From Miami Herald

The above is the video of President Obama’s weekly address. This one is about Health Insurance Reform.

Some people keep wondering when Obama is going to bring change. If you notice, in this address he talks about listening to each other and ratcheting down the noise. This is part of the change that he brings. Now it is up to the rest of us to bring our portion of change to the table.

Here is the question of the day with regard to the above video:

Is defending to the death the right for someone to say something with which you disagree different from paying for someone to say it?

Of course, I must admit, the only knowledge I have of what Glenn Beck says is the carefully edited snippets that are put out by his opponents.  Knowing what Rev. Wright’s opponents did to him, I could imagine a situation where these sound bites do not represent what Glenn Beck really thinks.

If

If you can keep your head when all about you
Are losing theirs and blaming it on you,
If you can trust yourself when all men doubt you
But make allowance for their doubting too,
If you can wait and not be tired by waiting,
Or being lied about, don’t deal in lies,
Or being hated, don’t give way to hating,
And yet don’t look too good, nor talk too wise:

If you can dream–and not make dreams your master,
If you can think–and not make thoughts your aim;
If you can meet with Triumph and Disaster
And treat those two impostors just the same;
If you can bear to hear the truth you’ve spoken
Twisted by knaves to make a trap for fools,
Or watch the things you gave your life to, broken,
And stoop and build ‘em up with worn-out tools:

If you can make one heap of all your winnings
And risk it all on one turn of pitch-and-toss,
And lose, and start again at your beginnings
And never breath a word about your loss;
If you can force your heart and nerve and sinew
To serve your turn long after they are gone,
And so hold on when there is nothing in you
Except the Will which says to them: “Hold on!”

If you can talk with crowds and keep your virtue,
Or walk with kings–nor lose the common touch,
If neither foes nor loving friends can hurt you;
If all men count with you, but none too much,
If you can fill the unforgiving minute
With sixty seconds’ worth of distance run,
Yours is the Earth and everything that’s in it,
And–which is more–you’ll be a Man, my son!

–Rudyard Kipling

(Or a Woman, my daughter!)

I thought of this poem when I was thinking about how proponents of health care reform ought to behave.

When I looked for the poem using Google, this is the first link that I came to.

Barry Goldwater famously said in accepting the 1964 Republican presidential nomination:

I would remind you that extremism in the defense of liberty is no vice! And let me remind you also that moderation in the pursuit of justice is no virtue!

I have finally come to the realization why neither part of this quote is true. Extremism raises peoples’ emotions.  Uncontrolled emotions make it hard for people to make rational decisions.  Most of the time, we want people to make rational decisions.

At least this is my rationalization to justify my emotional dislike of this famous quote.

Thinking about the current Health Care debate, getting people all riled up  (or however they get riled up) is not helping them to discover what the health care reform really is.  Most of the people who are against it would actually benefit greatly from it.  Apart from the individuals, the economy and the country as a whole would benefit.

In this case moderation may be the best approach for calming the situation down. What good does it do when the proponents call the opponents names and get just as emotional? How is that  going to make the opponents feel that the outcomes they  worry about will be averted by changes the proponents will make?  Each side might as well be shouting, “Is anyone listening to me?”

The answer ought to be an obvious, “Yes we are listening to you.  Now let me explain what we have done in response to your concerns.  Then tell me if this gets to the essence of your worry.”

It does no good for either side to explain when people on the other side are not listening. Maybe neither side is able to listen to what they hear because their emotions are too strong a filter between their ears and the rational thinking part of their brains.

Christina Romer, Chair of the Council of Economic Advisers, debunks the myth that health insurance reform will hurt small businesses. To the contrary, reform will ease the burdens on small businesses and help level the playing field with big firms who pay much less to cover their employees on average.

Get the facts about the stability and security you get from health insurance reform | Health Insurance Reform Reality Check

It is time for us to recognize the emotion that is driving even Senator Grassley to say these things about the health care reform effort that he said in the above video.

Whenever Grassley hears of a program of increased government involvement, his emotions tell him that this is a bad idea.  The emotional system is what makes decisions first.  Then the rational brain comes along and tries to figure out the justification for this emotional reaction.  Most people believe that it works the other way.  They think that they went through a rational decision process to decide whether or not they like an idea. In reality the like or dislike came before the rational process.

So we have to understand that the opponent’s emotional system tell them to be wary of government.  No matter how much you try to explain away their rationalizations, their brain will be able to come up with another reason to explain their emotion.

We all have to be more like Obama and hear the emotion underlying the fear and figure out a way to deal with it.  In the end, there will be some people who will have enough flexibility to be able to overcome their gut reaction.  It will be worthwhile to get those people on your side.  There will always be some who just cannot see beyond their emotions.  If enough people are convinced of the correctness of the proposal, that will be enough ro carry the day.

For the rest, we ought not to purposely do things that reinforce their negative emotions.

Please speak up if you have some even better ways to deal with this situation.  Situations like this are going to arise again and again throughout Obama’s 8 year tenure.

I just got through listening to President Obama’s Town Hall meeting about health care reform.   This is the meeting that was held in Portsmouth, New Hampshire and it was aired live by C-SPAN..

If I can find a link to the rebroadcast, I will post it here. Well here is the Montana one.

The following comment is both a tribute to the President and an unfortunate fact. Nobody can speak in defense of his priorities as well as he can.  Of course, he did have the advantage of getting to speak.  Nevertheless, I doubt that there are many members of Congress who would have had the breadth of knowledge and the ability to address the legitimate concerns of the attendees of the meeting.

The ability of President Obama to listen to real concerns that people have and to address those concerns as he formulates policy is one of the traits that I thought I saw as he ran for President.  This is exactly why I thought he would make a better President than some other candidates who had very similar policy ideas.

I was of course concerned about a candidate’s stand on the issues that we knew about at the time.  However, I also wanted a President I could trust to handle the issues that would come up later. The issues that we had no ability to predict that they would become issues were the ones I wanted to be covered by my choice of President.  History has shown time and again, that unpredictable issues do arise.

Follow this link to the Q & A article from the AP published in the Worcester Telegram and Gazette.

In my opinion, this piece is an attempt to calmly look at a complaint about the health care reform bill and see if the facts support the claim.  (Spoiler alert, the claim does not seem to stand up to an analysis.)

I have been reading in the book ‘How We Decide’, that the default behavior of the human brain is to decide an issue on emotion and then with the rational brain to invent reasons for that decision. It takes real effort to take in contrary information and use it to test your emotional decision.

I hope that on my more lucid days, I am willing to examine contrary evidence and make that test.

In my previous post, America’s Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009, I alluded to an online conversation where someone had made a claim against the health care act that I thought was unlikely to be true.  Rather than just reject the claim, I asked for and received a pointer to what the complainant had read that made him think his complaint was valid.  I then read the passage myself to see if he had a valid point. In the end, I thought he had misinterpreted what the section of the bill was trying to accomplish.  I give myself a pat on the back, though, for being willing to look for evidence that might change my mind.  I know I should do more of that.

My rational reason for my emotional decision to vote for Obama was the feeling that he was the type of person who was willing to look at information that contradicted his position and try to consider it fairly.  I used this rationalization to choose him over Hilary Clinton.  Even though he and Hilary had almost identical views on many issues, I felt his process of deciding was far superior to what I perceived was her process.

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Thanks to RogerG for posting this on his facebook page.