Let me ask you a question. Is there any way to read the following tripe from Mark Steyn without coming to the conclusion that he values sexually transmitted diseases for their deterrent effect on promiscuity and that he does not want to reduce the transmission and occurrence of STD’s?
Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House, is on TV explaining the (at this point the congregation shall fall to its knees and prostrate itself) “stimulus.” “How,” asks the lady from CBS, “does $335 million in STD prevention stimulate the economy?”
“I’ll tell you how,” says Speaker Pelosi. “I’m a big believer in prevention. And we have, er… there is a part of the bill on the House side that is about prevention. It’s about it being less expensive to the states to do these measures.”
Makes a lot of sense. If we have more STD prevention, it will be safer for loose women to go into bars and pick up feckless men, thus stimulating the critical beer and nuts and jukebox industries. To do this, we need trillion-dollar deficits, which our children and grandchildren will have to pay off, but, with sufficient investment in prevention measures, there won’t be any children or grandchildren, so there’s that problem solved.
The more interviews Speaker Pelosi gives explaining how vital the STD industry is to restarting the U.S. economy, the more I find myself hearing “syphilis” every time she says “stimulus.”
There are probably many appropriations that would be more directly stimulative to the economy than money that goes towards the prevention of STD’s, but treating STD’s does cost money and states will save money if they have less cases of STD to treat. I’m not concerned with Steyn’s critique of the efficacy of STD prevention as a stimulus. What concerns me is that he seems to think that preventing STD’s will lead to a culture where women (not men, interestingly) will feel free to have sex with whomever they want. Steyn would much rather have STD’s occurring with significant enough frequency that women feel constrained in picking their partners and display much less promiscuity.
He’s quite open about this. And, even if we posit that there is some socially beneficial advantage to less female promiscuity (beyond lowering the incidence of STD’s), we have to wonder about a person that wants people to get a disease as a lesson for others. Isn’t is possible for people to be less promiscuous without the threat of STD’s? And why doesn’t any of this apply to men?
Stimulated right into being another Europe
He makes it sound like a bad thing.
Just amazing. You’d think that after the catastrophic failures of their idol Bush and the catastrophic failures of their beloved unrestricted capitalism, those rightwing schmucks like Steyn would have the good sense to stand humbly in the corner and let somebody else run the show for awhile. The fact that they continue to imagine that they are still relevant in any sense is just astonishing.
What’s funny about this is that Steyn is play-acting at being a puritan. It’s all very well and good to pretend that men still wear bowler hats and carry pocket watches, and that women enter the publican’s house from the ladies entrance wearing a gigantic hoop skirt, where ribald men “trick them” into having sex (except for the “fallen women”) but everybody knows real life isn’t like that. So steyn goes on pretending as if he doesn’t drink in bars (the guy’s a canadian, right? I am so sure he’s never had a sip of booze in his life or been to one of canada’s hundreds of thousands of bars) or as if the concept of men and women co-mingling is something he’s never experienced.
What he comes off as is a finger-wagging prig.
He was making a joke. You all may remember humor -or possibly not. It goes right along with his comments on Macedonian content farmers. Get over yourselves.
The Repubs are screaming that the Stimulus is loaded with “liberal” wish projects! So be it! What the Democratic/progressive/liberal folks have to understand is the tactics that the Dems are using to get the real stimulus projects properly funded in the bill. If the Dems crafted the bill just for the critical “shovel ready” infrastructure (roads, bridges, water, and sewer)projects, the Repubs would propose a flurry of amendments designed to reduce the money available to these shovel ready projects. THE REPUBS WILL TRY TO UNDERCUT WHATEVER IS IN THE BILL, REGARDLESS WHAT IT IS. If the projected amount was $800 million, they would still be trying to undercut it.
So the Dem’s strategy is to load up the bill with a lot of ancillary projects just to give the Repubs a lot of stuff to cut or amend out. For example, $200 million to clean up the Washington Mall, $335 for STD prevention, $50 million to the Center for the Performing Arts, etc. These projects are “red herrings” for the Repubs to go chase after, thereby protecting the real bread and butter projects necessary to achieve real stimulus by putting people back to work.
Without question, the Republicans are becoming more and more delusional. How does one ever understand where they are coming from? But, if the republic is to survive, such bizarre thinkers may have to be institutionalized, for every ones good.
So if we spend $335 million (1 dollar for every man, woman, and child in the country) that will lead to “trillion-dollar deficits” on its own? That’s pretty stupid. He also seems to think that STDs cause children. Maybe someone should explain the birds and the bees to him.
