Critique of Conservative Philosophy

Conservatives believe that less government is better. They want to leave much to private industry, rather than having government involved in it (financing it, etc.) because they believe government is inefficient, wasteful, and even corrupt.

They also believe in lessening government regulation of business. This is a major conservative tenet. Rather than government ensuring that business takes measures to protect its workers (e.g., from factory injuries), protect consumers from unsafe products, and avoid polluting the environment--the air we breathe and the water we all must drink--conservatives believe that if you just leave businesses alone, they will do the right thing. This ignores the innumerable times that businesses have put their own profit and other business objectives before the health and welfare of their workers, customers, and the public.

Conservative economics have given us "trickle-down" economics under President Ronald Reagan (when it did not work) and now again under Donald Trump. This idea holds that if you cut taxes to the wealthy and to big corporations, they can invest the money they save on taxes and use it to expand their businesses; this creates new jobs--or so the theory goes. As I said, this theory did not work in Reagan's day, and today this same economic theory is being urged on Trump by an economic advisor of his who has been wrong over and over and over again.

Conservative individuals sometimes go so far as to say that they feel they should not have to pay taxes, that the income which they have legitimately earned (through hard work, or being enterprising, or being rapacious) should not be taken from them and given to the poor and needy who, they believe--usually with definite racist implications--simply do not want to work. The recent incident (caught on video and gone viral on social media) involving New York lawyer Aaron Schlossberg shows Schlossberg saying that his taxes go to support these immigrant, Spanish-speaking restaurant workers whom he is complaining about through "welfare". This makes little sense, because if they were on welfare they would not be there, working in the restaurant. And if they are there, working in the restaurant, they are not on welfare. But this is typical conservative thinking: Reagan and Trump both got elected by implying that these lazy people (African-Americans and/or Hispanics) don't want to work and simply take money away from the good, noble, hard-working (white) guy who pays taxes.

To go back to some of our earlier points: Public health has been one of the major successes of government. Government entities identify epidemic diseases (food-borne illnesses, diseases, and so forth), identify the sources, and put public-health countermeasures in place.

Also, as I have said, government (except to the extent that Trump is doing his best to undermine and even stop these functions) helps keep our food and medicine safe, our air and water clean, pure, and safe, and nearly every aspect of life in our country as  many of us would like it to be.

Update: A conservative (unfortunately I can't tell you who it was) appearing, I believe, on Fox News, said of the children detained at the US border and wrenched from their parents, "Well, they're not our kids. This exemplifies what I believe to be a very common characteristic of conservative people: no empathy--that is, the  ability to imagine themselves in someone else's shoes.
One time, while I was on a business trip and pleasantly enjoying dinner in Lake Tahoe, I quoted a US Supreme Court justice (I think it was Justice Frankfurter, and I don't recall what the topic of conversation was or what prompted me to come out with this) as saying something to the effect, "Better nine guilty men should go free than that one innocent man should be unjustly punished." To this my colleague said, "See, I don't agree with that!"
But what if the innocent, unjustly accused person had been his spouse, or child, or parent, or sister or brother? I think that, were the matter to touch home in that way, he might feel differently.

Copyright © 2018.

Fluoridation of Our Drinking Water

Today's news mentions that the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recommends that the level of fluoridation of our drinking water be reduced.

I remember when fluoridation was still pretty new and it was not without controversy. Since the chemical element fluorine is poisonous (in sufficient quantities), some people claimed that fluoridation was a Communist plot to poison America. In all the years since—some 60 or more years—it has proved itself one of the major triumphs of public health policy and has reduced tooth decay.

However, nowadays almost everyone uses toothpaste that contains fluoride, so our tooth enamel may be being exposed to more fluoridation than is needed to minimize tooth decay. This causes mottling of teeth, or even more harm to teeth than just a cosmetic effect, specifically a weakening of the tooth. (These effects have long been known to occur in areas where drinking water naturally contains high levels of fluoride, more than is artificially added to water in those places where it is not naturally occurring.)

Still, I expect all the anti-fluoridation crackpots, who have been maintaining a low profile for 60 years, to come out of the woodwork now and use HHS's new guidelines for a lower level of fluoridation as proof that they were right all along, that fluoridation is a bad thing.

Maybe this should be perceived along with the idea that vaccines cause autism in children—an idea now shown to be without basis since, as reported in the U.K., the research on which the association between vaccination and autism was based is now shown to have been basically fraudulent, with forged research data.

But, as has been shown, Americans have a particular propensity to believe in conspiracies. So those who believe fluoridation was a conspiracy, way back when; those who think that vaccine makers, public health officials, etc., who urge vaccination upon parents, are somehow malicious and have been ignoring the harm that vaccination does—all these types, who have made up their minds, will not change their minds easily. Their motto is, "Don't confuse me with the facts."

Copyright © 2011 by Richard Stein