Category: Free Speech

“Stand for Health Freedom”

I believe that respecting each other’s freedom is what makes America exceptional. It is the right thing to do. But what a wonderful miracle, that on balance respecting freedom results in much else that is good, including better health and more happiness.

I believe that vaccines sometimes have bad side effects, but that on balance some vaccines are among the greatest contributions to human health.

But we should convince, not mandate. We should respect freedom because that is what is moral to do. And if we do, there will be more medical innovation; more and faster cures.

(p. A11) Ms. Wilson’s organization, Stand for Health Freedom, has become part of a grassroots push . . . .  . . .  To Ms. Wilson, those involved have coalesced around one idea: “There’s roles for government, and telling us how to care for our bodies is not one of them.”

. . .

Stand for Health Freedom is a young organization, but the wider movement “goes to the very roots of America,” said Lewis A. Grossman, a professor at American University’s law school who has studied the history of libertarianism.

“There’s always been a robust portion of Americans who embrace these values,” Mr. Grossman said. As early as 1902, organizations like the American Medical Liberty League were pushing for freedom from vaccine mandates. In the 1950s, the John Birch Society and National Health Federation took up the cause. In 1975, a group opposed to water fluoridation in Rockland County, N.Y., called itself the Citizens for Health Freedom.

But by and large, these groups and others like them existed outside the mainstream. Starting in the 1960s, however, American trust in institutions began to wane.

. . .

Then, Covid struck and cities were locked down. Public health officials also fumbled critical early messaging, painting the vaccines as a “miracle” that would provide permanent immunity, said Michael T. Osterholm, the director of the Center for Infectious Disease Research and Policy at the University of Minnesota.

“We really lost credibility, because that’s not what happened,” Dr. Osterholm said.

Suddenly, medical freedom became a salient issue to many more Americans, and resistance to Covid restrictions became their unifying principle.  . . .

Much of that growth occurred online, as people lost faith in traditional medical institutions and searched for like-minded thinkers, Dr. Osterholm said. New supporters flocked to Ms. Wilson’s organization as it took on all sorts of causes.

. . .

As it grew, Ms Wilson’s organization gained support from a politically diverse group of advocates. Roughly 40 percent of the people who have taken action on the platform are Democrats, she claimed. Ms. Wilson saw this as evidence that “there are plenty of people who care about being the one who makes the ultimate health decisions for their children,” she said.

“This is common sense,” she added, “not strange or rare.”

For the full story see:

Kate Morgan. “Vaccine Protesters Find Winning Slogan: ‘Health Freedom’.” The New York Times (Wednesday, January 1, 2025): A11.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the story was updated Dec. 31, 2024, and has the title “How ‘Health Freedom’ Became a Winning Rallying Cry.”)

Musk’s Defense of Free Speech Leads an E.V. Hater to Become a Tesla Cybertruck Lover

I admire Elon Musk’s energy, his ability to focus his mind in spite of distractions, and his ambitious entrepreneurship. The kid in me who got up early to watch Apollo space launches admires his ambition to take us to Mars. But what I admire most is his willingness to put that ambition at risk by spending $44 billion to buy Twitter (now X) in order to defend free speech. Too often entrepreneurs will put their dream above everything else. Musk put free speech above his dream.

And it’s not just the $44 billion. Many of his actual and potential Tesla customers are left-wing environmentalists who criticize his purchase of Twitter, and later his leading D.O.G.E. If that dislike leads to lower sales and profits at Tesla, then Musk will have even fewer funds to take us to Mars.

But the outcome is not certain. Maybe a society with free speech is one that is more likely to allow Musk the freedom to take trial-and-error risks to get us to Mars. And there is a small chance that Tesla will sell more cars because of his principled stand.

Tesla owners who supported Harris for President are buying bumper stickers to slap on their Teslas that read “I Bought This Before We Knew Elon Was Crazy” (Peyser 2024, p. D4).

But consider Berkeley Professor Morgan Ames who bought a Tesla in 2013. Even though she did not like Elon Musk’s views she later bought a second Tesla “because she couldn’t find other electric cars that matched Tesla’s capabilities” (Peyser 2024, p. D4).