“The more interviews Speaker Pelosi gives explaining how vital the STD industry is to restarting the U.S. economy, the more I find myself hearing ‘syphilis’ every time she says ‘stimulus.'” That says a hell of a lot more about Mark Steyn than it does about Nancy Pelosi.
so, family planning is pork. and performing arts is pork. now, what else in the stim bill that the repugs refused to support is pork. seriously, what other grotesque horrors do the repugs categorize as port?
all i can say is that if the dems just make the public aware of all the “concern” the repug have for the public, we may grow the Dem majority each and every election cycle for the next fifty years.my god- they even chose a leader that reeks of the stench of loser!
The religious right has always thought of disease — and pretty much any other calamity — as being divine vengeance. (Except, unsurprisingly, when it happens to them.) They live in a delusional universe where there is no ordinary causality; actions happen more or less randomly in a vacuum, and their consequences are determined by the will of God. And since their God, like all gods, is an imaginary projection of their own wish-fulfillment fantasies, every event is interpreted as divine reward for people they like and divine punishment for people they dislike.
Of course, it’s not surprise that they dislike women. Women, in their infantile mythology, are responsible for getting them kicked out of Eden through the original sin of questioning and defying authority. Male authority, of course. Their model for female virtue is Mary, the rape victim who liked it and whose sole duty is to support the child who was forced upon her and to silently suffer.
There is genuine terror on the right of the day when all STDs are cured and effective contraception is widely available. Then there will be no more divine punishment for the terrible sin of rubbing one’s parts however one wants, whether it be against oneself, a member of the same sex, or a whole series of random strangers. And without the fear and sexual frustration that provides most of the driving energy behind, well, most of the uglier and hateful forms Christianity, the whole thing collapses.
Here’s what folks are missing: Those STD prevention programs and family planning programs already exist and are being run by the states. But states in between a rock and a hard place with constitutionally mandated balanced budgets. Therefore, governors and legislatures are looking to cut budgets and cut employees.
This might not be stimulative but it damn well prevents digging a deeper hole through state layoffs.
Corvus has it exactly right. And think about it, no wonder the extreme pro-lifers oppose abortion even in the case of rape or incest…Jesus was the result of both! Poor Mary was raped by “God the Father”. Man, that’s messed up.
loose women
C’mon. “Loose women”??? Seriously? What happened, did a wormhole eject him from the 19th century?
Mark Steyn is one of the many reasons I quit subscribing to The Atlantic. I refused to subsidize that blowhard.
It’s worth pointing out that Steyn’s 19th C phrasing is on a par with his 19th C opinion. His “argument” is precisely the same as the 19th C argument against trying to find a cure for syphilis.
This moron needs a good stiff kick to the crotch. Hopefully one stiff enough that it leaves him with a new set of tonsils.
You people are hilarious.
How can you read Steyn’s passage, and then say “I’m not concerned with Steyn’s critique of the efficacy of STD prevention as a stimulus, etc…”?
It’s like reading, oh, I dunno, American Psycho, and saying. “Well I’m not concerned with Easton Ellis’ portrayal of 1980s metropolitan hedonism, what concerns me is that his murderer wears a suit”.
How can you get his point, and then completely sidestep it? Unless, that is, your own sexual psychopathologies and preoccupations lead you round by the nose as completely, if not more so, as you suggest Steyn’s do to him…
“You people”? Ah yes, you must be a visitor from the dark side.
The reason Steyn’s putative argument is ignored here is that it’s irrelevant. Both parties put forward bills all the time that serve multiple purposes. A military spending bill might contain some amendments related to, say, road construction or small business tax incentives. It’s part of the normal process of compromise and deal-making in a legislature. The bill that doesn’t contain a few topical non sequiturs is a quite a rarity.
Consequently, the reaction centers around Steyn’s archaic, religion- and bigotry-based view that there is something wrong with promiscuity. Excepting violations of trust — like when a member of a monogamously married couple commits adultery — there is no practical reason to discourage promiscuity beyond the likelihood of unintended pregnancies and STDs. Eliminate those risks, and the only possible objection is to resort to the superstition of bronze age savages, i.e., religious morality.
Humans are primates. Primates are notoriously randy animals. Unlike most other mammals, female primates are in permanent estrus and like pretty much all animal species, the males are always ready to go. Primates fuck. A lot. It’s normal, healthy behavior for them. The only psychopathology in human sexuality are religions like Christianity and Islam that bottle up all of that energy and turn it to harmful purposes.
Oh, you can always try to tie this back to God’s will. And we’re ready to listen. If, instead of completely disappearing as soon as the camera was invented, God had stuck around and made a few appearances before Congress, there’d be no debate. Heck, if He just once made the rounds of the weekend talk show circuit, there might be some hesitation while we asked for a show of credentials, but rationalists being rationalists, we’d be obliged to acknowledge His existence.
