Why Hate Shouldn't Be a Crime

By Gregory Koukl
Saturday, July 21, 2007

Senators Ted Kenney and Gordon Smith have proposed a hate crime amendment to the defense appropriation bill the Senate is debating this week. It would add special enhancements to crimes for certain classes of victims, including homosexuals and transgenders. It’s hidden in this bill to try to ensure its passage since it might not pass on its own and the President has vowed to veto stand alone hate crime legislation. It makes it much harder for him to do so when it’s packaged with critical support for our troops.

I was first introduced to the concept of hate crimes like most Americans, from the front page of the morning paper. When I began reading the details of the story I was sickened. By the time I finished the account in the LA Times, I wanted to cry.

In Laramie, Wyoming, several years ago a homosexual student from the university there had been brutally beaten, robbed, and tied to a wooden ranch fence. He was found unconscious by a man on a bicycle who first thought he was a scarecrow.

The police arrested two men and two women in connection with the attack. The men allegedly lured their victim from the Fireside Bar, a campus hangout, by telling him they were gay. They drove in a truck to a remote spot and beat the young man mercilessly. His skull was smashed with a handgun. His hands and face were cut and his body was burned. Strung up on the fence, he was exposed overnight to 30 degree temperatures. His life was hanging by a thread. A few days later, at a hospital in Fort Collins Colorado, 22-year-old Matthew Shepard died.

Since this brutal murder in Wyoming in 1998, the effort to pass hate crime legislation—with expanded language to include "sexual preference"—has shifted into overdrive. This current bill is called “The Matthew Shepherd Law.” In spite of its proper intent to curb these attacks, such legislation is ill conceived.

I am against hate crimes, but I also am against hate crime laws for three reasons. First, they criminalize thought, not behavior. Second, they do not protect individuals, but rather select classes of people. Third, they actually encourage hostility towards one group of people, Christians.

Criminal Thought

George Orwell once said that sometimes the first duty of a responsible person is to restate the obvious. Note the obvious: Hate crime laws criminalize thought, not conduct. Assault is already punishable under existing statutes. This legislation levies an additional penalty solely for the attitude of heart: a motive called hate.

One of our most cherished freedoms is the liberty to think as we see fit, even if our thoughts are ignoble. A man's inner life has been his own. His conduct was under jurisdiction of the law, but not his convictions. Thoughts could not be made criminal.

Until recently, the law has been completely uninterested in penalizing motive. Whether one was driven to commit a crime by greed, malice, love, or hate was irrelevant. Only the conduct mattered. As far as the law was concerned, one could believe as he wished. He could like or dislike according to his whim. He could love or hate as he pleased.

Hate crime legislation changes all that. Now motive as well as conduct can be punished. This is a frightening step. "At the end of the day," wrote former ambassador Alan Keyes, "government can govern men's actions; it cannot govern their hearts. And when it attempts to govern their hearts, that is simply an excuse for the worst kind of tyranny."

Keyes’ remarks are not mere hyperbole. In April 2004, by a vote of 59 to 11, the Canadian Parliament passed bill C-250 criminalizing the expression of “hate” for homosexuality. The text reads:

Every one who, by communicating statements, other than in private conversation, willfully promotes hatred against any identifiable group is guilty of ... an indictable offence and is liable to imprisonment for a term not exceeding two years.

This is just the first step. Svend Robinson, the MP who authored C-250, wants the law to go beyond punishing incitement to hatred to criminalizing the anti-homosexual speech itself. It makes one wonder how an unfettered debate on same-sex marriage will be able to proceed (“All those opposed to same-sex marriage…you’re under arrest”).

The thin religious exemption included in C-250 gives Christians little cause for comfort. World magazine reports that…

…at least one Saskatchewan court has already held that certain Bible passages expose homosexuals to hatred. Even without C-250, London, Ontario, officials recently slapped a Christian mayor with a $10,000 fine for refusing to proclaim "Gay Pride Day." A Christian businessman in Toronto was fined $5,000 for refusing to print materials for a gay-rights group.

Hate crime legislation not only criminalizes thought and, in Canada, speech. It also creates another anomaly. Isn't it odd that, in this case, assaults animated by emotion are considered more abhorrent, not less? Generally, passion is a mitigating factor. Courts show lenience for crimes committed under its influence, reserving their greatest condemnation for calculated evil, thus the difference between first and second degree murder.

Hate crime legislation turns that equation on its head. Is a hit-man more noble because he lacks emotional connection to his victim? A person who commits a crime of passion is immoral, granted. But isn't it more twisted to assault, torment, or murder without any feeling of malice? Such a person is not just immoral, he's a monster.

