Probably the most annoying personality defect that one could possibly have is being hopelessly ignorant of a subject, yet having a very loud and self-assured opinion on it. These people are utterly cemented in their baseless opinion, and nothing that could be said would change their mind. Of course, everyone should believe whatever they want to believe. The problem arises when these throngs of the self-assured ignorant begin promoting public policy that will have a direct effect on others. These people almost always and everywhere have an anti-liberty public policy stance. They are constantly advocating for greater restrictions of liberty, and criticizing any movement in the direction of less control over our daily lives. They also appear to consciously allocate time out of their day to police the opinions of others, point out the errors of their ways, but all the while remain utterly immune to counterarguments. Despite their self-admiration, they also remain the most gullible to government propaganda, becoming veritable receptacles for the Establishment narrative. Although they believe their opinions to be purely their own, they are the unwitting, walking avatars of government talking points.
A great example of this is on display in a recent column at Enid News & Eagle, where writer David Christy strings together a series of non sequiturs in a rambling attempt to warn and chastise the reader about falling vaccination rates. Christy refers to vaccine critics as the “weakest link”, seemingly blaming them in advance for the inevitable (in his mind) resurgence of a multitude of infectious diseases.
The point he is apparently attempting to make is that society’s failure to learn from the past will inevitably lead to the same mistakes being made, which is the same unoriginal point that has already been made thousands of times before, and predictably made by people who know very little actual history. But it’s an important point, although one that could easily be turned against Christy’s own argument.
He then approaches the real target of his article: the dreaded anti-vaxxers. He appears upset that greater numbers of people are questioning the safety and efficacy of this injectable pharmaceutical product. Why don’t they just shut up and get their shots? Civilization is at risk! I’m going to go out on a limb and say that Christy has probably never heard of the 1986 National Vaccine Injury Compensation Act, or of the $4.5 billion paid out in vaccine injury settlements. I doubt he knows that if he is injured from a vaccine, he can’t sue the manufacturer. Instead he goes to “vaccine court” and pleads his case to a “special master”. The process takes years, and few receive a payout.
He apparently thinks that vaccines saved us from tuberculosis, cholera, typhoid fever, malaria, and others. No, they didn’t. The sanitation movement in the United States saved us. Clean water, plumbing, and soap saved us, and are still saving us today. John Leal and George Warren Fuller are forgotten today, but were primarily responsible for the rapid decline of infectious disease in this country. Leal was a physician and water treatment expert who devised a method of public water treatment through chlorination, and lobbied the New Jersey government endlessly until it implemented his method. Fuller designed the treatment facility. The implementation of this method marked the turning point in the war against infectious disease. Not vaccines. Smallpox, stubbornly infecting thousands despite high vaccination rates, also plummeted once the process of water chlorination became routinely practiced throughout the country. Christy knows none of this I’m sure.
A painful diatribe to read, Christy drags in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust to bolster his argument that a right-wing fascist government could again arise, lest we learn the mistakes that led to Nazi Germany. Does he realize that fascism can arise in more than one way, and that a society in the grips of fear could backpedal directly into the type of fascist totalitarianism that Christy ostensibly fears.
Christy’s entire piece appears to be nothing more than an attempt to satisfy some inner impulse to chide society at large for failings that he perceives will lead to world-ending catastrophe. What he doesn’t realize is he is engaging in just the sort of behavior that could inadvertently lead to just such a catastrophe that he seeks to avert, because the fear he is peddling is far more dangerous than the apparitions he sees on the horizon.
What we truly have to fear is the transformation of the voting public into a fear-enveloped mob, cowering before the myriad phantoms that the Political Class conjures up in order to Pied Piper the public into consenting to various authoritarian measures.
What we have to fear is truly fear itself, due to the destructive power that that fear can have on our liberty and safety. Fascism arises out of sufficiently politicized fear. Fear reverts the mind of a person back to an animal. Mass fear transforms the populace into a seething emotional mob that can be coaxed into supporting all manner of legislative atrocities. It’s this baseless fear that we must resist, fear that Christy insists we give in to.