And there is Oklahoman Sean Ziese who said to his wife: “If Elon is going to start supporting conservatives and free speech, I’m going to start supporting Elon, even though I hate E.V.s” (Ziese as quoted in Peyser 2024, p. D4). Then Ziese went out and bought himself a Tesla Cybertruck.

Ziese now concludes that his driving a Tesla Cybertruck is “a really neat experience. It never would have happened if Elon never would have bought X, and, you know, got free speech going again” (Ziese as quoted in Peyser 2024, p. D4).

The source article quoted above is:

Eve Peyser. “Tesla Owners Don’t Drive Away Quietly.” The New York Times (Thurs., December 19, 2024): D4.

(Note: the online version of the Eve Peyser article has the date Dec. 11, 2024, and has the title “For Tesla Owners, a Referendum Through Bumper Stickers.”)

The Last Lonely Night Watchman Blows His Horn, “Signaling That All Is Well”

When I was a graduate student in philosophy and economics the exciting new read for the liberty-inclined was Robert Nozick’s Anarchy, State, and Utopia. I was at first rejected from the philosophy graduate program at the University of Chicago because I had the audacity to praise Ayn Rand in my application essay. The rejection decision was eventually reversed. But imagine my reaction when then-young Harvard philosophy professor Robert Nozick had the guts to write a paper evaluating the philosophy of Ayn Rand. My memory is that he did not praise all that is Rand. But that is not the point; the point is that Nozick took Rand seriously. Regardless of the contents of his main book, Nozick was my hero.

The book is pretty good too. I still ponder much that Nozick pondered. Should we eat animals that think and feel? Should a libertarian society approve of people who voluntarily join an authoritarian community? If we could plug ourselves into a machine that would give us the false illusion that all is well, should we?

Not everyone I admired totally admired Nozick’s book. I remember reading (or hearing) Milton Friedman say that it was good but “too Talmudic.” (I assume that Friedman meant that there was too much back and forth nit-picking on minor issues, and too little dispositive empirical evidence on big issues.)

The main constructive section of Nozick’s book defends the libertarian’s minimal state, what Nozick memorably calls “the night-watchman state”–the fundamental justifiable function of government is to act as a conscientious night watchman. (Today many who call themselves “libertarians” are anarchists which is why I now sometimes call myself a “classical liberal.”) (For fans of The Lord of the Ring: I think of the Rangers, the unappreciated protectors of the Hobbits, as kin to night watchmen.)

Nozick solidified the heroic image of the night watchman going about his job.

(p. A11) Mr. Stein, a journalist and editor for BBC Travel, has globetrotting in his veins, but this book is much more than a travelogue.  . . .  . . . under the drizzle of a wet November, he climbs 14 stories to the belfry of a Swedish church with Scandinavia’s last night watchman and listens to the watchman’s call, on a 4-foot-long copper horn, signaling that all is well.

. . .

In reading about the night watchman, alone in the dark tower above Ystad, along Sweden’s southern coast, I felt the wind and rain, I awed at the sacrifice, I understood the power of tradition. Those who listen to his horn night after night, even cracking open their windows in subzero temperatures for the comfort of its lonely bellow, know that the world would be different without it. It would be poorer, less a home to mankind.

. . .

Mr. Stein’s great gift—his sensitivity and his dedication to capturing joy and hope, however fleeting—is worth giving to others.

For the full review see:

Brandy Schillace. “Bookshelf; The Great Chain Of Humanity.” The Wall Street Journal (Friday, Jan. 3, 2025): A11.

(Note: the online version of the review has the date January 2, 2025, and has the title “Bookshelf; ‘Custodians of Wonder’: The Great Chain of Humanity.”)

The book under review is:

Stein, Eliot. Custodians of Wonder: Ancient Customs, Profound Traditions, and the Last People Keeping Them Alive. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2024.

Nozick’s book, mentioned in my introductory comments, is:

Nozick, Robert. Anarchy, State, and Utopia. New York: Basic Books, Inc., 1974.

“Trusting the Experts Is Not a Feature of Science. It’s the Opposite of Science.”

