In Brief: Follow the ‘Science,’ They Said
Victor Davis Hanson explains why following the science is the last thing leftists are doing.
The great historian Victor Davis Hanson can tell you how this supposed devotion to “science” ends: tyranny.
Throughout the Trump years and in particular during the 2020 COVID pandemic crisis, the nation was lectured by the Left “to follow the data,” as the Democrats proclaimed themselves the “party of science.” As sober and judicious children of the enlightenment, they alone offered the necessary disinterested correctives to Trump’s supposed bluster and exaggeration — and to his anti-scientific deplorable following (often dismissed by Biden as dregs, chumps, and Neanderthals).
In truth, leftists and Democrats have become the purveyors of superstition. Their creation of a fantasy world is not because they do not believe in science per se, but because they believe more in the primacy of ideology that should shape and warp science in the proper fashion for the greater good.
Take COVID-19, for example. Regardless of how often Dr. Anthony Fauci and others get it wrong, we are to take their pronouncements as gospel truth.
Dr. Fauci has not just been flat-out wrong on the science of COVID — in his assessments of the origins and possible dangers of COVID-19, of when we can get back to normal, of when the vaccinations would appear, and of which particular governors have been doing the most or least effective management of the disease. He has also, by his own admission, deliberately lied.
Another example of abusing science included Joe Biden’s physical and mental health. Whereas the media relentlessly attacked Donald Trump’s fitness for office, there’s little interest in pursuing Biden’s decline. “‘Science,’” Hanson says, “is used to denigrate a perceived enemy of the people, and ignored to enhance a guardian of the flock.”
Furthermore, focus on “hate crimes” shows a lack of interest in real science.
Joe Biden and the Left are implying if not outright asserting that there is now an epidemic of Anti-Asian violence perpetrated by white racists, insidiously emboldened by Trump’s past references to the “Wuhan” or “China” virus. No doubt, in a nation of 330 million, there are lots of haters who happen to be white, but are they the main culprit for racially-motivated crimes of hatred against Asians?
The actual science says “hate crimes” against Asians are not only remarkably low but “inordinately” committed by black Americans, not white ones. Hanson goes on with other anti-science behavior from the Left, but he concludes with a simple statement:
As a general rule, the next time an official, a politician, or an expert lectures us on the “science,” make sure that he is not projecting his own unscientific biases onto others.
Read the rest at American Greatness.
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