We’re funny that way, you know. We like to fuck and we are highly responsive to factual evidence. What’s wrong with you people puzzles us, but we’re sure you’ll eventually evolve.
If you’ve read Steyn’s OC Register article, Corvus, you’ll know its subject matter is a) how government-sponsored stimulus is ineffective, and b) what you Americans rather pithily call ‘pork’.
Of course, you’re at liberty to dismiss USD330m of STD prevention in an economic stimulus bill as nothing more than a non sequitur and politics as usual (which Steyn also criticises), but in agreeing that it’s politics as usual, and a non sequitur, you agree with Steyn that it has no place in such a bill. Indeed, USD330m is prima facie a high price to pay for politics as usual and poor legislative drafting.
So far as fucking is concerned, I’m a big fan. But I’m buggered if I can see any reason why anybody else should subsidise my hobbies.
The problem here is that I’m not objecting to a bill serving multiple purposes. While the practice is sometimes abused, deal-making and compromise are necessary parts of the functioning of any legislature. Moreover, there are many relatively minor government programs that, while worthwhile and by no means objectionable, are not likely to generate enough interest to get bills of their own, and the amendment process provides a way for them to see the light of day.
As far as “subsidizing” hobbies, I have no need for the government to subsidize mine, either, but after eight years of official silence on the subject, a full quarter of the teenage girls in this country have STDs. And since I’ll be paying for their medical treatment as part of my insurance premiums anyway, I see no reason to object to STD prevention, which is cheaper than treatment, being pursued by the government as a policy goal. And I certainly wouldn’t mind it if the adult playing field was more disease-free, either.
But as far as that goes, if we’re going to object to STD prevention, why not object to tuberculosis prevention or heart disease prevention? They, too, are largely byproducts of lifestyle choices, after all. Let’s keep taxes low so we have plenty of money to pay our insurance premiums.
OK, Corvus, so to recap: Steyn objects to politics as usual on the basis that it’s costly and ineffectual and, reading a little between the lines, intellectually dishonest.
Were I an American taxpayer, so would I. As a British taxpayer, where it is relevant here, so do I.
I think you hold your legislators to too low a standard. Moreover, if you’re comfortable with government spending large sums, on a utilitarian basis, or merely because it oils the wheels, that’s hardly a compelling argument for compelling other taxpayers who disagree to stump up. Is there any point at which expenditure aimed at buying votes becomes too great even for you to stomach? And isn’t buying votes, ahem, corrupt?
I’ll give you this much, however: you’ve done a better job than did Nancy Pelosi of articulating your support for millions in STD prevention in an economic pump-priming bill. On the other hand, since she has to run for office, maybe she’s embarrassed to admit to spending hundreds of millions in order to buy legislative votes. It’s not called ‘pork’ for nothing.
I don’t know a huge amount about American private health insurance, but I’m pretty sure that in a free market for such insurance the premia you would pay would reflect the risk you yourself pose. If you’re underwriting teenage STDs I suspect it’s because government regulation requires you to. Maybe that doesn’t bother you, but you’re overall very easy with the idea of government impositions on your goodwill particularly where, as here, said imposition is underpinned by nothing more pressing than whether a girl has a good time. And if you are happy to be obliged to subsidise teenagers through your health insurance, then justifying further spend on prevention is an indictment of that prior consent.
If it’s any consolation, here in Britain we have healthcare free at the point of demand. Condoms and abortions are made freely available to girls below the age of consent, and in spite of their parents’ wishes. Yet teenage and young adult STD occurrence has gone through the roof in the last decade.
But putting aside all questions of coercion and obligation and legislative policy in the name of the ‘common good’, surely if you want USD330m of STD prevention funded by the taxpayer, you ought to argue for it on its own merits, rather than burying it a mammoth so-called bailout.
Are you suggesting that Steyn advanced his argument against the stimulative effects of family planning funding by telling us that we need syphilis to keep women from cruising at bars for feckless men?
Or were you more impressed by the logic he advanced that eliminating STD’s (which harm fertility) would lead to no fertility whatsoever (no grandchildren)?
BooMan, I have only just cottoned on to the fact that your comment was directed at me. I have now read it a number of times, but am unsure as to its gravamen.
Insofar as I understand it, I take your second paragraph first: I understood Steyn (and this is partly based on familiarity with his writinng) to be saying that if everyone has sex with a condom then no one will be giving birth, hence no grandchildren.
Insofar as concerns your first paragraph, I quite simply have no idea what prompts you to ask that question.