During the Republican debate a few nights ago a theoretical question was raised: Should an uninsured young man with a sudden life-threatening event have federal financial help or should he be abandoned? The question assumed, regardless of the institutional decision, that people would abandon him but the question is not totally irrelevant. Often people make the decision to buy something else other than health insurance; young men especially believe health care insurance is a bad investment. The more libertarian candidate emphasized this right--and responsibility--of choice and the acceptance of consequences. Two voices in the audience cried out the man should be allowed to die. It has been the talk of the news. What do these two voices mean? Does it say something about Republicans, or Tea Partiers or our culture?
Coarse? Yes. Insensitive? Yes. Funny? No. Can one generalize from this? How?
Life is extremely complex. We are extremely complex. It is astonishing how difficult it is to create representative samples from anything. Industries are based on it. Drug researchers are plagued by it. Phone canvassers slaves to it. But, nonetheless, it is extremely difficult to develop subsets representative of large groups.
We have a name for nonscientific generalization from small to large groups: Bigotry.
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