Further, the present trend sometimes seems to make the motive more serious than the assault itself. Representative Barbara Cubin (R-Wyoming) said, "We will not stand for the arbitrary killing of other people due to any hateful act of intolerance." Los Angeles Mayor Richard Riordan said, "Angelinos have no tolerance for crimes motivated by hatred or bias of any kind." [emphasis added in both]

Why the qualifications? Why not say, "We will not stand for the killing of other people. Period." Or "Angelinos have no tolerance for crimes done for any reason"? The crime itself is reason to lament, but in these cases it's the motive that causes the outcry.

But it's worse than that. Hate crime legislation doesn't make all hate connected with assault illegal, only certain types of hate.

A Class Action

This is the second consequence of hate crime legislation. To paraphrase a line from George Orwell’s Animal Farm, though all hate is equal, some hate is more equal than others.

Consider this. According to Webster's New World Dictionary, "Hate implies a feeling of great dislike or aversion, and, with persons as the object, connotes the bearing of malice." On this meaning, virtually any crime of passion could be construed as a hate crime because it entails malice towards persons.

However, all crimes of passion are not actionable as a hate crimes. Why not? Because they don't involve a protected class of people. This raises a question. Is hate crime legislation about hate per se or is it really about something else?

Columnist George Will observed that such laws mandate penalties for particular government-disapproved states of mind. He is only partially correct. The government is not as concerned with the hateful state of mind as it is with the particular group of people the hate is directed toward.

The result of criminalizing malice under certain circumstances is that only certain types of people get protected. Will observes, "Surely Shepard's assailants would deserve no less severity if he were not gay and their motive had been, as it may partly have been, pure sadism."

Yet this is not the case. In a state with hate crime legislation, penalties levied for an assault on me personally would be milder by statutory requirement than for the very same assault on a Matthew Shepard. Why? Because as a straight, white male I do not belong to a class protected by this law.

Hate crime legislation, then, turns out to be not really about hate, but politics. It's not hatred for the victim that is punished. That's covered under existing statutes. Rather, it's hatred for a protected class—African-Americans, Jews, homosexuals, etc.—that's punished under hate crime laws.

Such legislation makes two crimes out of one. The murder is a crime against the victim. The hate is a crime against the victim's group. Yet how does one make sense of a crime against a group that is a different crime from the one against the victim?

Groups have no rights according to the Constitution. Only individual persons have rights (or groups that become legal persons, like corporations ). Even class action lawsuits follow this pattern. Only individuals who are harmed can collect damages, even though their case is argued collectively.

Hate crime laws create a whole new category of faceless, personless victims—the injured class. They identify crimes against no one in particular, but crimes nonetheless, offenses that are punishable. They don't prohibit all hate, only politically incorrect hate.

A "Climate" of Hate

Just as these laws are used to defend certain classes of people, they can also be used to oppress a certain class of people. They can serve as a legal tool to enforce a particular moral and political point of view that goes by the misnomer of "tolerance." This is the third problem with hate crime legislation. It encourages many to actually blame Christians for incidents like the death of Matthew Shepard.

As soon as the terrible incident in Wyoming hit the national press, a torrent of criticism descended upon the Christian community.

Martin Marty, a prominent religious thinker from the University of Chicago, wrote that "anti-gay" Christians do not act in the name of Jesus. Rather, "Christian rhetoric...stirring hate" contributed to the death of Matthew Shepard. In the LA Times, Robert Scheer said, "Trafficking in the presumed judgments of the divine is a road map to the outer limits of civic intolerance."

These have joined a chorus of voices claiming that Christians, through their moralizing, are promoting a climate of hate. The phrase of choice is "less than." By claiming homosexuality is evil, Christians demote homosexuals to a "less than" status. If a homosexual is "less than," he is marked in a way that makes him an object of scorn, hatred, and physical abuse.

This is twisted logic. In Los Angeles, KABC talk show host Al Rantel—himself a homosexual—noted that this kind of thinking would make Alcoholics Anonymous responsible every time a drunk gets beat up in an alley. It simply does not follow that moral condemnation of homosexuality encourages gay bashing any more than condemning Christian “intolerance” promotes Christian bashing.

Such a tactic is equally dangerous to those who use it. According to them, taking a moral position is called hate. But objecting to hate is also a moral position. Are those who demonize Christians for their views equally guilty of hate-mongering? Clearly, this kind of attack is not really about principle, but politics once again.

