Skepticism Protects Freedom, Reagan On Appeasement (VIDEO) & Abolish Office of Surgeon General

Let’s get to the issues that fire me up and deplete the blogsphere.

“It is hard to believe that a man is telling the truth when you know that you would lie if you were in his place.” -H.L. Mencken.

“When a man finds a conclusion agreeable, he accepts it without argument, but when he finds it disagreeable, he will bring against it all the forces of logic and reason.” -Thucydides

“Giving every man a vote has no more made men wise and free than Christianity has made them good.” -H.L. Mencken

These words of wit, satire and wisdom show a lot about what is important about skepticism.

Merriam-Webster dictionary defines ’skepticism’ as:

“The method of suspended judgment, systematic doubt, or criticism.”

For freedom to survive then skepticism must flourish. How so? Easy, our government and society is run by human beings. Sine our government and society are in essence ‘human societies’ then there is an inevitable influence of our flaws be it greed, lust, passion, vanity, pettiness, prejudices and etc. Especially lately, it is our tendency to force our own tastes and preferences on others via smoking bans, trans-fat bans, environmental hysteria and etc. Skeptics are those individuals who turn facing the rising tide of emotionally based policy holding out their hand yelling stop. Skeptics are those who choose to not believe everything they are told and question the motives of policy makers and issue/activist groups.

Skepticism is basically a realist outlook on human nature. Skeptics, or realists, see man for who he is and how he really acts. Therefore, skeptics and realists tend to guide their policy initiatives along this belief. 

For example, idealists pushed for the concept of a welfare state so efficient and stable that the average American would only use it temporarily to get back on their feet. However, this is not what happened. The human animal, guided by his nature, is more likely to continue on being ’subsidized’ by the welfare state as long as he can. FDR’s New Deal and LBJ’s Great Society only made more and more Americans dependent on the welfare state. Plus the cost and burden of big, bloated government swelled. Political rebellion against this taxpayer subsidized welfare monster reached its high point with the election of Reagan in 1980 and the implementation of welfare reform with the Republican takeover of Congress in the 1994 elections. Bottom line: the human animal does not temporarily use welfare. The human animal uses welfare unless forced to do otherwise.

The Founding Fathers themselves were healthy skeptics of human nature. That is why they implemented a system of checks and balances for the three branches of government. That is why they allowed only property owning males to vote in the beginning of the Republic to protect moderate rule from both a tyrant king and the angry, uneducated mob. That is why we have an electoral college to protect the interests of rural/sparsely populated states against urban/highly populated states in presidential elections. Man is born with human nature and that nature can NOT be changed. Therefore, one must operate government in a way that accepts and deals with that reality while providing law and order.

Most importantly, skepticism has been used to prevent the wise acceptance of half brained schemes and beliefs by the nation as a whole without debate. Just because an idea seems real or makes the majority of the people feel good does NOT mean that it is viable or good. Sadly, in the last 60 years, we as a nation have shown our ability to believe anything without question. This is dangerous. For example:

1. We banned the use of DDT due to fear mongering and environmental scare tactics even though the only real evidence of human harm was from individuals who used it in a closed structure without protective gear for long periods of time. African nations are currently using DDT and have seen their malaria mortality rates plummet. Yet, we allow environmental brainwashing to allow a national rise in cases of West Nile virus;

2. We have allowed anti-choice/private property zealots to ban private property establishments from allowing smoking, a legal activity. The use of questionable secondhand smoke studies done by the EPA in 1993 and others led to a mass acceptance of dubious science and reasoning. No consideration was given to the concept of amount of risk or the consumers choice to enter a smoking establishment. Instead, we approved laws that hurt private property rights and opened the door to more big/nanny government;

3. Probably the biggest unchallenged new religion is global warming hysteria. The science used has been thwarted with facts. Scientists and professionals who disagree with the global warming doomsday crowd are threatened and attacked. Just because you saw the fictional movie ”The Day After Tomorrow” doesn’t make it real. More and more Americans are embracing this new and unproven theory simply because a movie, TV show or rock band talks about it. There is no fair and balanced look at the science. If most Americans were able to look at all of the science then I believe there would not be such a willingness to allow government to increase taxes on ‘environmentally bad’ vehicles or write laws forcing us to use certain types of light bulbs;

Then there are the plain ridiculous areas that we proud skeptics refute daily as cons and hoaxes:

4. UFOs;

5. Fung Shui;

6. Recycling;

7. Mediums (psychics, fortune tellers, speakers with the dead, etc.);

8. Ghosts

I could go on.

