The Persistence of Snake Oil

Morton Tavel, a well-known Indianapolis cardiologist, has previously confined his writing to medical journals and textbooks. Recently, however, he has written a very readable book intended to discomfit most of its readers. “Snake Oil is Alive and Well: the Clash Between Myths and Reality” takes on the logical fallacies and medical frauds so near and dear to the hearts of most Americans.

Full disclosure here: I would never have come across this e-book on my own; the author is my cousin. That said, I downloaded it from Amazon a few weeks ago and have now finished reading it. And my connection to the author is absolutely irrelevant to my recommendation–honestly!

For most readers, the value of the book will lie in its clear explanations, especially its exhaustive lists of medical/dietary hocus-pocus and distinction between good and bad science. Most of us have fallen for at least some of the identified quackery at one time or another.

For me, however, the central “take-away” was a meditation on the unquenchable desire of most of us humans for quick and easy solutions to our problems.

That desire is in tension with the scientific method, which is slow and painstaking and requires empirical observation and the accumulation of evidence over time before (inevitably conditional) conclusions are drawn. We want answers and we want them NOW!

If you would enjoy a brief jaunt through the history of folks who have preyed upon that all-too-human desire for instant gratification, a look at some of the con men and quacks whose nostrums are usually intended to “cure” our solvency rather than our aches and pains, this is a good read.

Be warned, though: it won’t cure what ails you.

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Bipartisanship

There’s a lot of talk these days about bipartisanship and the lack thereof. One the one hand, we have cartoon characters like Richard Mourdock and peevish pundits like George Will decrying the very idea. (In a recent column, Will attacks all the bad ideas that have become law as a result of the dreaded cooperation across party lines.) On the other hand, we have well-meaning citizens and numerous other pundits despairing over the disappearance of that same co-operation.

Absent from this conversation is any recognition of the difference between goal and strategy–the difference between substance and method that determines when bipartisanship is appropriate and when it is not.

No sane person (granted, the numbers falling in that category have dwindled dangerously) promotes “compromising” with, say, genocide. But neither do sane people try to hold the country hostage by refusing to raise the debt ceiling and thereby throwing the entire globe into financial depression, in order to get their own way about something.

As with so many other aspects of our efforts to live with one another in something approximating civility, an all-or-nothing mind-set is a hindrance. The question is not: should there be bipartisanship no matter what the goal? The question is: can we work together when the common good clearly requires that we do so? Reasonable people (again, a vanishing breed) can and will disagree about what the common good requires. Bipartisanship–rightly understood–is a good-faith effort by members of both parties to determine the extent to which they agree on what the common good requires, and to come to as much agreement as possible on the methods for achieving those ends. We used to believe that getting 70% of what you want is preferable to taking your ball and bat and going home, getting none of it. (Okay, I’ve mixed my metaphors….)

There is a lot of agreement (at least rhetorically) about the nation’s problems. There is less agreement on the best way to address those problems. That’s not new. What is missing these days is a willingness to engage in the sort of give and take that gives us at least partial progress toward solving pressing issues. What’s new is the willingness of the GOP to take the country down in service of ideological purity.

Call it absence of bipartisanship, call it zealotry, call it partisanship gone wild. Whatever you call it, it bespeaks a depressing absence of the good faith and integrity citizens have a right to expect from those we entrust with the nation’s business.

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Indiana’s Choice

Now that the primaries are over, and the outlines of the gubernatorial campaign are getting clearer, it is beginning to look as if Hoosiers will have a choice between a candidate with bad ideas and one with no ideas.

The Star reports that Democrat John Gregg is advocating both a tax cut for businesses and the elimination of Indiana’s gasoline tax. He proposes to make up the lost gas tax revenue by “better management.” This at a time when government is struggling to provide basic services, and when all available evidence rebuts the tired rhetoric about tax cuts generating jobs and government funding services by cutting “waste.”

Add to these positions his anti-choice and anti-gay-rights pronouncements, and apparently, Gregg has decided to campaign as the non-Pence Republican.

Meanwhile, Pence has refused to take any policy positions. In 11+ years in Congress, he never passed a bill. He’s never held an administrative position, and–to use a Republican talking point–never made a payroll. He has never disclosed the slightest interest in the complexities of public policy.  The only thing he has done is sermonize and hector. In fact, given his holier-than-thou persona, it’s odd he didn’t just go into the clergy.

Unfortunately, one of these men will win in November. Rupert Boneham, the libertarian who has thus far made more sense than either of them, is simply not viable in a state and country that doesn’t elect third-party candidates.

So our choice–as my son frequently notes– is between a competent conservative from the 1950s, and a posturing theocrat from the 1590s.

Whoopie.

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Church, State, Gay, Straight

Okay, it’s time for one of my broken-record rants.

In the wake of President Obama’s endorsement of same-sex marriage, we’ve had a predictable–and increasingly tiresome–outpouring of criticisms to the effect that government recognition of such unions violates the “religious liberty” of those who oppose them.

No, it doesn’t.