Columnist John Leo noted, "The political advantage of using 'climate' arguments is that you can discredit principled opposition without bothering to engage it. All you have to do is connect the pope, your local rabbi, or any other adversary to a gruesome murder, and your work is done."

Leo concludes, "Beware of arguments based on climates or atmospheres. Most of them are simply attempts to disparage opponents and squelch legitimate debate."

Hate crime legislation is not the answer. It turns the government into thought police, and turns the law into a club to enforce political correctness. Those felled by its blow will be Christians and others like them.

Instead, existing laws should be enforced to give equal protection to all classes of people, punishing the crime and not the frame of mind.

For Believers, though, there is a frame of mind that needs attention.

Made in His Image

Christians have an impulse to distance themselves from people like Matthew Shepard. Though his assault was lamentable, some have reasoned, he was, after all, a homosexual—evil and an abomination to God. Sporting signs with slogans like "Aids Cures Fags," they go public with their crusade by disrupting graveside ceremonies. This makes me want to weep.

There is no question in my mind that homosexuality is an egregious evil. Christians need to be reminded, however, that no matter how far we try to distance ourselves, we are more similar to Matthew Shepard than we are different from him.

There are at least two things each of us share with Matthew, maybe three. First, like us, Matthew Shepard is a human being made in the image of God. His value transcends whatever evil he may have been guilty of. This makes the brutal crime against him unconscionable.

Second, Matthew Shepard is fallen, as we are. We stand beside him in the dock, guilty of our own crimes against our Creator. Paul asks, "Are we better than they? Not at all, for we have already charged that both Jews and Greeks are all under sin."

Finally, for the homosexual that turns to Christ for forgiveness, we share the same Savior. Christ's blood was shed for us equally: "For the wages of sin is death, but the free gift of God is eternal life in Christ Jesus our Lord."

For these reasons all Christians should be grieved and angered at the injustice done against homosexuals, just as they should the any victim of a crime. They should condemn without qualification the brutalizing of Matthew Shepard and others, a human being who is, in all the important ways, just like us.

A Witness to Newfound Liberty

By Rebecca Hagelin
Friday, July 20, 2007

Shortly after 27 Cuban refugees set foot on a Florida beach in the wee hours of Saturday, July 14, Providence saw fit that I was among the first Americans to welcome them.

Along with a dozen or so homeowners and vacationers on Little Gasparilla Island, my teenagers and I witnessed the faces of men, women and children who had their first taste of freedom. They arrived on the quiet, sandy shores just before sunrise and instantly went from great peril to free people.

The U.S. “wet foot, dry foot” policy grants asylum only to those Cubans who actually set foot on our shore, rather than to all who make it to open or U.S. waters. The inane plan was adopted by the Clinton administration, a policy that includes charging the United States Coast Guard with preventing the freedom-seekers from ever reaching dry land. Clinton allowed himself to be, in effect, blackmailed by Castro who had begun loading criminals and the mentally ill onto boats and shipping them to the United States. Castro threatened Clinton with a massive immigration crisis and succeeded in perverting America’s long-standing policy of providing protection to escapees of communism.

Understanding the political suicide of outright reversing the practice of helping those who flee, Clinton shrewdly decided to slice the baby in a political move that no president or Congress has been brave enough to challenge and change. And decent, patriotic Americans in uniform who enlist to protect liberty and serve our nation are assigned the task of returning the desperate to their captors.

Very few make it all the way -- the courageous men, women and children I met are among the blessed few who have. Somehow, they avoided detection by the brutal communist officials who scour the Cuban waters for escapees, braved and survived the unpredictable open seas, slipped by the U.S. Coast Guard and overcame so many other odds stacked against them. Yet the event went largely unnoticed by the U.S. media.

The Cubans’ arrival just happened to be on the eve of the 49th Observance of Captive Nations Week. Of course, they knew not the significance of the date of their flight. Since 1959 -- the same year Fidel Castro seized control of the small Caribbean island just 90 miles from our country -- the third week of July has been designated by Congress to remember and show solidarity with those oppressed by communism “until such a time as freedom and independence shall have been achieved for all the captive nations of the world.” What happened to that vision?
Of course, there are those who commit their lives to spreading the cause of freedom, like my colleague at The Heritage Foundation, Dr. Lee Edwards, who is one of the forces behind the Victims of Communism Memorial, which was dedicated just this year. Dr. Edwards works tirelessly to support political dissidents in captive nations and to tell the terrible stories of those who have suffered under communist rule. And then there’s Frank Calzon, executive director of the Center for a Free Cuba, a nonprofit human rights organization that seeks to promote civil rights in Cuba. Calzon knows first-hand the suffering and heartbreak of families torn apart by communism. A native of free Cuba, Castro took control when Calzon was 15. At the tender age of 16, his parents arranged to have him flown out of the country. Mr. Calzon’s voice is rich and passionate as he reflects on the cruelty of the “wet foot, dry foot” policy: “Imagine the insanity if the police in West Berlin had been forced to capture those fleeing over the wall and return them to the Soviets. What we are doing to the Cubans today is just as horrible.”

