News and Views-March 12, 2018

The Enlightenment Spirit and ROAR

The Enlightenment was an extraordinarily, dynamic era that spawned the Scientific, Industrial, and American Revolutions, and gave birth to a culture-wide reverence for the faculty of reason. The human energy and creativity  that this “reverence” unleashed propelled the U.S. from an agrarian society to an industrial powerhouse in less than 100 years. Incredibly, this occurred while our foundational ideas were being systematically attacked by intellectuals in the U.S. and Europe. (See ROAR’s first publication: Solving America’s Greatest Conflict: The Public Interest vs. Private Rights, available on ROAR’s home page https://restoreour.wpengine.com, for details on the intelligentsia’s war against America.) The fact that America’s best and brightest have gone into science, business, and technology rather than the humanities has become our greatest pride, but, unfortunately, has also led to great tragedy.

A tragedy because while the creative genius of men such as Andrew Carnegie, Commodore Vanderbilt, Jay Gould, John D. Rockefeller, and others were lifting the country to unprecedented heights of economic development, they were simultaneously being attacked as “Robber Barons” by America’s intelligentsia. And that travesty of attacking producers who have given our society so much has only gotten worse in the intervening years as continuing attacks are launched via our public universities in conjunction with their enablers in the press and entertainment industry.

So, for those wishing to learn more about this incredible era of human history I recommend reviewing the history section at the online publication, The Objective Standard (theobjectivestandard.com). The Objective Standard has a number of excellent essays on the Enlightenment era that can be obtained for a nominal fee including: (1) “Happy Birthday, George Washington,” (2) “It was Time for Every Man to Stir: Thomas Paine’s Common Sense,” (3) “Thomas Jefferson: Word and Deed,” (4) “The Autobiography of Ben Franklin,” and (5) “Isaac Newton: Discoverer of Universal Laws.”

“Climate Change” Skepticism Comes of Age

In May 2015 President Obama made the following declaration regarding climate change:

    “Denying it or refusing to deal with it endangers our national security. . .  . Climate change will shape how every one of our services plan, operate, train, equip and protect their infrastructure, today and for the long term,”

Today, however, we have many top officials of the Trump administration openly calling manmade climate change “junk science.”   What a welcome change! I fully agree with the Trump administration sentiments on this issue. Subsidized science has wreaked havoc on our world by substituting ideology and alarmism for actual science, especially in the area of climate science. Through the efforts of the Heartland Institute, the Science and Environmental Policy Project (SEPP), and many independent scientists, the truth is finally coming to light concerning the pseudo-science behind the climate change folly. For readers wishing to know how and why this state of affairs has transpired, I recommend  the essay by my colleague, Jay Lehr, and myself: “Saving Science after Climategate: Recovering from the Loss of Scientific Credibility” (https://restoreour.wpengine.com/saving-science-after-climate-gate-recovering-from-the-loss-of-scientific-credibility/). The essay is six pages in length and requires no specialized knowledge to understand.

The theme of our essay is that the subsidizing of science has led to the entrenching of an anti-industrial ideology in the funding of scientific research that has been strangling opposing views for decades by cutting off the funding for “climate change” skeptics. This has led to phenomenon such as: science by consensus, alarmism, cronyism, and rampant influence peddling and corruption. It is long past the time that this travesty ended, and there are a great number of so-called “scientists” feeding from the public trough who have a great deal to answer for concerning the 27 billion dollars a year in research activities on climate change that have been expended with little legitimate return on those dollars.

One day in the not-to-distant future I hope to see 100% of the funding of  all non-defense- related scientific activities funded by the private sector. In the meantime, I believe we should celebrate this very significant change in public policy and do everything possible to support the efforts of individuals and organizations that are endeavoring to remove ideology and alarmism from the world of science.

Why Grassroots America Must be Involved in Restoring the Republic in America

In the Recommendations section of Solving America’s Greatest Conflict: The Public Interest vs. Private Rights I noted that:

“… attempts by elected officials have usually failed to frame policy approaches in terms of fundamental personal values. . .”

A recent article by Dr. Hurd (“Pragmatic Gun Control Legislation a Bad Idea for Republicans,” https://drhurd.com/2018/03/05/pragmatic-gun-control-legislation-bad-idea-republicans/) shows another failed effort by the Republican leadership to  develop a consistent policy based on fundamental personal values, this time on the issue of violence and guns.

The problem with our two major political parties in a nutshell is:

The Democratic leadership has virtually no interest or belief in the rights of the individual and sees government intervention as the answer for virtually every problem, and the Republican leadership doesn’t know what it believes which is the same thing as believing nothing at all.  

   The Republican leadership calls their viewpoint “pragmatic.” I call it failure with a capital “F” to understand what our rights are and what they as legislators should be doing to defend them.

This is why the grassroots approach that we are building in the upcoming publication Grassroots Solutions: The Key to Restoring Our American Republic is crucial for the future health of America. For more information on this approach and to review the existing content for the upcoming book see ROAR’s home page RestoreOurAmericanRepublic.org.

And for philosophical insights as to why both our major political parties are failing us, please see what is—in my opinion—the single best essay in existence on this subject:  “The Party of Modernity,” by Dr. David Kelley, 2003. (https://atlassociety.org/commentary/modernity-and-terrorism/modernity-terrorism-blog/3672-the-party-of-modernity). As Kelley notes, because of the fundamental principles of the respected parties, “Neither the cultural left nor the cultural right advocates for the values of modernity.”

Because of their philosophical inadequacies, it is up to us, the American people, to lead our so-called political leaders until such time as they start to act like actual leaders. Let us hope that time comes sooner rather than later. . .