Over my desk, in the biggest font my printer will print, I have the Latin motto “Nullius in Verba.” That is the motto of the Royal Society of London, the first association for the advancement of science. In English the motto says “on no one’s word” and is usually interpreted to mean that if we are doing science we rely on evidence, and not on the authority of experts. C.S. Peirce said truth is what results from infinite inquiry. Science is a process of asking questions, not a body of unquestionable truths. During the Covid pandemic we were told to stop asking questions and blindly accept the orders of “experts” who the government identified as scientists. Citizens who valued free speech and understood Nullius in Verba rebelled.

Vaccines and antibiotics are two of the greatest achievements in medicine. But both have side-effects and risks. By denying the real side-effects and risks of Covid vaccines, the “experts” destroyed their credibility with the thinking (i.e., the scientific) public. The public’s anger at being lied to was so great that some went so far as to reject all vaccines, even in the frequent situation where on balance the benefits of the vaccine outweigh the side-effects and risks. This was the unnecessary, outrageous, and sad result of government regulators who did not value freedom and did not understand the meaning of “science.”

(p. A1) The rise of Robert F. Kennedy Jr. from fringe figure to the prospective head of U.S. health policy was fueled by skepticism and distrust of the medical establishment—views that went viral in the Covid-19 pandemic.

. . .

Lingering resentment over pandemic restrictions helped Kennedy and his “Make America Healthy Again” campaign draw people from the left and the right, voters who worried about the contamination of food, water and medicine. Many of them shared doubts about vaccines and felt their concerns were ignored by experts or regarded as ignorant.

. . .

(p. A8) Much of Kennedy’s popularity reflects residual pandemic anger—over being told to stay at home or to wear masks; the extended closure of schools and businesses; and vaccine requirements to attend classes, board a plane or eat at a restaurant.

“We weren’t really considering the consequences in communities that were not New York City,” the places where the virus wasn’t hitting as hard, former National Institutes of Health Director Francis Collins said at an event last year.

Authorities focused on ways to stop the disease and failed to consider “this actually, totally disrupts peoples’ lives, ruins the economy and has many kids kept out of school,” Collins said. The U.S. overall took the right approach, he said, but overlooking long-term consequences was “really unfortunate. That’s another mistake we made.”

. . .

. . ., Jessica Malaty Rivera, an epidemiologist with hundreds of thousands of Instagram followers, shared information on the importance of vaccines and face masks. She dismissed unsupported claims as misinformation and described some of their purveyors as grifters.

Looking back, Rivera said her sometimes scolding messages weren’t helpful. “Everybody has been tempted by the slam dunk,” she said. “It’s not an effective way to communicate science. It’s just not.” She and others say they are dialing back the use of the word misinformation, saying it makes people feel they are being called liars or dumb.

During the pandemic, Palmira Gerlach had questions about the Covid-19 vaccines, but doctors “were very dismissive,” the 44-year-old recalled.

Gerlach, a stay-at-home mother outside Pittsburgh, said she falsely told her child’s pediatrician that she got the shot, seeking to avoid judgment. The doctor told her, “Good girl.” Gerlach turned to podcasts featuring Kennedy, drawn to his willingness to question pandemic measures.

. . .

“We were all told in Covid: ‘Trust the experts.’ But that’s not a thing,” Kennedy said in an episode of the “What is Money?” podcast in April [2024]. “Trusting the experts is not a feature of science. It’s the opposite of science. It’s not a feature of democracy.”

For the full story see:

Liz Essley Whyte. “How Science Lost America’s Trust.” The Wall Street Journal (Thursday, Nov. 21, 2024): A1 & A8.

(Note: ellipses, and bracketed year, added.)

(Note: the online version of the story has the date November 19, 2024, and has the title “How Science Lost America’s Trust and Surrendered Health Policy to Skeptics.” In passages where the online version is more detailed, I quote from the online version.)

When Ronald Reagan Needed the Owls of Hogwarts

One of my favorite scenes in the first Harry Potter movie is when an owl tries to deliver to Harry Potter an acceptance letter to Hogwarts. Ever since Voldemort murdered Harry’s parents when he was a baby, Harry has lived under a staircase with the Dursleys (Mrs. Dursley was the sister of Harry’s mother). Mr. Dursley, and the other Dursleys too, do not like Harry, hence his living under a staircase. Mr. Dursley sees the letter to Harry, opens it, and when he realizes the contents tears it up. Then a few other copies arrive and Dursley burns them. It would appear that Harry’s hope of escape is dashed.