These are just a few of the areas in which skeptics have bravely held open the possibility of the other side of the coin. Skepticism is not opposing something off the bat. Skepticism is just questioning something that is too good or too bad to be true. Once the truth is found then skeptics fight against all attempts to hide the truth with falsehoods. Truth is truth and fact is fact.

Here are some TV shows, publications and etc that proudly challenged commonly held or societal falsehoods:

1. Mythbusters on the Discovery Channel;

2. Skeptics Society (www.skeptic.com);

3. Penn & Tellers Bullsh%&! on Showtime network;

4. James Randi Educational Foundation (www.randi.org);

History has shown how man is guided more by his fears, emotions, passions and desires than reason. Therefore, there is a need for those, either right or left, who openly challenge those concepts that the angry mob/majority automatically accepts.

Skepticism protects liberty. Skepticism protects commons sense. Skepticism protects moderation over radicalism. Learn to question with an open mind.

I am disgusted at how the left-wing majorities in Congress are pushing appeasement via troop withdraws in Iraq. History shows that this move will only embolden our enemies and will only lead to more bloodshed. We need a history lesson. Who better to give it then Ronald Reagan in a 1964 speech attacking appeasement. Reagan’s speech was, at that time, a prophecy that would true in his direct defeat of the Soviet Union during his presidency. This is a great, great speech. Please watch. Just click on the video link below:

Here is a great article from yesterday’s National Review Online by Mr. Tom McClusky on why the office of U.S. Surgeon General should be abolished. I have always agreed. It is another branch of big/nanny government and the welfare state. Enjoy the article below.

July 16, 2007, 7:00 a.m.

Send the General Home
An unnecessary office.

By Tom McClusky

The House of Representatives held a hearing last week that included a number of former surgeon generals who are upset that they were forced to follow the orders of their presidential bosses. “The horror,” they (the gaggle of surgeon generals) collectively said, “That I had to follow the orders of the guy who gave me my job.” In response the equally horrified Democratic-controlled Congress wants to make the job more independent so as not to be constrained with silly things like following orders. “Just imagine,” they (this time the Democrats) collectively said, “the wonders that former Surgeon General C. Everett Koop could have done about smoking or Jocelyn Elders could have done about . . . errrr well you know, if they weren’t constrained by being answerable to anyone.”

While I will watch with amusement as Congress makes recommendations for the position I have a better idea, one that would totally eliminate the possibility of this politically appointed job getting any more political: Abolish the Office of the Surgeon General.

When the position of surgeon general, then called supervising surgeon, was first created in 1781, the appointee actually had something tangible to do. The first supervising surgeon, Dr. John Woodworth, was actually in charge of his own troops. According to the surgeon general’s website, he was in charge of “a mobile force of professionals subject to reassignment to meet the needs of the Public Health Service (PHS).” Since then, the duties of the surgeon general have been demoted so many times he’d barely be a buck private if his title kept up with the changes.

In 1968 President Lyndon Johnson took away the responsibility of overseeing the PHS and made the position of surgeon general into one of a glorified adviser who is answerable to the assistant secretary to the secretary of Health and Human Services. So while the former surgeon generals were complaining of the road blocks they faced with the respective presidents they served, there were, in fact, a few levels of bosses in their way before they reached the Oval Office. Meaning that these levels of government bureaucracy actually protect its citizens by stopping implementation of some of the cockamamie ideas coming from the surgeon general’s office, including drug legalization and universal health care paid for on the backs of U.S. taxpayers.The position of surgeon general today has become mostly one of a bully pulpit to serve as a federally funded advocate for various health causes (complete with a uniform straight out of a Gilbert and Sullivan play — “I am the very model of a modern surgeon general.”) The authority of the surgeon heneral has been reduced through reorganizations and, we are led to believe, a politicization of the confirmation process.

Today, the office has a budget of $3 million and the surgeon general is paid close to $200,000 annually. However they have little or no authority to coordinate the federal government’s public health activities. This coordination is already being done by more than 50 different federal offices that are involved in protecting public health. I think most people would agree that the surgeon general’s $3 million budget would better serve the taxpayers in a search for cures and treatments for cancer, heart disease, or other life-threatening illnesses. As an example, that $3 million could have been spent on Nevirapine, a retroviral drug that costs less than $4 a dose and has proven to prevent HIV transmission from mother to child with the administration of just two doses. More than 750,000 infants around the world could have been treated and spared from HIV infection. However, the money instead went towards a bootless position that lost its way before most Americans were even born.

So to save the taxpayers’ money, to eliminate yet another unneeded voice in the health-care cacophony, to free up a uniform for the local high school’s Pirates of Penzance performance and to save C-SPAN viewers from any more surgeon-general alumni reunion tours like last week’s hearings — eliminate the Office of Surgeon General today.