Insuring it all
“By now, virtually anything can be insured. Dolly Parton, Jennifer Lopez, Tina Turner, Betty Grable, Fred Astaire — the insurance industry has been involved in underwriting economically consequential body parts for all of these people. Surgeons insure their hands, soccer players their feet, chefs their taste buds. And there is plenty of room to grow in this direction, toward the insuring of ever more ineffable competencies. Could Roger Ebert take out insurance against the sudden loss of critical faculties? Or Donald Rumsfeld against a catastrophic lapse in judgment? There’s no reason why policies like these couldn’t be written. …
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“Indeed, insurance against loss of love already exists, in the form of the prenuptial agreement. … The prenuptial agreement between Michael Douglas and Catherine Zeta-Jones reportedly entitles her to $5 million for any act of infidelity on Douglas’s part.”
—Cullen Murphy, writing on “Looking for Trouble,” in the January/February issue of the Atlantic Monthly
Choice logic
“Staring at the back of a car during a red light can be a mundane experience — or it can be an opportunity to think through the logic of a worldview. I recently noticed a bumper sticker that read: ’Against abortion? Don’t have one!’ …
“This argument works when dealing with preferences. ’Against broccoli? Don’t eat it!’ It doesn’t work, however, with claims of objective morality. That’s why we don’t see bumper stickers that read: ’Against genocide? Don’t commit it!’ Or: ’Against rape? Don’t do it!’ Those slogans confuse categories. Pro-lifers are not simply expressing preferences; they are making arguments that abortion is an objective moral wrong.
“The same car had another sticker slapped onto its bumper: ’If you can’t trust me with a choice, how can you trust me with a child?’
“The virtue or vice of a ’choice’ is dependent upon its object and outcome. … The logic of this bumper sticker makes perfect sense if you assume that the ’choice’ has two legitimate, positive outcomes. … [W]e wouldn’t think it profound for a young man to say: ’If you can’t trust me with the choice of beating my fiancee, how can you trust me with marrying her?’”
—Justin Taylor, writing on “Sticker shock,” in the Saturday issue of World
Ad Hitlerum
“The flap over two political ads comparing President George W. Bush to Adolf Hitler … has gotten a lot of press (courtesy of outraged Republicans). Unfortunately, this is only one in a rich crop of Hitler and Nazi analogies littering the landscape of so-called public discourse these days. …
“It’s not just in political campaigning that Nazi analogies are used in vain. A Brazilian judge said last week that the U.S. requirement that visitors from some foreign countries be fingerprinted and photographed is worthy of ’the worst horrors committed by the Nazis.’ Talk-show host Laura Schlessinger said that the neglect of children in day care centers is ’like something out of Nazi Germany.’
“How about a belated New Year’s resolution for 2004? No more Nazi or Hitler analogies to describe policies or politicians you dislike. Unless, of course, those policies include actual mass murder and torture, or those politicians who engage in such acts.”
—Cathy Young, writing on “The Fuhrer’s Face,” Monday in Reason Online at www.reason.com
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