The Definition of Insanity

Mr. Todd Lee --in a Letter to the Editor of the Wall Street Journal, (6/14/01) produced an analytic gem in the call for price caps on energy now being demanded by a majority of Washington pols, showing among other things, that Governor Davis might win in the end.

Mr. Lee wrote: "The Democrats continue to blame the president for the energy situation because he calls attention to the problem. They seem to believe it is not what you do that matters, it's what you say....[Their idea is] price caps...'to alleviate the problem for the public.'"

Here is the analytic gem that shows why it doesn't matter what you do in democratic politics: Demagoguery about "price caps" is a naked buying votes having nothing to do with policy except the expectation that no one will remember what you did. Todd observes that calling for price caps is "another way of saying, do the same thing over again and expect a different result."

But, asks Todd Lee, "Isn't that the definition of insanity?" If you didn't see Yuval Levin's "Peace in our Time" oped of 6/14/01 on this site you missed his detailing of the Todd Lee pattern in the New York Times report of June 13 by Deborah Sontag, "Mideast Sides Accept US Cease-Fire Plan." Levin wrote: "For eight years, ever since that moment at the White House when the terrorist shook hands with the leaders of Israel and the United States, a pattern has been in place."

It's the pattern Todd Lee calls insanity. Instead of price caps, which will produce shortage and raise prices when the idea is to lower prices and increase supply, the peace process rewards terrorism in exchange for Israel giving Arabs land, a practice that stimulates more terror and weakens the Jews to give more land creating worse terrorism. This is the pattern that prompts the Deborah Sontags of the world and the New York Times to rail at Israel when it resists the peace process or attempts, however feebly, to defend the people of Israel while all the other Israeli politicians (and all the Jewish professors and media) join the rest of World Opinion, and, speaking in the name of a persecuted minority, the Arabs, scold the Jews for their failure to see they must make sacrifices for peace and thus to embrace with hope and restraint the peace process as "the only option" and the best hope etc etc.

Do we not ask of the pattern discerned by Mr. Todd Lee regarding price caps in California: Isn't this the definition of insanity? It's certainly a good question. Indeed, perhaps should we hope it is not something else?

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