The Discreet Charm of the Ayn Rand Right
Lest it be concluded that I am absolutely oblivious to the nihilism that is present on the contemporary American right, I thought that I should add a new post. There is a clear moral separation between the contemporary American left and the contemporary American right. For the former, it is a settled issue that eugenics, abortion, euthanasia, the deconstruction of the natural family, and the eradication of religious freedom are indisputable goods to be pursued. The right is generally opposed to all of these, on the level of public policy at any rate, if only for the purely utilitarian reasons of electoral politics.
With that said, the contemporary American right is obviously full of its own, well, nihilists. Take this example. Recently, a 22 year old struggling artist in Ohio died of the H1 N1 virus. As she was striving to be an artist, and possibly just because of the bad economy, her two jobs were not lucrative enough to be able to afford health insurance. Without health insurance, and fearful of the cost of prospective medical treatment, she was reluctant to go to the hospital when her symptoms hit. She eventually went, but by that time it was too late, and she died. It is a tragic story.
Of course, her death has been immediately politicized by the left in the push for health-care reform. But check out this response by Steve Spruiell, representative of the neo-conservative counteresponse, on National Review’s “The Corner”:
When Artists StarveA few points regarding this story [the story of the girl's tragic death]:• The median starting salary for Miami University (Ohio) graduates is $47,100.• A healthy 22-year-old female in Oxford, Ohio can purchase serviceable health insurance ($30 co-pay for office visits) for $55 a month, according to ehealthinsurance.com.This young woman’s death is indeed tragic, but it is not an indictment of the U.S. health-care system, cheap left-wing moralizing to the contrary notwithstanding. Many capable young people forgo stable careers in order to try their hands at starving-artistry. The rest of us are under no obligation to subsidize that choice.
This response seems utterly soulless, in the manner of the master Ayn Rand herself. Did Mr. Spruiell take account of our economy? Does he realize how difficult it is for newcomers in the job market right now to find jobs that he would approve of? And what of the pursuit of art as a career? So many pundits on the “neo-conservative” right have no concern whatsoever for any pursuit in life that does not involve wealth creation or being established in a sinecure as a policy-wonk-masquerading-as-a-philosopher. If they had their way, there would be nothing beautiful in the realm of human culture. We would all be buried in a dystopia of brick and steel with no art or religion to lift our spirits, spending our whole lives toiling in meaningless work.
The left is no better, what with their transvaluation of the transcendentals of being, giving us such marvelous testimonies to human artistic creativity as the “Piss Christ,” and whatnot. Nevertheless, to see the picture of this beautiful young woman, taken out of life tragically, and to respond the way Mr. Spruiell has done, is indicative of a nihilism on the right that is simply a mirror image of that of their political counterparts.
We pray for the repose of the soul of Kimberly Young.
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I had a response much like yours to Spruiell’s callous opinion.
Does he really propose our society require young people to choose between art and life? That not only must artists be willing to give their lives for their art, or rather for the opportunity to pursue art, but in such a meaningless way? And that, when an artist does die in a meaningless way because she chose art over a soulless cubicle, her sacrifice is not to be admired or even lamented, but rather dismissed and ridiculed?
Here are some additional factors he did not bother with:
We don’t know that Ms. Young was, in fact, completely healthy before influenza knocked her down. While 2009 H1N1 is known to kill healthy adults more frequently than modern seasonal flu strains, those with pre-existing health conditions are nevertheless always at a greater risk of complications with any infection. If she were not in perfect health, private health insurance would have cost here significantly more than $55/month.
In terms of her income, Ms. Young was clearly an “outlier.” Any statistical distribution can be expected to have outliers, that is, numbers that lie far from the average. One presumes that a number of her school’s graduates make considerably more than $47,000 per year, just as a number of them can be expected to earn considerably less. Are the outliers on the lower end less valuable as persons than those who reach the average or greater? Are they to blame? Since there will always be outliers, Spruiell is in effect saying that a certain fixed percentage of graduates of Ms. Young’s school should be condemned to life without health care, at least until the median income for graduates rises enough that even the low-end outliers can afford it.
And finally, consider that in nations which provide health care to all citizens, Ms. Young would have received care early in the course of her illness, and would have been much more likely to survive. The fact that, because only in America (and underdeveloped nations) could she have died of a common viral infection solely because a doctor visit cost too much, is in fact an indictment of the U.S. health-care system. There is no other way to describe it.
Comment by Robyn Broyles — September 27, 2009 @ 10:52 AM
I need to set something straight here: this young woman did NOT die because she didn’t have health insurance. She died of her own ignorance and fear. She could have gone to the hospital at any time and been treated, and dealt with paying the doctor for his/her time and expertise later. She PROVED as much by actually going to the docter later and getting treated, after treatment was no longer going to help her. Let me repeat that: she was NOT turned away from the hospital.
Also: calling our current economic mess “today’s economy” implies that it is some natural process, as if it’s just inevitable that we should ourselves here; just a backdrop. Our current economic state is the cummulative effect of millions of Americans making the choice not to pay one another for goods and services, but to simply take them, usually through their government. What’s really amazing about all this is that very few people even seem to see that, en though the same sequence of event has been played out in dozens of countries in the last century alone.
Comment by Eric Cox — September 27, 2009 @ 3:20 PM
I agree Eric Cox; we must make a distinction between health insurance and health care. If you are ill, hospitals will treat first and settle later. I like the website but this article is wanting; blaming with too broad a brush, not enough facts and the nihilism reference needs some explaining.
