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Clinton Wrong (As Usual) on Genetics! |
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"WASHINGTON - President Clinton will endorse legislation making it illegal for insurance companies to discriminate against people on the basis of their genetic inheritance to deny coverage or to set premiums, White House officials said. Clinton's decision to push for heightened protections reflects recommendations in a report to be presented to the president Monday by Health and Human Services Secretary, Donna Shalala." The trouble with Clinton, is that he is a chameleon. Like a feckless weather vane, he always fingers the wind to see which way public opinion is flowing. The trouble is, Clinton is no Statesman - he is the very drab of politicians. His instincts are always wrong. If you find him on the good side of an issue, you can bet he's stealing the credit from someone else. Most of the time, however, when Clinton comes down on an issue, it's like Dennis Rodman playing Carnegie Hall! In this case, Clinton automatically came down not on the side of the uplifting and just Egalitarianism-before-the-Law, any red-blooded American should support regardless of race, creed, politics, etc. - but the grind-everyone-down-to-the-lowest-common-denominator-Egalitarianism which only stupid or dishonest leftists promote. Prejudice and bias are bad things. They are bad, because they are at best, faulty rules of thumb. One may have had bad experiences within one's limited contact with a particular race or creed. Worse, one may ignorantly choose to operate on the prejudices of one's relatives or friends - a situation which is even more removed from pertinent reality. But genetics is real. It is verifiable. It is quantifiable. It is replicable. It is at least half of the Heredity*Environment Equation - more if you take into account the innumerable studies of twins-separated-at-birth. Such studies repeatedly reveal that two people of the same genetic inheritance, will, regardless of the socio-economic status of their adoptive parents, uncannily choose the same kind of home, clothes, mate, job, hobbies, etc. etc. etc. These facts can be ignored only at the cost of adopting the infamous hiding-technique of the ostrich! Hiding your head in the sand is not a viable coping mechanism! In a free country, one is allowed to be stupid - but one is not required to adopt idiotic standards! Clinton's typically leftist take on this issue is the equivalent of mandating that one cannot use a microscope to detect disease because some people might be at a disadvantage if they were found to be an AIDS or tuberculosis carrier! Now before you Screaming Leftists out there start screaming "Nazi!" "Genocide!" and the always deprecatory "Elitist!", bear in mind that I, myself, have no idea whether I would pass any such genetic test. The point is, that as a Libertarian, I come down on the just and reasonable side of any issue - regardless of where the chips may fall. For all of you Radical Environmentalists out there (the ones who don't consider Man to be a part of Nature), consider this: if the natural selection of Nature is so Sacred - What of Man's corruption of this process? In Olden Times, a person who stupidly decided to nap on an elephant trail didn't last long enough to pollute the gene-pool. But today, we have traffic lights, and police to enforce them. What happens to natural selection then???? Ralph Nader may be making the world a safer place to live - but what is he doing to the average I.Q.? It is sheer folly to abjure any means of knowledge. Sure, it may be misused - but so can a gun, a car, a chainsaw or a penny [fooling a fuse box]. The Path of Progress, the Road to Liberty - is to forge ahead with new paradigms as new realities open before us, to embrace them and make them part of our repertoire - not to bury our heads in the sand like some Luddite afraid of life! In regard to the question at hand, prohibiting the use of genetic information by insurance companies, this is but another ploy by the Left to shift the Burden of Reality to the backs of those who they so cupiditously envy. Insurance companies play the odds. It is the nature of their business to calculate the statistical probabilities which determine the relative risk of an insuree. That is why it always costs more to insure a teenage boy than it does a teenage girl. That is why it costs to insure a smoker than it does to insure a non-smoker. That is why it costs more to insure a sky-diver than it does a proof-reader. It has too cost more because there is more risk! If insurance wasn't charged by the amount of risk, then the non-smoking teenage female proof-reader would have to pay just as much premium as the smoking teenage male sky-diver - and think how very unfair that would be! And notice that it doesn't make any difference to the insurance company whether the category is one of choice, like sky-diving, or one in which one has little or no choice, like one's own sex. The risk is there regardless of choice. Leftists have a lovely urge to right all the wrongs of the world. In this they are admirable. However, for some unfathomable reason they cannot seem to comprehend that there are just some things that cannot be corrected. It is simply beyond Human ability. It is here that many leftists show extreme hubris by acting like they were elected gods. (Except for certain radical tree-hugger types who assume that Man is Devil Incarnate.) There is far too much government interference in business as it is. We should be looking to reduce such meddling rather than expand it. Actuarial tables are an essential tool of the trade. Anything that grounds them in hard science is a boon, and anything that frees the individual from the tyranny of being lumped with a group should be welcomed by all who cherish freedom. 
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