The other night at dinner a friend comes back with, “Do you have a better idea?” This, after I responded with two objections to a question I was asked by another dinner guest, “What do you think of Obamacare?”
The content of those two objections is unimportant, with the possible exception that they may provide a glimpse into my worldview, a view it so happens nobody at the table was probably unaware of, and one which was likely set and has remained unchanged since — as I recall being told it is in most people — about age 30. For any practical purpose I can think of it makes no difference what I think of Obamacare. I may disagree with the rain, too, but I understand the futility of shaking my fist at it. One constituent belief of my worldview is that one should sweat the changeable and shrug off the unchangeable. A different worldview has it that a real American should work for change he believes in else he should shut up and abide the rules others have established. If you don’t vote, some say, you’ve no right to complain about the outcome. I’ve never agreed with that. It doesn’t work that way in science. Pointing out a flaw in someone’s scientific method isn’t predicated on my knowledge of a better one, or me personally participating in the search for one. Surely there were people who were correctly critical of geocentricism yet unable to articulate an alternative theory before Copernicus and Kepler came along, just as legitimate scientific criticisms of the gene-centric theory of evolution have been raised absent a full-fledged alternative. I can’t be critical of Bush or Obama because I didn’t vote for either of them or their opponents? That makes no sense to me.
Do I have a better idea than Obamacare? Shrug. Not really. But I don’t have to have a better idea to have legitimate objections to it.
Happy New Year.