Little Gasparilla is a bridgeless island just off the coast of Florida. When the Cubans made landfall, they asked islanders to call the authorities. As the Cubans waited to be boated to the mainland for processing, word of their arrival spread quickly through the island. Locals eagerly gave food, water, clothes and a warm welcome to the foreign strangers. The spirit of Americans, it seems, naturally reaches out to those who seek liberty. How horrible that the official policy of our nation does not.

The Cuban’s plight is not a new concern for me. I went to high school with a close-knit Cuban-American contingency whose parents had fled when Castro took power. My classmates and their families were among the most patriotic, freedom-loving people I have ever known. They treasured their liberty, and their hearts broke for those left behind. They still do. Never in my wildest dreams would I have imagined that I would have the privilege of welcoming some of their countrymen to America. Never in their wildest imaginations would they have believed that nearly 50 years after the bloody dictator seized their nation, he would still be in control.

As I scanned the faces of the newly free Cubans before me, I thought of my high school friends and their parents. The Cubans on the beach were the offspring and grandchildren of those who had not fled so many years ago. Their lives have been so different from my classmates -- for whatever reason, their parents did not or could not make the break. But those before me did, and now their children will be free. My mind raced back to those who remain in Cuba. How many generations have to suffer? How long does a proud nation so close to our border have to be oppressed?

Despite what Michael Moore and revisionists tell you, Cubans suffer daily at the hands of their evil government. According to the U.S. State Department’s report on human rights practices in 2006, thousands of Cubans serve sentences in dungy prisons absent any criminal activity; beatings of prisoners is inflicted with impunity; government-recruited mobs terrorize political opponents; there is no free speech or free press, no right of peaceful assembly and association; there are frequent and arbitrary arrests of human rights advocates. The list goes on and on.

On a personal level, I am still trying to process what my experience on the island means for my life, and how I am to use the many blessings I enjoy every day to help others whose souls yearn for freedom.

In one moment I went from packing up after a weeklong dreamy island vacation, to standing in the midst of a life-changing experience. I had the privilege of filing the first detailed press story of the refugees’ successful arrival that bright, sunny morning. I’ll always remember their beaming faces and dazzling eyes – they sparkled not from the sun, but from the sheer exhilaration of breathing freedom for the first time. I became immersed in the joy of their discovery.

In addition to the memories and photographs from that day, I have a Cuban souvenir that I plan to frame and put on my desk. One jubilant man who appeared to be in his 20s pulled Cuban bills from his pocket and began distributing them to the islanders as officials called him to the waiting boats. Misunderstanding the money as some attempted payment for the hospitality, at first I refused. “The Cuban money is no good here in the United States. He wants you to have the bill -- he says it is for good luck,” someone explained. I hugged my new friend and accepted his token of goodwill, marveling at how quickly humanitarian bonds can form when joy is shared.

My prayers are with my new friends and their families -- and especially for those who remain captive.

Chris Matthews and "Misinformation"

By David Limbaugh
Friday, July 20, 2007

MSNBC's Chris Matthews appeared on "The Tonight Show" Wednesday night pontificating, mostly, about the Iraq war. Those who deny the overwhelming liberal bias of the mainstream media and who are pushing the Fairness Doctrine to muzzle conservative talk radio should be required to watch a tape of Matthews' performance.

To a fawning Jay Leno, Matthews engaged in a nearly uninterrupted soliloquy trashing all things Bush, from his governing according to perceived signals from God to his alleged lies about WMD.

Notably ironic, was Matthews' repeated spewing of misinformation in the process of characterizing the administration of disseminating misinformation. They talk about men and women occupying different planets. Perhaps, but at least their planets seem to be in closer proximity than the ones inhabited, respectively, by liberals and conservatives.

Leno jump-started Matthews by asking him about New York Times columnist David Brooks' supposed assertion that President Bush has pursued the war in Iraq because God wills it. "God told him that we should fight this war."

We've heard this bogus charge before. Matthews dutifully responded, "Well, if he was going to play Joan of Arc, we wouldn't have elected him. Getting whispers from heaven is scary business. The guys we're fighting say that, too." Matthews said Bush needed "a little humility." Even Abraham Lincoln, Matthews said, didn't claim to have God on his side in the Civil War.

