NH Liberty Conference, Day 2

(There's no "day 1" post. Yesterday I was at work during the day and with friends in the evening.)

This year's New Hampshire Liberty Forum is in the Crowne Plaza hotel in Nashua, which is convenient for me. After registering, I dropped in on the dealers' room, which had an odd array of tables. The John Birch Society, real estate agents, the Libertarian Party, and various issue groups were all there. The quality of the ideas represented varied a lot. I picked up a bumper sticker and a T-shirt.

At least 20 people commented favorably on my T-shirt showing Bush as a vampire attacking the Statue of Liberty.

The first talk I went to was by Jim Lark, on "Knee-Jerk Libertarianism." It was a very good presentation on "ill-considered responses to statist stimuli." These responses, even if they're correct, don't do much to get the message across. Examples include vaguely invoking the market, dismissing all government employees as scum, and speaking without adequate knowledge. He pointed out that trying to get people to accept new ideas may compel them to do a painful self-examination, since people's ideas are often part of their self-concept; we can't expect people to turn around quickly on that level. The talk was an entertaining one, with good illustrations and even Monty Python references.

Scott McPherson gave a talk about the history of public schooling in the United States, showing how governments took over a situation with minor problems and kept expanding their power. He blasted Horace Mann with particular vehemence. There was a lot of material, and I gave up on taking detailed notes with my handheld.

Wayne Green advocated eating raw liver, not getting vaccinations, avoiding amalgam fillings, and outlawing pasteurized milk. That was in the first ten minutes; I couldn't take any more and left. He's done many wonderful things, including founding 73 and Byte magazines; if he's gone crazy now that he's somewhere past eighty, he's entitled to it.

The last talk I went to was by Ed Hudgins of the Atlas Society. He talked about the Objectivist ethics as the basis for liberty, noting that many people are blind and deaf to principles and that it's difficult to communicate ideas to them. Some points which he discussed were the attempts to base morality on religion, the manipulation of people by guilt, and the morality of crossing borders to earn a better living. He also mentioned that the Atlas Shrugged movie project is still active, and that there should be news for better or worse this month.

Before going home I talked with quite a few interesting people. Jack Shimek told me about a project to create a small library of freedom, called the Renaissance Reading Room. The domain renreadingroom.com is registered, but either no website has been set up or it's not currently running.

I was very pleased to meet with Declan McCullagh, whom I crib from in half the posts on this blog. We had an enjoyable if brief conversation.

More tomorrow, including Ron Paul.

More blog coverage here.

Clinton wants to bring medicine up to the 1980's

Hillary Clinton is, it would seem, under the impression that medical offices and hospitals haven't yet heard of computers.

NASHUA, N.H.--In a new push to win over New Hampshire voters on Friday, Hillary Clinton highlighted a technological facet of her pledge to revamp the nation's healthcare system: ditch paper medical records.
 
Digitizing the vital documents will not only cut an estimated $77 billion in costs, but "much more important than that, we would save lives," the New York senator said Friday morning to a few hundred cheering, sign-waving supporters huddled around the stage in a drafty airplane hangar here.

Perhaps back in Arkansas there are still medical offices that keep their records on paper, but she sounds very silly saying that in high-tech Nashua.

I don't think she really believes it. What she really means is that our personal medical information should be in a central database under the authority of the federal government. A report cited by the ACLU places the United States among the world's worst surveillance societies, mentioning "[w]eak protections of financial and medical privacy" as one factor. Clinton thinks we still have too much medical privacy.

Hanlon's (or Heinlein's) Razor -- "Never attribute to malice what can be explained by stupidity" -- is a doubtful guide when it comes to politicians. On issues of policy it may be true, but on issues of fact, I'd suggest: "Never attribute to stupidity what can be explained by political posturing."