Adjustment of risk pools, i.e., higher premiums for smokers, would seem perfectly reasonable to me, however, and -- full disclosure -- I'm a smoker. If we do that, though, we'd then have to have a table of increased risk, from trans-fats to skydiving, from a genetic pre-disposition to diabetes, to travel in the Middle East. Do we really want to go that route?

Insurance companies already have trodden that route. The difference is they put some risks in larger pools and other risks in smaller pools, and avoid some altogether. For example, I know that death from war, insurrection, etc. are not payable on most policies unless you have a policy written that way, and pay for it. I also know that I would pay more for certain insurance if I were to buy it, as a result of the fact that I’m 177 cm and 118 kg (121 cm chest and a 106 cm waist) i.e. overweight.

I strongly suspect that certain professions (Alaskan fishermen) have higher premiums.

I personally would be happy to have trans-fat premium on insurance as well as a “no helmet/no seatbelt” premium. I certainly don’t want to be in the same risk group as people who chow down on McDonalds 25 out of 30 days per month, or don’t wear safety gear on vehicles. FWIW, the insurance thing caused me to re-think my life and attempt weight loss.

The whole “public health” thing is a very difficult issue. IMHO, drug use wouldn’t be a public health issue if it were legal in a licensed parlor, where the person who would be using the drug is placed alone in a padded room. If they die – oh well, their choice. No “public” health issue there. OTOH, vaccinations can and do cause deaths, but it is a scientific fact that the more people who are immunized, the lesser the chance for an epidemic. It seems a bit counter-intuitive to me (you either are or are not “immunized” I would think) but I’ll defer to the doctors as biology isn’t my strong suit. So do you force immunization? The US has indeed opted for that for the most part. You can claim religious grounds, etc. but many (most? All?) public schools won’t let you in the door without them.

"You could not be more mistaken -- but then, most that you write about libertarians is utter horseshit."

But Mona, there is no agreement even among self-described libertarians what libertarianism is. Take it up with Friedman.

Michael Cloud once said, "Some libertarians succeed by re-inventing the wheel. Most libertarians fail by re-inventing the flat tire."

To which Mike Huben responded, "Most libertarians fail by re-inventing the flat tire. Michael Cloud profits by using Libertarian Persuasion to convince people that driving on the rims is a good thing."

Somehow this exchange reminds me of you.

Quite a ways back, Glenn wrote:

Could someone identify any specific views that Keith Olbermann has that demonstrates he is a "liberal" in the sense that it's meant (i.e., in the left-wing Democratic Party sense, rather than the classical 18th Century sense Paul Rosenberg described earlier)? I'm not saying he has none, but I honestly don't know of any.

To my knowledge, no one has answered Glenn with an example.

My point, however, is that simply being an 18th Century liberal (ie someone who would have sided with the American Revolution, rather than sided against it--a fairly minimal definition for "American Patriot," one might think) is quite sufficient to make one a Democratic Party partisan, given how thoroughly the GOP leadership has come to embrace the Bush/Cheney/Yoo/Gonzales authoritarian, unitary executive, divine right of kings alternative.

Just to be clear, this is not to make any claim about individual party members. But it is unmistakably clear about the party as a whole--as well as the Versailles press that caters to them.

This leaves the "Democratic Party partisan" side as a rather large, more-than-usually-unweildly group. If organizing the Democratic Party itself is like herding cats, adding on all the fellow travelers this situation creates is like herding fleas on cats.

But it does cast some light on why these debates over libertarianism keep cropping up: it's because the libertarians are really odd-men (and women) out in this arrangement. Many are still on board with Bush, and while many have recently joined us, most have voted for him at least once. This is, however, only indicative of deeper cleavages, of which I'll point to two:

(1) They are not so much reality-based as the rest of us are. They are far more ideological, and much more in love with their abstraction than with how the world actually works.

(2) They are not really down with classical liberalsim, when you get right down to the nitty gritty.

I've already addressed #2 before. And others have hit on it as well, though not talking about Locke's social contract so explicitly. They've talked about the reality of social collectives, for example, which was something that Locke took for granted.

But I just want to briefly re-emphasize this point: Locke's purpose was not to attack the state in the name of the individual, but to justify the state in terms of individuals needing one another, even for their own most personal ends. (Securing liberty through the state secures our own most private hopes and desires, our most inward pursuit of happiness.)

And so to point #1. We've had a wide-ranging debate about all sorts of hypotheticals and annecdotal what-ifs. But what about this simple claim--that America's medical system is the best in the world, and that any sort of state-controlled "socialized medicine" would trample our liberties, and send off down The Road to Serfdom. (Not to be confused with Route 66, the Road to Surfdom.)

This is, quite simply, a lie. Or more to the point--if less dramatically--it's an ideological argument, not a reality-based one. Because the simple fact is that (a) other industrialized nations spend far less than we do on health care and (b) produce better health outcomes, while (c) providing means for having much more medical choice than Americans currently enjoy.

While (a) and (b) are simple matters of statistical fact, (c) is much more central to the sort of debate that Mona wants to advance. Yet, anyone who's ever been in an HMO knows just how restrictive it can be. In contrast, a single-payer system can--if sensibly designed--allow you virtually unlimited choices about which physicians to see. This is, in short, the exact opposite of what the free marketeers always argue.

Of couse a badly-designed single-payer system could restrict you just as mindlessly, cruelly and arbitrarily as a private HMO does--or even much, much moreso. It could, for example, mandate that you could only see a doctor with the same last name as yours. But there is no reason whatsoever that it has to do so. Instead, it could give you virtually unlimited choice--much, much more than a purely private system ever could.

And this is something that Mona must deny--for purely political reasons. It is this sort of ideological fixation, creating a massive blindspot toward reality, which makes libertarians ala Mona inherently weak members of the anti-BushCo Enlightenment Liberal coalition.

It would be good if we could take advantage of our time together to see how much of our differences we can work through. Because soon--if we're lucky--we'll have the opportunity to do some actual governing, and that means doing more than simply repairing much of the damage BushCo has done. And the more we can learn to agree on fundamentals--and communicate even when we disagree--the better off we all will be when that day finally comes.

But I fear that libertarian ideologues will simply not be with us for much of that time. And I hope, therefore, that we can use some of this time to persuade some with libertarian leanings that they are better served to put reality first in seeking to secure liberty. After all, I scored -11 on both axes at Political Compass (Spinal Tap!), so I refuse to be out-libertarianed by anyone when it comes to what I value--as opposed to how I choose to share.