government meddling, Frank lectures his readers thusly:

"One reason government got involved is that our ancestors understood something that escapes those who brag so loudly about their prudence at today's town-hall meetings: That health care is not an individual commodity to be bought and enjoyed like other products. That the health of each of us depends on the health of the rest of us, as epidemics from the Middle Ages to this year's flu have demonstrated."

To quote Kim Jong Il: "Oh reary?"

Because a quick trip to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention tells a different story. Per the "National Vital Statistics Report" for 2007, the 10 leading causes of death in America were:
1) heart disease
2) malignant neoplasms (aka cancer)
3) cerebrovascular disease (which leads to stroke, and is often caused by hypertension)
4) chronic lower respiratory disease (usually associated with smoking)
5) accidents
6) Alzheimer's Disease
7) diabetes
8) influenza and pneumonia
9) nephritis, nephrotic syndrome and nephrosis
10) septicemia

I can't help but notice that not until number 8 on the list do you encounter a cause of death that can spread from one person to another, as implied by Frank's unsupported claim that "the health of each of us depends on the health of the rest of us." I also can't help noticing that the major causes of death are largely linked to lifestyle choices, and have no interpersonal properties whatsoever. You can't exactly catch my heart disease, whether or not a politician in Washington decrees that you must pay my medical bills.

I know full well such observations won't change the minds of collectivists like Thomas Frank, whose stated objective is the creation of a new entitlement that permanently yokes our physical health to the tender mercies of government. But I'm chalking this one up as a small victory for stubborn facts nonetheless.