Government recognition of civil same-sex marriages is no different from government’s recognition of heterosexual divorce. Divorce violates the religious doctrines of Catholics and several other Christian denominations. Those denominations remain free to expel divorced congregants, to refuse to recognize their newly single status, to preach against divorce, or to take such other congregational action as may be dictated by their particular theologies. Meanwhile, the government adjusts the legal, civil and tax status of divorced folks. It recognizes the reality of their severed relationship.

If every state in the country were to recognize same-sex marriage tomorrow–if they were to recognize the reality of same-sex relationships–churches would still be free to reject gay parishioners, to refuse to perform same-sex unions, and to preach about the sin of homosexuality in accordance with their doctrines. But gay couples could file joint tax returns. Their children would be covered under their employers’  health insurance policies. They would be entitled to hospital visitation, Social Security survivor benefits, and the full panoply of civil rights to which legally married folks are entitled. Last time I looked, there were well over a thousand such rights that my husband and I enjoy automatically because the government recognizes our marriage.

It has been obvious for a very long time that the only genuine objection to same-sex marriage is religious. There are no credible secular arguments, as was painfully clear from the trial testimony in California’s Proposition 8  litigation. Numerous studies have confirmed that children raised by gay parents–and there are millions of them–are just as well-adjusted and happy as those raised by heterosexuals. All of the public policy reasons for encouraging heterosexual marriage apply with equal force to homosexual ones. The “slippery slope” argument has best been rebutted by Bill Maher, who noted that allowing women to vote did not–surprise!–usher in voting rights for dogs or vegetables.

Furthermore, not all religions are homophobic. A growing number of denominations are welcoming gays and lesbians and celebrating same-sex marriages.

What we are seeing now is the last gasp of the fundamentalists who believe–contrary to history and the American constitution–that the U.S. is a Christian Nation, and not simply Christian, but their particular brand of Christian. When we deconstruct their argument, it boils down to a conviction that whenever the government allows behavior of which they disapprove, government has violated their religious liberty.

Next time we go to war, tell that to the Quakers.

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Looking Backward

In 1980, I won the Republican primary for what was then Indiana’s Eleventh Congressional District, defeating three opponents. I was pro-choice and on record supporting equal rights for gays and lesbians (same-sex marriage was not yet an issue), positions that were consistent with the generally libertarian Republicanism of the day. Indeed, my loss to Andy Jacobs, Jr. in the general election was widely attributed to the belief that as a “Goldwater Republican,” I was simply too conservative.

My political philosophy has not changed in the intervening 32 years, but now I’m routinely accused of being a leftist or socialist.

How far the political pendulum has swung! A pro-choice, pro-gay rights candidate winning a Republican primary almost anywhere in the country would be inconceivable today.

In Indiana, even Richard Lugar—who had become steadily more conservative as the party’s center shifted more and more to the right—was deemed insufficiently pure by the rigid party base that now controls the GOP.  Governor Daniels’ argument that Richard Mourdock is in the mainstream of the party is actually true, because the party today is more radical than at any point in my lifetime. The people I worked with on past Lugar campaigns and in the Hudnut Administration are dispirited and dismayed; more and more often, they’re voting Democrat or simply staying home.

That brings me to the new slogan unveiled by the Obama campaign a few weeks ago: Forward. That slogan has generated a lot of derision from Republicans, but they may find their scorn is misplaced. In a very real sense, the 2012 general election will be a choice between going forward and going backward.

The President’s recent statement supporting same-sex marriage is just one example. The principle (which used to be a Republican principle) is that government should treat all citizens equally. Acceptance of the application of that principle to gays and lesbians is clearly the way forward.

The Administration’s support for equal marriage rights is only one example. Yes, my students overwhelmingly endorse equal civil recognition for same-sex couples. But they also support Administration proposals–vehemently opposed by Republicans–to ameliorate climate change, including government support for renewable energy and conservation. While the subject of abortion remains a thorny moral issue for many of them, they are repelled by efforts to humiliate women by mandating vaginal ultrasounds and similarly invasive procedures. And they are appalled by efforts to go backward by denying women access to contraception.

Whatever their opinions of much-maligned and poorly understood “Obamacare,” surveys confirm that most Americans agree with the proposition that our healthcare system is both economically and morally deficient, and that those deficiencies must be addressed.

Surveys also show huge majorities of Americans favor cutting the deficit by raising tax rates on the wealthy, and favor reducing expenditures on defense. (In defiance, the House GOP recently voted to restore proposed defense cuts and to pay for that restoration not with taxes but by cutting services to poor women and children.)

In November, voters will have a choice between an administration that—while often clumsy and ham-handed—is on the right side on most of these issues, and a party that stubbornly rejects dealing with any of them.

At a time when America desperately needs two substantive political parties offering competing solutions to the problems we face, one of them—the one I supported for 35 years—has simply gone off the rails. I miss that party. America misses that party.

Today’s GOP has come to be known as the “Party of No,” and it isn’t just Obama the party is rejecting. It’s rejecting modernity.

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