1

Of the many groups of fail I could address questions to, I like to know how Medicin Sans Frontiers let this doctor fly back to the US (I desperately want to be wrong, but a commercial flight does not sound far-fetched.), and why they let him fly back without having been quarantined first.

 

2 Especially since they lost about 8 doctors to the disease.

3 "Wonderful" or not, he and his coworkers seem to have forgotten the Hippocratic Oath.

Priests molesting children?  "Even worse than normal because of their vows and position of authority!"  Doctor spreading a deadly disease?  "But he does so much good otherwise!"  It's almost like it's all politics...

4  It is really getting to the point where a modern day re-enactment of John Byng's appearance in Candide might be in order, pour encourager les autres.

5 I have to admit that I'm an uncultured peasant and have no idea what you're referring to.

6 It's easy to see why they're more worried about panic than infection.

The nasty bit about Ebola is that it's extremely difficult to provide care to sufferers without getting infected. "It transfers through bodily fluids" makes it sound like it's actually tough to get, like HIV where you're more or less safe unless one of a short list of acts occur. But Ebola sufferers -leak-. Just about every method of ejecting bodily fluids is on the symptom list, meaning patients need a lot of care to avoid becoming one big filthy infectious mass, but that care also opens you up to repeated exposure.

If we do get a serious number of cases of Ebola, the worry is that it will kick our health care system in the butt, with nurses and other caregivers saying "you know, my paycheck doesn't cover dying" and leaving en masse. All sorts of negative effects follow from there - Ebola containment gets a lot harder, hospitals try to avoid treating patients who might have Ebola, people with other health problems suddenly can't get care.

This should not be a problem for society, which has developed the answer to this - the virtue of valor. Past leaders could say "you have a duty that goes beyond yourself; man the barricades if you are no coward!" Men would lead and men would follow. (And though valor is not a traditionally female virtue, women too would respond; the history of health care is full of women who braved terrible plagues for the good of others!)

Our administration can't invoke that virtue. Indeed, they don't even understand it.

Ever hear a Democrat talk about the self-interest of the poor and voting? "Why would he vote Republican? Doesn't he know that voting Democrat means more dollars in his pocket? That we'll tax other people and give him the money? Why do they bitterly cling to freedoms they have no use for? Why can't we buy their votes?" The idea that people can have values that aren't the values of the Progressive Future boggles them. They don't merely disagree, they simply do not understand; isn't anyone who isn't With The Program obviously motivated by nothing but mean self-interest?

Valor itself is a relic, consigned to the dustbin of history along with the other discarded virtues. The military bring it out and dust it off when necessary, but the Democrats don't understand why valor was necessary in the first place; many don't understand why the military is necessary in the first place. In an age where police departments value force preservation over protecting the lives of the public, where firemen watch a man drown because the manual forbids them to go in the water without special equipment, where civic service is an invitation to graft, boodle, and paybacks to the voting blocs that keep you in office... even if they were to understand, "oh, THAT is what valor is, and why it was prized so highly!" and issue the call to arms, who would answer?

The truth is that people would answer, but it's a truth that can't coexist with their political ideals. So it's not a solution they can bring themselves to count on. They simply cannot trust that the public, the individuals who they would have to rely on, would rise to the occasion, because it's utterly against that mean self-interest which is all they will admit motivates such people. The idea that you can have a Duty - to something other than the Great Progressive Cause, of course - is anathema.

So that's why they fear panic more than the disease - because in their minds there is nothing beyond panic except disaster, chaos, and a terrible mid-term election.

(And that's also why we don't have mandatory quarantines for travelers arriving from affected areas, or flat-out bans. It's a tenet of the Democrat position on immigration that it's flat-out impossible to stop without huge disruption, armed men dragging families from their homes and shooting them in the street, so on and so on. A demonstration that we could actually do so if we wanted to - and with minimal disruption to boot, because frankly, it ain't like Liberia - US traffic is filling the airports - would be disaster; it would be evidence that it could be done, and not only that it could be done, but that it would be a proper exercise of the government's authority. A Democratic administration that stops movement from Liberia would lead to a Republican administration that stops illegal immigration at the southern border, eventually. And that's a thing that Obama Can't Let Happen.)

Sorry, I've kind of gone on. Lemme know if I've overdone it, I'll take the text and post it up on my blog instead.

7 Own blog? You probably should. Much easier to link.

8 Stephen, read this if you already haven't.  The short version is he was a good military commander told to achieve an objective (keeping a fort away from the enemy) he wasn't given enough men or materials to maintain, and he was executed for not being able to do so.
This is the basis of the line in Candide, "in this country, it is good to kill an admiral from time to time, in order to encourage the others"

9 (I had to look it up myself. )