Comment by gravey — September 27, 2009 @ 10:05 PM
I did not say in this post that I blamed this student’s death on a lack of universal health care coverage. Don’t confuse my post with Ms. Broyles’s comment. My post was directed at the rather callous tone of Mr. Spruiell’s post, and to his insinuation — if you read Mr. Spruiell in the context of the movement that he represents — that able-bodied young people with degrees from standard public universities in the midwest have a moral duty to pursue their 47,000$/year careers.
The commentor Mr. Cox blames Kimberly’s death on ignorance and fear. He fails to recognize that she died of influenza, not of some obviously catastrophic illness. What able bodied 22 year old, without health insurance, would go to the hospital at the first signs of influenza? Or even when the symptoms become fully developed? Even given all the public health warnings involving H1 N1, considerations of cost are likely to outweigh any thought of prospective, imminent danger. After all, very few people who have contracted it have died from the H1 N1 virus, and few 22 year olds worry that influenza of any type is going to kill them.
As for his point about the economy, I do not recognize in Mr. Cox’s words an account of the current economic situation that has any connection whatsoever to what I read about it in Caritas in Veritate, which is the best analysis of the economy currently available. It must be remembered that I am a Catholic, first and foremost, and an ultramontanist to boot, and not an apologist for laissez faire capitalism.
But ultimately my post has to do with the stance of neo-conservatives toward cultural issues, in the sense of art, poetry, music, the life of the mind, etc. Anyone with any knowledge of contemporary neo-conservativism knows that its standard-bearers can be very hostile to the class of “culture creators”: artists, writers, professors, etc. — and not only because this class is dominated by leftists, but on principle. They think that it would be better that these people should be “out in the world,” making a “real living,” and getting their education in the “school of hard knocks.”
They fail to acknowledge that their hostility to the culture creators is at the root of the self-destruction of neo-conservatism in the wider culture wars. In fact, it is doubtful that the neo-conservatives even really care about the culture wars except inasmuch as certain cultures serve better to buttress the development of purely economic interests. They only care about wealth creation. They do not see that culture runs much deeper than economics.
This is why it is appropriate to label them as nihilistic. They do not understand that the economy must serve the culture, and not vice versa. The left understands this much better than the right, and that is really the gist of my post. Thus I disdain neo-conservative condescension directed at “starving artists,” as if the policy wonk Mr. Spruiell has so clearly chosen the better path in life. This disdain of mine grows considerably when the condescension is directed at a young woman who was tragically taken out of this world by a simple influenza virus: as if somehow she’s to blame for it; as if we should have no social concern for her situation except to recommend that it serves her right, for she should have been a more prudent and self-aware consumer. As if the reduction of man to a consumer of economic goods is anything but a deranged anthropology: every bit as deranged when it is carried out in the tradition of Adam Smith as in the tradition of Karl Marx.
And, frankly, it is perfectly acceptable to hold, with the left, that it is good to spend public money on the arts and on artists.
And the idea of universal, government funded health-care does not run contra Catholic social teaching — which is, in fact, my only concern. I don’t care what Milton Friedman’s principles dictate in regard to economic structures nearly as much as I care about what Pope Leo XIII’s principles dictate.
With all of this said, and to reiterate, nowhere in my post did I recommend universal health care coverage. In fact, I do not want it, because I do not want the New Left running it. After all, they flat out hate humanity and human persons. I’ll take Mr. Spruiell over John Holdren any day of the week, and twice on Sundays.
Comment by hierothee — September 27, 2009 @ 11:10 PM
A few quick points:
1) There are very few facts presented to support the charge that the young lady “died of H1N1″ flu. More likely it was pneumonia which followed the flu. But ‘pre-existing conditions’ certainly could have been a major factor, as well.
2) While there are no absolutes in this regard, it seems to me that she should have seen a doctor (or “free clinic”–they have them in Ohio, just like Wisconsin), or under Hill-Burton gone to a hospital MUCH earlier than she did.
3) Catholic social doctrine does NOT militate for Federal universal health care. Many Bishops have clarified: locally-driven healthcare, yes! Nationally-driven, no!! The principle of subsidiarity cannot be ignored (as it was by a Vatican-based Cardinal) in the calculus.
4) It is true that the Left and the Right have both politicized this case shamelessly, and horribly. To drive a national policy initiative of the magnitude of healthcare based on a few (or even several thousand) cases is not prudent in the least.
Comment by dad29 — September 28, 2009 @ 12:31 PM
Finally: MANY people WITH healthcare-insurance will ALSO die of H1N1 (or consequences thereof) this year. Keep a perspective!
Comment by dad29 — September 28, 2009 @ 12:33 PM
I don’t see what’s so callous here. The young woman was not turned out into the snow to die. She made a choice, not to get help until it was too late.
Comment by dymphna — September 28, 2009 @ 3:35 PM
All,
She made a choice that she would not have been compelled to make if she had had some sort of insurance safety net. One can always receive care in this country. That is true. And, then, if uninsured, one can receive a whopping bill in the mail afterwards from the hospital. That will effect one’s choice of whether or not to see a doctor in the first place. Believe me. I’ve been there and done that without health insurance in the past.
And the Catholic bishops recognize that this issue is very difficult. Even the bishops who point to the need for subsidiarity are not saying that it is good for the poor to go without health insurance.
To reiterate a point that I have already made, and in response to one of Dad’s counterpoints, the Church does not take a stand one way or the other in regards to universal, federal coverage for health care insurance. The bishops and popes have tended to see national health care insurance coverage as salutary, and in keeping with Catholic social doctrine, at least in the case Europe.
Once again, my main ire in this post is directed to the sneering condescension of neo-conservatives to artists, professors, writers, musicians, etc. Perhaps none of you have ever rubbed shoulders with movement neo-conservatives, so I am presuming too much knowledge on your part.
Comment by hierothee — September 28, 2009 @ 5:50 PM