While I can't prove a negative, I am confident Bush never said that God is on our side in this war -- though it wouldn't bother me if he had -- or that God directed him to attack Iraq. He has said he continually prays for divine guidance and reads the Bible every day. That is wise, commendable and utterly no different from what Abraham Lincoln and many, probably most presidents in our history did.

This is not a distinction without a difference. Matthews is unequivocally implying that Bush has claimed to get his marching orders directly from God and that that is scary -- as if he's in some kind of spiritual trance. It simply isn't true, and Matthews is distorting the truth in suggesting it is.

Contrary to Matthews' depiction, Bush is exhibiting the ultimate humility in prostrating himself before God to ask for His guidance and blessing. Perhaps Chris has his wires crossed. It's the secular humanist types who are more likely to have too much pride: to believe in God, much less ask for His guidance.

Matthews then began a rant, saying "almost half the American people believe that Iraq attacked us on 9/11. The misinformation, the indoctrination that's going on. And the rest of the American people have gotten so skeptical now do you think the American people believe that the brass didn't have something to do with Abu Ghraib? Do you think the American people don't think that we were given a bill of goods to get us in over there? ... I think we gotta be damn skeptical of this crowd, because on WMD, on the connection to 9/11, on the surge on the torture, on every step of the way we've been given misinformation to the point now, we just did a poll, a fifth of the American people believe we found weapons of mass destruction when we got there. They're still indoctrinated. How do we get all this misinformation? From the top, unfortunately. It's a sad thing "

There is no question in my mind that Matthews believes this nonsense he is spewing. I think he's a decent enough guy -- but he just doesn't think straight. The administration never said Iraq attacked us on 9/11. It never said there was an operational relationship between Iraq and Al Qaeda, just that there was a relationship, which there was.

Only grassy-knoll nutcakes and anti-military types believe the "brass" authorized systematic abuse of enemy combatant detainees. I don't deny that many Americans now mistakenly believe, after being bludgeoned over the head with liberal propaganda for years, that Bush lied us into war -- as I've said three billion times, but apparently not often enough.

On all of these points and more it is the Democrats and mainstream media who are responsible for the "misinformation."

If two-fifths of the American people believe Iraq attacked us on 9/11, it isn't Bush's fault because he never said that. And if one-fifth of the people believe we found new WMD stockpiles (we clearly did find old WMD), it isn't because Bush said so. Yet Matthews says this "misinformation" came from "the top," meaning Bush. But he knows that Bush has never said we've found WMD there. Never. He's said quite the opposite. This one isn't even arguable.

Unchallenged, even frequently applauded, Matthews "disseminated" his "misinformation" to the audience. It's no wonder people so many people are so woefully misinformed.

Chris, you're not helping.

Know Thine Enemies

By Cliff May
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

It would be nice – or at least more convenient – if America could fight just one enemy at a time. But that’s seldom how it works.

World War II was called a world war for a reason: President Roosevelt might have preferred to take on only Imperial Japan, the nation that had attacked us. Instead, he had to lead the country into battle also against Nazi Germany and Fascist Italy. He had to fight not only in the Pacific but in North Africa and Europe as well.

It’s astonishing how many otherwise smart people seem incapable of grasping this reality. Many have been making the peculiar argument that we shouldn’t worry too much about al-Qaeda in Iraq – because it’s somehow different from al-Qaeda Not in Iraq. Consider the question a reporter asked of President Bush at a recent press conference:

But, sir …what evidence can you present to the American people that the people who attacked the United States on September the 11th are, in fact, the same people who are responsible for the bombings taking place in Iraq? What evidence can you present? And also, are you saying, sir, that al Qaeda in Iraq is the same organization being run by Osama bin Laden, himself?

Can you imagine, President Roosevelt being asked:

But, sir … what evidence can you present to the American people that the people who attacked the United States on December 7th are, in fact, the same people who are responsible for the so-called “blitz” bombings now taking place in London? What evidence can you present? And also, are you saying, sir, that those attacking London belong to the same organization as do those Japanese who are allegedly responsible for the attack on Pearl Harbor?

Reporters and other interested parties might spend a few minutes reviewing the latest National Intelligence Estimate. It states unequivocally that al-Qaeda in Iraq is al-Qaeda’s “most visible and capable affiliate and the only one known to have expressed a desire to attack the Homeland" here in the U.S. In plain language: The consensus view of the U.S. intelligence community is that the most dangerous branch of the terrorist organization that attacked American on 9/11/01 is al-Qaeda in Iraq.

