Hsieh PJM OpEd: "GOP: Dance With The One Who Brung You"

The November 3, 2010 PajamasMedia published my post-Election Day OpEd, "GOP: Dance With The One Who Brung You".

My theme is that I voted for the Republicans because I want them to pursue an agenda of limited government, fiscal responsibility, and defending individual rights -- not the "social conservative" agenda.

Here is the opening:

Republicans are rightfully celebrating their recent successes in the midterm elections, recapturing the House and making major gains in the Senate. But before House GOP leader John Boehner starts measuring the curtains for the speaker's office, he and his fellow Republicans would do well to remember the old proverb popularized by legendary University of Texas football coach Darrell Royal: "Dance with the one who brung you."

In this case, that means: Don't forget who put you in office and why -- namely, the independent-minded Tea Party voters.

Hence, the Republicans should take to heart three key lessons...

Those lessons include:

1) Americans don't want "ObamaLite".
2) Don't mistake this as a mandate to pursue a divisive "social conservative" agenda.
3) Respect the Constitution and the principle of individual rights.

(Read the full text of "GOP: Dance With The One Who Brung You".)

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A62, A63 Reveal Ideological Rifts

As I mentioned in a prior post, Ari Armstrong's and my op-ed on Colorado's Amendments 62 (personhood) and 63 (health care choice) was published in the Denver Daily News on Friday, October 22nd. It was a non-exclusive op-ed, so we hoped that some of the smaller papers around the state might choose to print it too. That hasn't happened that we know of, so I thought I'd post it here before the election. Hence:

A62, A63 reveal ideological rifts
Friday, October 22, 2010
By Diana Hsieh and Ari Armstrong

This year's ballot presents voters with a mystery. Amendments 62 and 63 are based on opposite political premises, yet many prominent groups either endorse both or oppose both. What explains this contradiction?

Amendment 62, the so-called "personhood" measure, would grant full legal rights to embryos. Its goal is to eliminate a woman's choice to get an abortion, use the birth control pill, or obtain common in vitro fertility treatments.

Amendment 63, Health Care Choice, seeks to protect people's choices in health care by forbidding state government from assisting in the enforcement of ObamaCare. It would preserve people's choices in insurance as well as ensure their ability to pay directly for health care.

Amendment 62 destroys liberty and choice in health care, while Amendment 63 protects those values. Yet few seem to recognize that.

In an Oct. 15 e-mail, Planned Parenthood of the Rocky Mountains opposes both 62 and 63. The group alleges that Amendment 63 "drives up health care costs by reducing insurance coverage."

In fact, those rising costs are due to government controls and welfare programs, and the mandate to buy insurance will only exacerbate the problem.

Likewise, Progress Now opposes both measures. Planned Parenthood and Progress Now follow the standard left-wing approach on these issues, advocating some choices in health care while denying others.

Religious-right advocates of Amendment 62, on the other hand, attempt to package their measure with Amendment 63. In an over-the-top video complete with Obama as the Angel of Death, proponents of 62 attempt to appeal to Tea Partiers. They suggest that the same movement responsible for legal abortion led to the bailouts and ObamaCare.

Amendment 62 supporters also endorse a "Blue Book Alternative," which features one-sided praise of their measure along with positive language about Amendment 63.

Both the left and the religious right, then, express contradictory views about liberty and individual choice. They support it in some cases, but not in principle. Why is that?

The left rejects America's founding ideal of liberty as each person's freedom to pursue his own life and happiness using his own property. They regard rights as entitlements to goods and services provided by others, not freedoms to think and act without coercive interference.

That's why Planned Parenthood does not merely want to protect the freedom of women to obtain abortions from willing doctors using their own funds, health insurance, or private charity. Instead, Planned Parenthood wants to force people to fund others' health care, including abortions. Therefore, the organization seeks to protect the right to abortion while denying any right to choose what health insurance to buy, if any.

The religious right claims to support individual rights, but its conception of rights is little more than sectarian dogmatism. Rights are whatever God declares them to be, on this view.

By contorting some Bible passages and ignoring others, advocates of Amendment 62 claim that newly fertilized zygotes -- even before implantation in the uterus -- must be declared persons with full legal rights. By similar methods, they ignore the Bible's overt hostility to individual rights and capitalist values.

The consistent, secular view of individual rights is opposed to both the entitlements of the left and the dogmatism of the religious right. Rights, on this third view, define the individual's proper sphere of freedom in a social context. They enable each person to act by his own judgment and for his own life and happiness.

Such rights are based on the facts of man's rational nature, not the whims of the majority or the arbitrary commands of God. They apply equally to every person, to individuals living in society, as opposed to an embryo or fetus entirely contained within a pregnant woman's body.

By this secular view of rights, any attempt to dictate the choices of others is morally wrong. Nothing can justify the forcible seizure or control of another person's property, whether via Medicare taxes or insurance mandates. And nothing can justify forcing a woman to carry an unwanted pregnancy to term or banning the pill.

Under a consistent, reality based view of individual rights, Amendment 62 violates rights while Amendment 63 protects them.

Philosopher Diana Hsieh and political writer Ari Armstrong coauthored the paper, The 'Personhood' Movement Is Anti-Life, available at SecularGovernment.us.

