Hentoff - 2 / I Won - 0

For the record: Nat Hentoff is afraid of this Administration.

And why are common men and women up in arms about the health care reform being hawked by the Last Self-Help Administration? Let me borrow from Dale Ahlquist's book on G. K. Chesterton:

Chesterton says that since the 16th century, nobody's system of philosophy has really corresponded to everybody's sense of reality. Each of them asks us to believe something that no normal man would believe: "that law is above right, or right is outside reason, or things are only as we think them, or everything is relative to a reality that is not there." The modern philsopher claims, "like a sort of con(fidence) man," that if once we will grant him this, the rest will be easy, that if at one point we just sacrifice our sanity, everything else will make sense.

The Administration is built upon modernist and pragmatist philosophies that the common man rejects. Its reasoning says things like, "We have to spend lots and lots of money in order to bring down the deficit" using the wisest of modern economic philosophy. Or that a vast, bureaucratic network of government workers will insure the best health care for the people in optimal age ranges (15-40).

I would say that Nat Hentoff has good reasons for his high anxiety.