A front-page story in the Washington Post this week further muddies the issue. It describes West Rashid, a Baghdad neighborhood currently controlled by Jaish al-Mahdi, the Shia militia led by the radical and anti-American cleric Moqtada al-Sadr. The article asserts: “West Rashid confounds the prevailing narrative from top U.S. military officials that the Sunni insurgent group al-Qaeda in Iraq is the city’s most formidable and disruptive force.”

That is flatly misleading: First, the fact that there are neighborhoods controlled by Jaish al-Mahid hardly constitutes proof – or even compelling evidence -- that Sadr’s militia is “more formidable and disruptive” than al-Qaeda, the group responsible for the vast majority of suicide bombings in Iraq. Second, top U.S. military officials have said consistently that the new “surge” strategy fully underway since June 15 includes an offensive against both al Qaeda strongholds and extremist militias.

If the U.S. does have an enemy more worrisome than al-Qaeda, it’s Iran. For years, we have responded fecklessly to Iran’s acts of war – from the seizure of our embassy in 1979 to the 1983 bombing of the U.S. Marines barracks in Beirut by Iran’s proxy, Hezbollah, to the 1996 attack on our troops in Saudi Arabia to the undermining of our current missions throughout the Middle East.

Finally, last week – and with relatively little media attention -- the Senate unanimously indicted Iran for murdering Americans in Iraq. It adopted Senator Joseph Lieberman's amendment to "Confront Iran on its Attacks on American Soldiers.”

Some of these attacks have been direct. Others have been carried out by militias – such as Jaish al-Mahdi – financed by Iran and, in many case, armed and trained on Iranian soil. Hezbollah also has come to Iraq to help slaughter Americans. The amendment notes that Iran has even been facilitating the entry of al-Qaeda terrorists into Iraq. And the Tehran regime permits Ansar al-Sunna, an al-Qaeda affiliate, to maintain a base in northwest Iran.

These combatants, Sen. Lieberman observed, “are responsible for the murder of hundreds of American soldiers, and thousands of Iraqi soldiers and civilians as well.”

So yes, America has a long list of “formidable and disruptive” enemies – in Iraq and elsewhere. That’s not just a “narrative.” It’s the truth – and it ought at least to be taken into account by those debating from which battlefields Americans should flee.

Michael and Me

By John Stossel
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Michael Moore loves government.

OK, he doesn't love a government headed by George W. Bush, but he believes that once the Democrats are in charge, government will do a better job providing health care.

In his new movie, "Sicko," he praises government-controlled health care systems in Canada and Europe. He suggests that Americans pay more for health care but have a shorter life expectancy than people in other countries because our health care is driven "by profit."

He is wrong in so many ways.

First, life expectancy is no measure of a country's medical system. Lifestyle and culture matter more, and Americans are different.

Interviewing Moore for an upcoming health care special on "20/20," I said, "In America we kill each other more often. We shoot each other. We have more car accidents. Forgive me, more of us look like ... you."

He smiled at that, but still argued that that people live longer in Canada "because they never have to worry about paying to go see the doctor. That means at the first sign of being sick they go right away to the doctor cause they're not worrying about whether or not they can afford it."

Please.

Freedom brings anxiety, but its other rewards are so superior to passive care from a smothering government.

America's medical system has problems, but profit is the least of it. Government mandates, overregulation and a tax code that pushes employer-paid health insurance prevent the free market from performing its efficient miracles. Six out of seven health-care dollars are spent by third parties. That kills the market. Patients rarely shop around, and doctors rarely compete on price or service.

Moore told me, "Government can do things right. ... My dad gets his Social Security check every month. Comes not only every month, it comes on the same day through the so-called 'dilapidated' U.S. mail. ... [A]sk your grandparents what they think of Medicare. Although it has its flaws, although it may be underfunded, it's a much better program than the HMO that somebody has."

Underfunded? Medicare has a 75-year $34 trillion unfunded liability! Its costs are growing faster than inflation. Social Security has a 75-year $5 trillion unfunded liability. These are Ponzi schemes that will be bankrupt before Moore reaches retirement age. The U.S. mail manages to deliver his dad's checks, but compare its performance to FedEx or UPS. The Post Office said it wasn't possible to deliver packages overnight.

I want FedEx health care: innovation, new cancer treatments, hip replacements and pain relief. We get that from private-sector competition, not government lethargy.

Moore said, "You don't introduce profit into your city water department."