But then something wonderful. Countless owls fly toward the Dursley house, each carrying copies of the letter. Acceptance letters start pouring through the front door mail slot, down the chimney, and through every opening in the house. Soon the inside of the Dursley house is buried in acceptance letters. Dursley cannot stop Harry from knowing.

I thought of this scene when I was reading the Wikipedia entry for “Human Events.” Human Events was a smallish weekly readers-digest-type newspaper that my father subscribed to for many years (in the 1960s and 1970s?). Copies of Human Events would always be piled up next to his chair in the living room. Human Events was a contrarian publication presenting conservative/libertarian commentaries on the issues of the day.

The Wikipedia article says that starting in 1961, Ronald Reagan is an avid reader of Human Events. In the 1970s he writes articles that appear in Human Events. When he is president, Reagan’s top aides Baker, Darman, and Deaver do not like what is in Human Events, and try to keep copies of it away from him. When Reagan realizes that his aides are blocking Human Events, he “arranged for multiple copies to be sent to the White House residence every weekend” (Edwards 2011, as quoted in Wikipedia entry on “Human Events“).

Unfortunately for Reagan he does not have a flock of wise owls providing redundant information. But Reagan is his own owl.

Harry could not fire Dursley; I wonder why Reagan did not fire Baker, Darman, and Deaver?

Wikipedia gives the source of the Edwards quote as:

Edwards, Lee. “Reagan’s Newspaper.” URL: http://www.humanevents.com/article.php?id=41609

Dr. Marty Makary Refuses to Stop Asking Questions

I am almost finished reading Marty Makary’s Blind Spots book that is discussed in the passages quoted below from a column by Pamela Paul. Makary writes with wit and clarity. But the thought-provoking examples are what make the book great. And the thought that the examples provoke is that medicine would progress more quickly to more cures if doctors had greater freedom in what they say, write, research, and prescribe.

Marty Makary has been named by President-Elect Trump to head the Food and Drug Administration (F.D.A.)

(p. A22) You probably know about the surge in childhood peanut allergies. Peanut allergies in American children more than tripled between 1997 and 2008, after doctors told pregnant and lactating women to avoid eating peanuts and parents to avoid feeding them to children under 3. This was based on guidance issued by the American Academy of Pediatrics in 2000.

You probably also know that this guidance, following similar guidance in Britain, turned out to be entirely wrong and, in fact, avoiding peanuts caused many of those allergies in the first place.

. . .

As early as 1998, Gideon Lack, a British pediatric allergist and immunologist, challenged the guidelines, saying they were “not evidence-based.” But for years, many doctors dismissed Dr. Lack’s findings, even calling his studies that introduced peanut butter early to babies unethical.

. . .

Finally, in 2017, following yet another definitive study by Lack, the A.A.P. fully reversed its early position, now telling parents to feed their children peanuts early.

But by then, thousands of parents who conscientiously did what medical authorities told them to do had effectively given their children peanut allergies.

This avoidable tragedy is one of several episodes of medical authorities sticking to erroneous positions despite countervailing evidence that Marty Makary, a surgeon and professor at Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, examines in his new book, “Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health.”

. . .

While these mistakes are appalling, more worrisome are the enduring root causes of those errors. Medical journals and conferences regularly reject presentations and articles that overturn conventional wisdom, even when that wisdom is based on flimsy underlying data. For political or practical reasons consensus is often prized over dissenting opinions.

“We’re seeing science used as political propaganda,” Makary told me when I spoke to him by phone. But, he argues, mistakes can’t be freely corrected or updated unless researchers are encouraged to pursue alternative research.

“Asking questions has become forbidden in some circles,” Makary writes. “But asking questions is not the problem, it’s the solution.”

For the full commentary see:

Pamela Paul. “Why Medicine Still Has Such Blind Spots.” The New York Times (Friday, September 20, 2024): A22.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date Sept. 19, 2024, and has the title “The Medical Establishment Closes Ranks, and Patients Feel the Effects.” In the print version the word “caused” is emphasized by italics.)

