Conservatives should know this word

Iatrogenic is a word us conservatives should learn, use, and teach. From what I'm reading, Sen. Moynihan first used it in relation to the government. It didn't go far. It hasn't gone far. Until about this week. I've read it in three separate, apparently unrelated blog posts.
Let us quote: "Induced in a patient by a physician's activity, manner, or therapy. Used especially of an infection or other complication of treatment." Scratch the word "physician" and you've got your term. Also change "a" to "an" so that it still squares grammatically. Quit bitching! Jesus, make an effort.

I was having a conversation with a lefty this week. A teacher. She was "undecided" twixt Bush and Kerry. I'm with Jonah Goldberg on the saintly "undecided" voters. If they really don't see a difference between a Democratic or Republican candidate, after a year of campaigning (especially in primaries), EVEN if they only watch a single, national TV news program every night, and can't tell a single difference between the candidates, maybe they shouldn't vote. Or vote for Nader. Too often I get the feel that the "undecided" voters are really more concerned about which candidate will give them things. So they're Democrats at heart and should vote thusly. Look, if you're looking for people to give you things, a conservative probably isn't your best bet. A conservative may have read Max Weber's Capitalism and the Protestant Work Ethic and isn't necessarily predisposed towards giving people things for free. Please note I said conservative, not Republican. If it's frustrating for you to have to deal with that parsing, imagine how frustrating it is for a conservative Republican.

Enough of that. What the hell was I talking about? Ah, my conversation with the teacher. So she starts in on the, what, 2-year-old No Child Left Behind program and starts blasting it. Because she's a teacher. I don't fault her for this. I think it could work better. But I think it lit a proper fire under the educational establishment. This person I was talking to is a good teacher. It'd be nice if there were more good teachers, and it'd be nice if there were less bad teachers (numerically, not percentagewise). NCLB helps that, or is meant to. It should. But it's 2 years old. If it was 30 years old and didn't do what it was supposed to do, we'd call it the EPA. Or OSHA. Or the Department of Education, or Labor, or Health and Human Services.

What the hell am I saying? I'm saying if NCLB doesn't work (which could be true!) it should be changed. Like Social Security or Medicare or Medicaid or AFDC or WIC or... what? Those dinosaurs! There were unintended consequences of the welfare state. If people get money for not working, they won't work. If they're getting money when they turn 65, they won't invest their own money for retirement. When people get free healthcare, they use a whole helluva lot more of it than people who pay for it. Unintended consquences that (in some cases) have only recently been remedied. After being in place for 30 years--that's 2 or 3 generations simply laid waste! In education, that means huuuge portions of a population that simply can't perform at even basic levels to sustain an economy or themselves. Why was this allowed? Because people meant well. How do you argue against a series of policies that really nice people agree with? You're spending money for schools! And books! And students! Sure, there are some problems, like spending all that money on schools and books and students and the students can't read, but that's because you didn't spend enough. Ever. In history. Except when you didn't spend enough (by modern standards, even accounting for inflation) and all those people not only learned to read, but they learned to read some pretty impressive literature. This, in part, is how a conservative thinks, by the way: Some things work, or worked. What worked about them? Why did they stop working? What about stuff that didn't work? Any idea why that didn't work?

Iatrogenic policies are thine enemy. Spot them early. Correct them or excise them.