He's wrong about that, too. As I wrote in "Give Me a Break", Jersey City, New Jersey's water tasted foul and failed safety tests. City workers said there wasn't much they could do. In fact, water prices would have to be raised ... just to maintain the lousy service they had.

So Jersey City turned its water system over to a for-profit company. Within months it had fixed the pipes government workers said couldn't be fixed, and for the first time in years, Jersey City's water met the highest cleanliness standard. Taxpayers saved $35 million.

The private company could do it better and cheaper because their skills were honed by constant competition.

Private competitors innovate or die. Government workers do what they did last year. That's why I want the private sector to provide my health care. Pursuit of profit will give us our best medicines and medical devices. I'll pay you $1,000 if you can name one thing government does more efficiently than the private sector.

Moore laughed at me, saying, "You are, like, so Thirteenth Century," but he conceded that America's founding libertarian philosophy has made us a rich and innovative country. "Look at everything we've invented," he told me. "I say to my British friends, can you tell me something you invented in the last 50 years. I mean, what have you given us?"

"Can they come up with anything?" I asked.

"No, they have a hard time. That can-do spirit served us well in building this country."

Served? It still does. And will -- if government would just get out of the way.

Michael Moore vs. CNN

By Brent Bozell III
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

Let's be blunt: Michael Moore is one ungrateful leftist hack. CNN had showered him with three hours and 10 minutes of face time (repeats included) on "Larry King Live" and "The Situation Room," helping him sell his latest socialist film, "Sicko." That kind of attention would make a conservative drool. But when CNN aired a "fact check" piece on his documentary, adding a fraction of balance, he declared jihad, promising in a letter to be CNN's "worst nightmare."

CNN medical reporter Dr. Sanjay Gupta put together a fairly mild report taking issue with some of Moore's cinematic claims. For example, Moore gauzily promoted the health-care promise of communist Cuba. In the film's most publicized stunt, he traveled with Americans suffering from 9/11-related symptoms and had them treated in Cuban hospitals. Gupta pointed out that while Moore highlights that the United Nations World Health Organization cites the United States as 37th in the world for health care, the same study ranks Cuba as 39th.

This is the kind of fact checking that drives Moore into a frenzy. He cannot tolerate someone insisting that the infallible Michael Moore would ever mangle a fact. In a response on his Website, Moore didn't say Gupta was wrong. Instead, he declared, "CNN should have its reporter see his eye doctor," since that list with Cuba two slots down is clearly on screen, even in the trailer. Technically, he's correct. A sharp-eyed viewer can see Cuba. But that's not the point, and Moore knows it. Moore's voice-over was focusing the viewer on how the United States ranks just above poor Slovenia at No. 38.

Then he walked away from the facts, making the outrageous claim that communist Cuba's dismal ranking is all America's fault: "The fact that the healthcare system in an impoverished nation crippled by our decades-old blockade (including medical supplies and drugs) ranks so closely to ours is more an indictment of the American system than the Cuban system."

The chutzpah level is so high he should seek medical attention. Most of Moore's attack on Gupta doesn't claim Gupta has mangled the facts, but instead argues that Gupta's facts are not important. Moore isn't saying Gupta is "untrue" -- he's "true, but." Gupta noted America ranked No. 1 in patient satisfaction. Moore admits: "True, but" when the WHO took patient satisfaction into account in its comprehensive review of the world's health systems, we still came in at No. 37.

Gupta reported that Americans have shorter wait times than everyone but Germans when seeking non-emergency elective procedures. Moore doesn't say that's untrue, but: "This isn't the whole truth. CNN pulled out a statistic about elective procedures."

In his boastful letter to CNN, Moore demanded the network cry uncle and admit that everything Moore says is to be accepted without qualification: "What I want to do is help you come clean. Admit you were wrong. What is the shame in that? We all make mistakes. I know it's hard to admit it when you've screwed up, but it's also liberating and cathartic. It not only makes you a better person, it helps prevent you from screwing up again."

This is incredibly rich coming from Moore, whose M.O. is not to deal in facts as much as in cheap stunts and socialist innuendoes. This is a man who ended "Fahrenheit 911" with the less-than-factual claim that the "war effort" was "always planned to keep society on the brink of starvation." Footnote, please, Mr. Moore? Can anyone forget his gauzy video of Saddam Hussein's Iraq before the invasion, with pastoral pictures of children with kites?

In fact, on one point in Gupta's report, CNN did retract a claim and apologize. Gupta said Moore's film claimed Cubans pay $25 per person a year for health care, when Moore said $251. But CNN's response also pointed out that Moore is playing apples and oranges with the numbers, plucking the Cuba number from a BBC report and then selecting his American cost-per-person number from our Department of Health and Human Services. The HHS number for 2006 is not a fact, but a projection, CNN pointed out: "Actual numbers for the years 2006 and 2007 are not yet available, which is why CNN could not use them."

