Sunday, Jul 20, 2008
"Compassionate conservatism" means creating a social contract where people take responsibility for swimming with sharks -- or sleeping with them.
Sep 6, 2001 | The recent shark infestation off the coast of Florida (and the insurgent response to it by some surfers) is a perfect metaphor for one of America's biggest social problems, and for the way in which liberals and conservatives have attempted to solve or worsen it, as the case may be.
By now, every prospective surfer in the country knows that at least seven other surfers have been bitten by sharks in the past few weeks, all in the same stretch of water off Smyrna Beach, where a surfing competition recently took place. (I should make it clear here that I'm not talking about the two other swimmers, one in North Carolina and one in Virginia, who have been killed by sharks in recent days. Neither of them went into the water knowing the dangers.) Some Smyrna surfers, however, having been made aware of the considerable risks, have insisted on braving the waves anyway, which is, of course, their prerogative. But, as always, there's a hitch. That prerogative of doing what you like with your body comes with a price. Paradoxically, freedoms don't come free. They come with responsibilities attached.
In this particular case, this means that if a surfer wades into the surf, knowing all too well that 1) those waters are infested with sharks; 2) an alarming number of other surfers have been bitten by those sharks; and 3) the authorities have closed the beaches for this very reason, he must take sole responsibility for what happens to him.
Now, to most litigious idiots, this means that if they get bitten they'll agree not to sue the state for damages. It would never occur to them, or to us, apparently, that taking responsibility for one's injuries in this case means a great deal more than not crying foul. Or, at least, it should. It should mean that the person who knowingly swims in shark-infested waters thereby automatically renounces his right to expect the lifeguards on duty to risk their lives trying to save him once the inevitable bite has been taken out of his demonstrably dumb ass. It should also mean that the surfer, not the taxpayer, must absorb the entire cost of whatever help and/or medical treatment he receives during and after his ill-advised swim.
But most Americans, childish and self-entitled as they are, don't like this idea. "What?" they whine. "I can't do anything I want and still expect someone else to pick up the tab or otherwise pay the consequences? That's not freedom." No, they argue, this must be some politician's plot. That, or the scourge of compassionate conservatism, President Bush's ballyhooed philosophy for revamping public policy.
Which indeed it is. To wit: Everyone has to play by the rules. It's a simple principle, and one that we should, by all rights, expect of every citizen, rich and poor alike. Think of it. If everyone understood that the social contract is a transaction, not an automatic entitlement proposition; a two-way street, not a free lunch; imagine how things would change for the better. Imagine how much money would cease to be wasted on the inevitable results of bad behavior willingly undertaken. Imagine that same saved money supporting programs that help the truly helpless, rather than abetting the sophomoric decision making of the perpetual 2-year-olds with whom our culture is rife.
Doesn't it strike you, for example, that this death beach scenario, and the way that these would-be water babies have responded to it, sounds an awful lot like the sexual habits of a certain segment of the gay male population? In a recent New York Times article on the 20th year of AIDS, Erica Goode reported the sad finding that, these days, your average Priapus is likely to have lapsed again into having unsafe sex. It seems a new complacency has arisen in the wake of the stunning success of the latest HIV drug cocktails, which have managed, for now at least, to stem the death toll of AIDS.
Think of it. Each young surfer, determined to ride the waves of sexual bliss though he knows the waters to be infested with ravenous, disease-bearing, unscrupulous sharks who'd just as soon maim him as look at him, jumps in feet first. The authorities have warned him against it, but he insists on going in without (sorry for the ham-handed analogy) his wetsuit. Yet, he does so fully expecting that if he meets with a bad end, the Coast Guard will dutifully dispatch its fearless Argonauts to try to save him.
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