More to it than ‘resentment’

More to it than ‘resentment’

The criticism in a letter about Thomas Sowell’s May 12 “Duty to die” essay may have been a little misplaced.

I recall hearing a “duty to die” argument back in the 1980s. Was it offered up by some marginal wing nut? Not by a long shot. Colorado Gov. Richard Lamm was the proponent then. My understanding is the backdrop of Lamm’s case was a recent change in the Medicare funding formula. There have also been other “duty to die” arguments, some of them motivated by explicitly ideological considerations, others by commercial concerns. You have to wonder if the “duty to die” folks also offer an accompanying “privilege to live”.

Sowell does sneer sometimes at America’s intellectuals and policy makers, but not because they think for themselves. It’s because, as Sowell sees them, they sometimes don’t think at all. You almost can’t blame them. Who’d want to risk career and reputation by speaking the truth to power? President Obama, for whom I did not vote, came pretty close to doing just that during the recent health care debate, and he took a drubbing for it.

“Does anyone know the problem for which Obamacare is purportedly the solution?” I’d tossed out the question to a group of Republican partisans, some of whom regard themselves as opinion leaders. “Resentment”, grunted one man. That was it. They really didn’t have a clue, but they had opinions aplenty. The sort of well-tailored rhetoric that cloaks ignorance and self-interest is why I think Sowell goes on as he sometimes does.

Jack Labusch, Niles