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Muslims and Sikhs Show Arrogant Disdain for Patient Safety

Islamic and Sikh Healthcare Workers Scoff at Patient Safety in the name of God

In a recent capitulation to "multiculturalism," the British Department of Health has exempted complaining Muslims and Sikhs from complying with a specific dress code implemented to reduce the spread of so-called "super bugs" in health care settings.

Bluntly, these religious followers are now allowed the capricious indulgence of putting their faith before patient safety!

In 2007, the British National Health Service started requiring all health care personnel providing direct care to patients to be bare from the elbows down, so that following contact with each and every patient, hands and wrists could be thoroughly and properly washed. The scientific (i.e., not religious) basis for this reasonable rule was that the pernicious "super bugs," MRSA and C Diff, were found to cling onto providers' long lab-coat and shirt sleeves, neckties, wristwatches, and wrist jewelry, thus transmitting these often deadly disease-causing microorganisms directly to the next patient.

The Muslim women got exempted because it is an "offense" to their religion to show bare skin, even below the elbows. The Sikhs wanted to keep wearing their wrist bangles as long as they were pushed up their arms during patient contact. But guess what (for those of you who haven't fought the vicissitudes of fashion) those damn things slide back down where they can end up coming in contact with super bugs! Muslim and Sikh health care providers "may" wear disposable protective long sleeves; but to quote Derek Butler, chairman of MRSA Action UK, "My worry is that allowing some medics to use disposable sleeves...compromise(s) patient safety because unless you change the sleeves between each patient, you spread bacteria. Scrubbing bare arms is far more effective."

"Super Bug" Epidemiology 101

Indeed, thanks to the early-scientific inquiry and common-sense of the Mother of modern Nursing and Epidemiology, Miss Florence Nightingale, the gold standard for preventing the spread of disease in health care facilities is the simplest practice of all: thorough handwashing before and after each and every patient contact.

But how about some background information on what these "super bugs" are and why they're such a threat to human health. MRSA, or "methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureas" and C Diff, "Clostridium difficile," are bacteria that have evolved to develop resistance to antibiotics as newer generations of antibiotics have become part of the arsenal against infection and as the prescribing of antibiotics has become more widespread (a stunning demonstration of the power of evolution). These bacteria have become very prevalent in hospitals, nursing homes and other long-term-care facilities in recent years. There are also other "super bugs" evolving to become ever-more-resistant to antibiotics, presenting a grave challenge not only to health professionals trying to control the spread of these awful germs, but to developers of new generations of antibiotics.

These are not benign bugs! MRSA can cause serious infections of the skin and respiratory tract. Severe infections of MRSA can also lead to sepsis, in which bacteria escape into the blood stream leading to an immune response that can cause organ damage and death. Patients die by the tens of thousands in both the U.S. and Britain because of this organism.

C Diff lives in the intestinal tract of many people, including the healthy, but the "good" bacteria in the gut keep it in check. Many hospitalized patients develop C Diff infection after taking antibiotics for some ailment; these antibiotics kill off enough good bacteria, allowing C Diff bacteria to overpopulate and release toxins that cause diarrhea and even severe inflammation of the colon.

These are hearty bugs! MRSA can be present in people without causing symptoms, meaning these people can be carriers. If a patient has MRSA infection or is a carrier, or if someone has the C Diff diarrhea, the germs will be present on their body and surfaces they touch. This is why health care facilities isolate these patients, require health care workers to wear barrier gloves and gowns, and most importantly require them to thoroughly wash their hands after patient contact. In Britain, authorities added the additional requirement of bare arms below the elbows, so sleeves don't get dragged in bacteria that can be transmitted to the next patient and to enable good hand and wrist washing.

Compliance With Infection Control is Enough of a Problem Already

In Britain, there is some evidence that the 2007 infection control practices are having a positive result, but compliance is not uniform.

When health care providers don't properly follow infection control practices, they risk transmitting these bugs to other patients, who may be susceptible because they're in a weakened immune state due to their illness or other health problems. This is exactly how these super bugs have spread and evolved to become such a threat to patients' health and lives.

Multiculturalism-Sensitivity is in Conflict with Patient Safety

Infection control advocates are having a hard-enough time getting personnel and facilities to comply with the guidelines known to work. Just getting health care workers to simply wash their hands has been an ongoing problem since the Crimean War!

Now British health authorities are reversing direction, subordinating science and sound medical practice to religious doctrine, literally threatening the lives and health of patients.

How would you like to be a patient in a British hospital, cared for by a Muslim doctor who insists on protecting her Islamic dignity by wearing long sleeves that have contacted the spores of C Diff residing on the bed rails of Patient Number 43589403298? Do you like watery diarrhea and cramping?!

Would you like your surgical incision to become infected with MRSA from Patient Number 98039817298 whom your Sikh doctor wearing religiously-correct bracelets has just seen? Do you like pus and fever?!

The Western World Must Fight for its Standards

I can best characterize the haughtiness of the British Muslim and Sikh health care workers by using a crude American expression; but let's just say it has to with their holier-than-thou belief that "their own excreta lack the noisome vapors characteristic of everybody else's." Thus, they exempt themselves from rational rules designed to save human lives, arrogantly shoving their religious practices in the faces--and bodies--of patients.

"Dutiful Diarrhea!" "Mercy for MRSA!" Praise Be To God and Allah for worsening the spread of British "super bugs!"

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