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March 30, 2007
Confused Americans for Truth - An Important Difference Between Pet Food and the Police Force
A little over a month ago, an off-duty Chicago policeman beat up a girl in a bar. He was subsequently arrested on a misdemeanor charge, but is now facing a felony count of aggravated battery. If convicted, he faces up to five years in prison.
The Washington Post has this to say about the incident.
Critics question whether Cline and others are downplaying the scope of the problem within the department.
They say the two cases illustrate the types of abuse that have occurred for years.
Now, I am absolutely compelled to point out that this is a classic example of the Many People Trick. A journalist says something he believes to be true, and because he's sure there are people out there who agree with him, he can make it appear to be more true by attaching it to Many people say or Critics say. Whenever you see this phrase, you can replace it with There is no evidence without changing the meaning of the sentence. So, according to the principles laid down by The Confused Americans for Truth Institute of Journalistic Interpretation, the actual meaning of the above quote is
There is no evidence that Cline and others are downplaying the scope of the problem within the department.
There is no evidence that the two cases illustrate the types of abuse that have occurred for years.
But there is a deeper problem here than journalistic dissembling. We have two incidents of off-duty cops getting violent, and we don't know if it's the tip of the iceberg or a problem with a few bad apples out of over 13 thousand. A similar problem occurred a few weeks ago when all of us discovered that a company called Menu Foods was selling contaminated pet food. At the time, we didn't know how big the problem was, but the various people who buy food for their companion animals all came up with different ways to change their shopping habits in order to avoid accidental poisoning. We could do that because pet food is not provided by the government, nor is it a utility where you're forced to buy from a single provider.
The police force, however, is part of the government, and when it screws up, we can't temporarily switch to another policing agency until the extent of the mess is confirmed. We have to live with the mess while it's still pretty vague. Worse, we're going to have to spend extra tax money in order to get to the bottom of it.
No one is ever going to privatize the police, but it's important to realize that when we move something from the private sector to the public sector, we lose that important tool for dealing with incompetence or failure-- the Power of Choice.
Next year there is probably going to be a long discussion about nationalizing health care. You can't choose whether or not you need health care, but you can choose where to get it. For example, Bruce is never going back to the doctor who prescribed the pills that made him hallucinate. You can also choose what kind of care you get, and if you have to wait weeks to get an appointment for one particular doctor, you can decide to go to a different doctor with a more accessible schedule, or you can pay extra to get help from an immediate care facility.
These kinds of choices tend to fade away under a one-size-fits-all public system. It's a very high price to pay. We are willing to pay that price for the police force, because enforcing the law is the most important function of a government. We have just discovered how wonderful it is that we haven't paid that price for pet food. It's important to remember that we want to pay that price as infrequently as possible.
Respectfully submitted,
Ferdinand T. Cat
# At Fri 11:59 AM | Permalink | Trackback URI | Comments (1) | More Confused Americans for Truth | Tags: choice conservative health care journalism Menu Foods pet food socialism socialized medicine
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Posted by: Mick at March 30, 2007 3:27 PM
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