All of the sins of America and the West are not what make us unique. They are what make us exactly the same as every society in the history of humanity.
What makes us unique is the dedication to the higher ideal of individual liberty.
To misunderstand that fundamentally basic fact is at the core of pretty much every bad idea.
I was enjoying listening to your guest's insights about the real history of human nastiness (e.g. slavery, violence) until he made his dismissive comments about anti-nukers & anti-vaxxers because ... Oops!! ... I became both of those things after doing very deep dives on both issues. Mr. Reilly paints with a very broad brush! Turns out almost all "anti-vaxxers" are actually people who trusted the paradigm, got their kids vaccinated, & wound up being burned - in some cases, badly badly burned indeed. It's got nothing to do with politics! Nothing whatsoever to do with being "on the right." I myself was a very left 63-year old grandmother when I began deep research into the issue. While I'm no longer a leftie (the Covid era cured me of that), I'm decidedly not "right" either. Merely one of the now-so-numerous politically homeless. (Feel free to read about why I became an "anti-vaxxer" at 63 in the pinned post on my Substack. Or take the quick & dirty vaccine quiz I posted a few years back https://www.janetsplanet.ca/blog/frhd5esbjp5z6agxga8wjzrxyssymr.) Bridget mentioned the idea of risk assessment. The U.S.-based Physicians for Informed Consent group has important information about the rate of post-MMR shot seizures, which might incline a careful parent to re-think whether those injections are really so very "safe and effective." You can look it up. Call me old-fashioned or something (maybe just old? I'm 71 now, if that makes me "old"), but I can't help but wish that people who pronounce publicly on weighty matters would learn to confine their "insights" to issues they've actually done some research on. In a dizzying era of sound bites, reliance on mainstream media propaganda, & snappy Twitter posts, seems like we're determined to rely on superficial analyses of complex matters. Sigh. (Oh, & as for the nuclear stuff? After 16 years of hard work on it, I finally got too burned-out to keep on. Victories against the military-industrial complex are vanishingly rare - though the occasional one does occur. If you like, the item '15 Nuclear Mythbusters' on the Durham Nuclear Awareness Web site can show you that the nuclear issue has quite a good deal more to it than meets the eye. Or the snappy PR-inspired sound bite.) Finally, while being an activist is apparently something you frown upon, Bridget, I'm proud of my decades as an environmental activist. For me, it beat apathy all to heck. (& yes, I was too often naive. I get that now, in retrospect. That's a whole separate story.)
All of the sins of America and the West are not what make us unique. They are what make us exactly the same as every society in the history of humanity.
What makes us unique is the dedication to the higher ideal of individual liberty.
To misunderstand that fundamentally basic fact is at the core of pretty much every bad idea.
I was enjoying listening to your guest's insights about the real history of human nastiness (e.g. slavery, violence) until he made his dismissive comments about anti-nukers & anti-vaxxers because ... Oops!! ... I became both of those things after doing very deep dives on both issues. Mr. Reilly paints with a very broad brush! Turns out almost all "anti-vaxxers" are actually people who trusted the paradigm, got their kids vaccinated, & wound up being burned - in some cases, badly badly burned indeed. It's got nothing to do with politics! Nothing whatsoever to do with being "on the right." I myself was a very left 63-year old grandmother when I began deep research into the issue. While I'm no longer a leftie (the Covid era cured me of that), I'm decidedly not "right" either. Merely one of the now-so-numerous politically homeless. (Feel free to read about why I became an "anti-vaxxer" at 63 in the pinned post on my Substack. Or take the quick & dirty vaccine quiz I posted a few years back https://www.janetsplanet.ca/blog/frhd5esbjp5z6agxga8wjzrxyssymr.) Bridget mentioned the idea of risk assessment. The U.S.-based Physicians for Informed Consent group has important information about the rate of post-MMR shot seizures, which might incline a careful parent to re-think whether those injections are really so very "safe and effective." You can look it up. Call me old-fashioned or something (maybe just old? I'm 71 now, if that makes me "old"), but I can't help but wish that people who pronounce publicly on weighty matters would learn to confine their "insights" to issues they've actually done some research on. In a dizzying era of sound bites, reliance on mainstream media propaganda, & snappy Twitter posts, seems like we're determined to rely on superficial analyses of complex matters. Sigh. (Oh, & as for the nuclear stuff? After 16 years of hard work on it, I finally got too burned-out to keep on. Victories against the military-industrial complex are vanishingly rare - though the occasional one does occur. If you like, the item '15 Nuclear Mythbusters' on the Durham Nuclear Awareness Web site can show you that the nuclear issue has quite a good deal more to it than meets the eye. Or the snappy PR-inspired sound bite.) Finally, while being an activist is apparently something you frown upon, Bridget, I'm proud of my decades as an environmental activist. For me, it beat apathy all to heck. (& yes, I was too often naive. I get that now, in retrospect. That's a whole separate story.)