Yet the parents who listen to McCarthy and Carrey — rather than the CDC and the FDA and the National Academy of Sciences' Institute of Medicine — tend to be well-to-do and highly educated. Calling them "ignorant" is hardly accurate.

And who is to blame them? For years our women were told that Hormone Replacement Therapy (HRT) would help them stay young, prevent strokes and heart disease. All so that Wyeth Pharmaceuticals could make more money. But it turned out that HRT did no such things, and in fact increased the risk of strokes and heart attacks. Other examples of similar misconduct exist: Vioxx, Celebrex, etc. Where was the FDA? Essentially neutered since the Reagan years. Where were the prestigious New England Journal of Medicine and the Journal of the American Medical Association? In bed with the drug makers.

The health care field is one of the most prominent manifestations of science in our lives. Unfortunately this prominence, along with the for-profit nature of the industry, have combined to give science a black eye; hence the willingness of the public to believe Jim Carrey & RFK Jr. over the FDA.

Because they don't know the difference between looting and earning. It's as if the Goths thought they were good at running a country because they invaded one and sacked it.

California needs these two privileged parasites like it needs a major earthquake.

This bias towards anything deemed the "Enemy" also extends to the Left, as the events in Honduras shows (what some call "Chavez Mania"). Witness the ridiculous spectacle of Sen. Jim Demint, S-SC defending the clearly illegal coup in Honduras:

President Obama’s call for the reinstatement of Zelaya is a slap in the face to the people of Honduras. And the resolution written by the Organization of American States tramples over the hopes and dreams of a free and democratic people.

(From his Senate web site.) So you see, condemning an illegal coup that overthrew a democratically elected government "tramples over the hopes and dreams of a free and democratic people." Meanwhile the "freedom loving" oligarchs who are behind this coup have already stripped the "free and democratic people" of the right to assemble, the freedom of unreasonable search and seizure, freedom of association, rights to due process, etc.

So what gives with Demint and his ilk? Zelaya's crime, of course, was nothing more than that he had turned to the Left and repudiated the Central American Free Trade Agreement, something near and dear to Jim Demint's heart (http://www.counterpunch.org/kozloff07032009.html). For that, we must support a "military impeachment" and get busy inventing "facts" about Zelaya and the coup. (See http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2009/06/more_on_the_honduran_military.html for an egregious example; and see http://www.narconews.com/, Spanish daily El Pais [elpais.es], counterpunch.org for a clearer picture.)

Odds are the average American wakes up in the morning worried about whether they will have a job for much longer, whether they can meet the mortgage payment, or whether their health plan will actually cover an illness in the family. I doubt many wake up worried that some Terrorist will bump them off. So what's the deal here? Why is it that these guys feel that our No. 1 Problem is that we aren't being "protected effectively, consistently, and with as much violence as necessary"? Are The Terrorists the only thing that can make these guys feel like Alpha Macho Men? (by proxy, of course, since it is The Troops that do the actual fighting.)

cabdriver wrote:

For them, the "tragedy of the commons" consists of the fact that "the commons" might be deemed to exist in the first place.

Yup. It's the Enclosure argument all over again. Folks like tonydavisnelson have an ideological position that is their anchor, and no amount of reason will sway them. He says he doesn't need a primer on Garrett Hardin yet clearly he is misusing Hardin's piece. He quotes our medical expenditures as "17 % of our GDP" but neglects to tell us that Western industrialized nations with single-payer are spending half per capita than we are, an inconvenient fact he conveniently ignores.

Has socialized medicine triggered a "tragedy of the commons"? Heck, why not take a look-see? Every other industrialized nation on Earth has some sort of social medicine plan. It is incumbent on those making an argument to present facts backing it up, and there are plenty of potential examples to chose from. Did it happen in France? Spain? England? Canada? Germany? Japan?

See, this is what drives me nuts about this "argument." We aren't blazing any new trails here. It's been successfully done by others. The outcomes are clear. A rational person would think "if socialized medicine has been demonstrated to be cheaper and more effective, maybe we ought to consider it." But the fact that we're still arguing about something that's been settled long ago shows that ideology, greed, and special interests are driving this argument, not reason.