The book praised in my opening comments and in Pamela Paul’s commentary is:

Makary, Marty. Blind Spots: When Medicine Gets It Wrong, and What It Means for Our Health. New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2024.

The Academic “Herd Mindset” May Be the Cause of What Elon Musk Calls the “Woke Mind Virus”

(p. B3) “I listen to podcasts about the fall of civilizations to go to sleep,” Musk said this past week during an appearance at the Milken Institute conference. “So perhaps that might be part of the problem.”

One provocateur, in particular, has caught his attention of late: Gad Saad, a marketing professor at Concordia University in Montreal, and author of the book “The Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense.”

. . .

Saad wrote that “The Parasitic Mind” was inspired, in part, by his experience in academia, where he described a herd mindset that chastised innovative thinkers. He described pushback he encountered, including his ideas being labeled as “sexist nonsense” and his efforts to use “biologically-based theorizing” to explain consumer behavior being dismissed as too reductionistic.

“The West is currently suffering from such a devastating pandemic, a collective malady that destroys people’s capacity to think rationally,” the 59-year-old Saad wrote at the beginning of his book. “Unlike other pandemics where biological pathogens are to blame, the current culprit is composed of a collection of bad ideas, spawned on university campuses, that chip away at our edifices of reason, freedom, and individual dignity.”

. . .

Another inspiration for his book, Saad writes, was his experience as a boy fleeing with other Jews from his home in Lebanon during that country’s civil war. In the book, he detailed some of the horrors he experienced, including the kidnapping of his parents.

. . .

Musk has said his concerns about Woke Mind Virus, his way of labeling progressive liberal beliefs that he says are overly politically correct and stifling to public debate and free speech, helped fuel his desire to acquire the social-media company Twitter turned X in late 2022.

For the full commentary see:

Tim Higgins. “His Musings Fuel Musk’s Nightmares.” The Wall Street Journal (Monday, May 13, 2024): B3.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date May 11, 2024, and has the title “The Man Whose Musings Fuel Elon Musk’s Nightmares.” The last two ellipses above indicate where I omit sentences that appeared in the longer online version, but not in the print version.)

The Saad book that has influenced Elon Musk is:

Saad, Gad. Parasitic Mind: How Infectious Ideas Are Killing Common Sense. New York: Regnery Publishing, 2020.

Facing Death in a Seaplane Accident, Bertrand Russell’s Thoughts Were Not Philosophical: “I Thought the Water Was Cold”

For a year or two in grad school at Chicago, I was a member of a Bertrand Russell book club. I didn’t like Russell’s politics, but I did like his down-to-earth clarity, his sense of humor, and his optimistic defense of secular humanism.

(p. 10) “I am human, and consider nothing human alien to me”: The famous line from the Roman playwright Terence, written more than two millenniums ago, is easy to assert but hard to live by, at least with any consistency. The attitude it suggests is adamantly open-minded and resolutely pluralist: Even the most annoying, the most confounding, the most atrocious example of anyone’s behavior is necessarily part of the human experience. There are points of connection between all of us weirdos, no matter how different we are. Michel de Montaigne liked the line so much that he had the Latin original — Homo sum, humani nihil a me alienum puto — inscribed on a ceiling joist in his library.

. . .

Humanism, . . ., has always had to negotiate between noble ideals of humanity and the peculiarities of actual humans. Paradox and ambiguity aren’t to be rejected but embraced. “Dispute and contradiction, not veneration and obedience, are the essence of intellectual life,” Bakewell writes.

. . .

. . ., Bakewell practices what she preaches — or, since preaching would be anathema to a humanist, she does what she suggests. She puts her entire self into this book, linking philosophical reflections with vibrant anecdotes. She delights in the paradoxical and the particular, reminding us that every human being contains multitudes.

This can lead her to some wonderful asides.  . . .  When Bertrand Russell was in a seaplane accident in Norway and a journalist called him afterward to ask whether his brush with death had led him to think about such high-flown concepts as mysticism and logic, he said no, it had not. “I thought the water was cold.”

