Things I Don't Believe

Paul Greenberg
Thursday, March 11, 2010

The daily news continues to prove a bountiful source of theories, explanations, assumptions and assertions that I don't believe for a minute.

For example:

Agreeing to insure the medical expenses of another 30 million Americans will reduce the costs of health care in this country. And not cost middle-class taxpayers a penny, either.

Barack Obama means it when he says the country "can't continue to spend ... as if the hard-earned tax dollars of the American people can be treated like Monopoly money." This was just days after Congress voted to raise the legal debt limit by some $290 billion in order to accommodate his $800-billion economic stimulus bill and record-breaking $3.5 trillion budget.

Letting the government rather than doctors decide which medical devices may be used and what medical procedures may be prescribed for Medicare patients will improve their health care. Ditto, slashing the budget for Medicare in general.

The health-care bills now before Congress contain no pork for states whose senators were savvy enough to hold out longest before supporting Obamacare.

The way to keep Iran from developing nuclear weapons is to extend an open hand to its dictators, theocrats and fanatics. Much the way North Korea's Kim Jong-Il was dissuaded from developing and exploding his nukes. Appeasement always works.

The president's setting a deadline by which American troops will begin withdrawing from Afghanistan (July 2011) will assure peace and stability there. Just as doing the same in Iraq -- instead of George W. Bush's ordering the Surge -- would have assured peace and stability there.

The great obstacle to peace in the Middle East is allowing Jews to live in Judaea and Samaria, aka the West Bank. Jews shouldn't even be allowed to preserve their holy sites there, like the Tomb of the Patriarchs at Hebron or Rachel's Tomb. For the Jewish connection to the land of Israel, as anyone listening to Barack Obama's address in Cairo last year might assume, dates back only to the Holocaust.

Nor should Jews be allowed to build homes in the old city of Jerusalem, which should also be declared Judenrein. If only the United Nations, the European Union and Joe Biden had been around 3,000 years ago, surely all would have protested King David's establishing his capital there.

The way to get more of something is to tax it. Raise the capital gains tax and the result will be more capital. Raise the taxes on the oil industry (be sure to call it a Windfall Profits tax) and the result will be more -- and cheaper! -- oil and gas. Tax amazing new medical devices more, and even more of them will be developed.

The economic recovery now slowly under way is irreversible, much like the recession that preceded it. Happy Days Are Here Again! The future is just a projection of recent trends. Whatever is, will be. Remember how the dot-com boom brought us the New Paradigm? Before that, the Roaring Twenties were going to be the start of a prosperous, permanent New Era. Instead, it led to the biggest Depression of them all. For there is still a tide in the affairs of man, and it flows both in and out.

The recession now slowly lifting was another Great Depression and not your classic financial panic.

The country can assure its prosperity by passing high tariffs to protect domestic industries. The way the historically high Smoot-Hawley tariffs, imposed during the Hoover administration, guaranteed the prosperity of the 1930s.

The best solution to any and all economic problems is to keep interest rates minimal, print more dollars, and in general inflate the economy.

Economics is an impersonal science in which individual personalities -- their innovations and contributions -- don't matter.

Greening our economy will cure our energy problems without creating others. The law of unintended consequences has been repealed.

The doctrine of man-made climate change bears no similarity to a religious dogma, complete with its true believers, defenders of the faith, suppression of dissent and search for heretics.

And there has never been a warming period like this one, especially in the late middle ages when the Vikings dotted Greenland with agricultural colonies.

Trading with them will make Communist regimes -- like mainland China and Castro's Cuba -- model democracies.

Our basic problems are economic, not cultural.

Manners are only superficial.

Shorter prison sentences and more paroles will discourage crime.

Leaders don't matter.

Character doesn't tell.

Moral authority isn't essential in a president.

Human embryos can be created and destroyed for experimental purposes without degrading human dignity.

Abortion is the answer to society's problems, neatly eliminating the unwanted and unproductive.

Television is a cultural boon.

The traditional family is outdated. It takes a village to raise a child, not a family.

You can have a strong country without strong families. Just as you can have strong schools without strong teachers and principals.

Teaching is a science or maybe just a technique -- not an art. We know how to mass-produce great teachers via assembly lines called schools of education.

Schools improved when teaching ceased to be a profession and became a union.

Religion is the opiate of the masses. (Actually, socialism is.)

Give people bread and circuses, and they'll be satisfied.

The masses, unlike you and me, don't know any better.

Government has the answers. (It may not even have the questions.)

And so unbelievably on. Name your own favorite fallacy.