Even people who don't believe that CNN is always Exhibit A for fairness and accuracy can easily find CNN to be a superior fact-finder to Michael Moore. So why does Moore, sloppily disorganized and so often factually untruthful, register such credibility with the press? Because his work provokes all the "right" people and shoots at all the "right" targets. If they really cared about the facts and people who handle them, they'd take away Moore's 6-foot-high soapbox. Gupta's report was a small step in the right direction.

Democrats' Iraq Policy: The Ultimate Hypocrisy

By Ben Shapiro
Wednesday, July 18, 2007

This week, Democrats broke out the cots and the S'mores, and held a big ol' Senate sleepover for surrender. By pushing an all-night Senate session purportedly designed to debate the withdrawal of U.S. forces from Iraq, Democrats hoped to show their sincerity and moral indignation. "How many sleepless nights have our soldiers and their families had?" asked oily Senator Dick Durbin, D-Illinois, who only two years ago compared U.S. soldiers at Guantanamo Bay to "Nazis, Soviets in their gulags or some mad regime -- Pol Pot or others -- that had no concern for human beings."

If politics is the art of painting a sincere face on blatant political manipulation, today's Democrats are masters of the craft. Democrats have hedged their bets on the Iraq war since its inception. They have voted for it before voting against it, funded it before denying funding, supported it before undermining it.

Democrats defend their war policy as a sort of principled waffling: Once we found out the truth about Iraq, we reversed field. Despite their political vacillations, Democrats maintain that they have been consistent on the major underlying issues in Iraq: first, the need for more international input; second, the protection of human rights.

Until now, Democrats have steadfastly and incessantly hooted for more international involvement. Though Senate Democrats voted 29-21 in favor of the 2002 resolution authorizing the use of force in Iraq (Hillary Clinton, John Edwards, John Kerry and Harry Reid all voted for the resolution), they called for more international input throughout the process.

That focus on international involvement has not abated of late. Clinton excoriated Bush on July 10, 2007, for his "unilateral decision to rush to a preemptive war." Just three weeks after his vote in favor of the authorization of military force, Edwards slammed Bush's "gratuitous unilateralism, a determination to act alone for the sake of acting alone." Kerry routinely blasted Bush's "unilateral preemption" on the 2004 presidential campaign trail. According to CNN, Reid "painted the president's war policy as unilateral" in April.

Yes, the Democrats have been absolutely consistent with regard to international involvement.

Until now. As Democrats plan to force an American withdrawal from Iraq, the international community begs America not to cut and run. On July 16, the day before the Senate slumber party, United Nations Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon pled with Americans to use "great caution" in contemplating a precipitate withdrawal from Iraq. "It is not my place to inject myself into this discussion taking place between the American people, government and Congress," Ban stated. "But I'd like to tell you that a great caution should be taken for the sake of the Iraqi people. Any abrupt withdrawal or decision may lead to a further deterioration."

It seems that Democrats are not quite so principled after all. International opinion matters when it is politically convenient; it is to be ignored when there is political hay to be made.

But surely the Democrats will never abandon the second prong of principle, support for human rights?

Sadly, Democrats care about human rights only if they can undermine President Bush by invoking human rights. The minute human rights come into conflict with Democratic political maneuvering they are jettisoned. The New York Times, which operates as a mouthpiece for the Democratic Party, recently issued a fascinating editorial confirming the withdrawal movement's dismissal of human rights. "Americans must be clear that Iraq, and the region around it, could be even bloodier and more chaotic after Americans leave," The Times announced.

"There could be reprisals against those who worked with American forces, further ethnic cleansing, even genocide," The Times continued. "Potentially destabilizing refugee flows could hit Jordan and Syria. Iran and Turkey could be tempted to make power grabs. Perhaps most important, the invasion has created a new stronghold from which terrorist activity could proliferate." Breathtakingly, The Times then dismissed such human rights nightmares and called for immediate withdrawal. Human rights, it seems, are important only when Democrats wield them as a weapon against President Bush.

When all of their pretensions to higher values are stripped away -- values like international involvement and human rights -- Democratic war opposition becomes nothing more than anti-Bush knee-jerk opposition. Democratic principle is in conflict with Democratic policy -- and, unsurprisingly, Democrats ignore their own principles. For Democrats, it seems, the only principle that matters is perpetuation of political power.