For the full review see:

Jennifer Szalai. “Oh, the Humanity.” The New York Times Book Review (Sunday, April 16, 2023 [sic]): 10.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the review has the date March 29, 2023 [sic], and has the title “The Tricky Thing With Humanism, This Book Implies, Is Humans.” In the original, the Latin phrase in the first quoted paragraph is in italics.)

The book under review is:

Bakewell, Sarah. Humanly Possible: Seven Hundred Years of Humanist Freethinking, Inquiry, and Hope. New York: Penguin Press, 2023.

Libertarian Economist Thomas Sowell Praises Trump’s “Defiant Response to Being Shot At”

(p. A13) Although the attempt to assassinate Donald Trump failed, it was part of a long and growing pattern of threats and violence that can be fatal to American society.

. . .

Over the years, too many people have used too many clever words to play down threats and violence. “No justice, no peace” has been one of the more fashionable phrases.

. . .

If one side keeps getting away with threats and violence, it is only a matter of time before their opponents also start using threats and violence. At that point, whatever they initially disagreed about is no longer the issue. It is now a question of revenge and counter-revenge, especially for unforgivable acts on both sides. And no compromise on the original issues can stop that.

If anything positive can be salvaged from this ominous attempt on Donald Trump’s life, it may be his defiant response to being shot at. It may be important to let foreign enemies know that there are still some strong American leaders that they may have to deal with.

For the full commentary see:

Thomas Sowell. “Lessons of the Attack on Trump.” The Wall Street Journal (Tuesday, July 16, 2024): A13.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary has the date July 15, 2024, and has the title “Lessons of the Trump Assassination Attempt.”)

For Nov. 5 Vote Diamond Ponders Deregulation of Entrepreneurs, Survival of Israel, Defense of Freedom of Speech

Art Diamond on 9/26/24 with red Nebraska sign.

I requested a red Nebraska sign that was delivered yesterday. Our Omaha district is sometimes called “the blue dot” because it sometimes votes against the rest of red Nebraska. To decide what to do on Nov. 5, I mostly ask three questions. Who will most reduce regulations so that entrepreneurs can create the goods and services that allow us to flourish? Who will stand firm for the survival of the freedom sanctuary that is Israel? And especially, who will stand firm for the nonpoliticized rule of law and for freedom of speech?

Not All Indians Were Peaceful Saints

The scalp of William Thompson. Source of photo: Omaha Public Library.

As I child I played cowboys and Indians. We used to fire the fake rifles at the frontier fort on Tom Sawyer Island in Disneyland. Today you cannot do that since it is politically correct to believe that before the arrival of universally evil Europeans all Indians were peace-loving environmentalists. The belief is false. But The Walt Disney Company in California has bought the falsehood, closing the Disneyland frontier fort so that children can no longer pretend to defend civilization. (In Florida, where civilization yet survives, The Walt Disney Company still allows children to play in the Magic Kingdom version of the frontier fort.)

(p. E1) I’m leading off with my nomination for the most bizarre item ever exhibited in Omaha. It’s been around for more than 150 years, and it’s a shame if you haven’t seen it–that is, as long as you’re not too squeamish It used to belong to William Thompson, an Englishman who was employed by Union Pacific on the new transcontinental railroad.

In 1867, while working at Plum Creek Station, near Lexington, Nebraska, Thompson was scalped by a band of the Northern Cheyenne. He was left for dead, but when he recovered consciousness, he found his scalp not far away. Remarkably, he put it in a bucker of salt water and headed to Omaha on a rescue train. On arrival he asked Dr. Richard Moore to reattach it. That wasn’t possible, so he kept it as a souvenir. Later he gave the preserved scalp to Moore, who donated it to the Omaha Public Library in 1900. Since then, it has been exhibited from time to time at both the old Union Pacific Museum and the main library. OPL took it off public exhibit in 1977, but it made a surprise appearance in 2012 for the library’s 140th anniversary celebration. I am grateful to library specialist Lynn Sullivan for a private showing last year of the desiccated scalp, complete with a nice shock of sandy-orange hair.

For the full story see:

Marks, Bob. “Weird, Wild and Wonderful Exhibits Here.” Omaha World-Herald (Sunday, March 21, 2024): E1-E2.