When I was a first-year law student, one of my more imaginative professors suggested an interesting hypothetical. At the end of the last millennium, it was quite profound, Nonetheless, I updated it slightly for use in the 21st century.
The professor asked that the class imagine that it was 1492 and Christopher Columbus was dragged before the High Court of Spain. He was charged with fraud. The allegation was that Columbus tricked Queen Isabella into financing a ridiculous voyage to the Spice Islands near India. He told the Queen that his ships would travel west in order to reach the East. It was possible, according to Columbus, because “the world was round.”
Unable to hide his incredulous laughter, the prosecutor argued that this was clearly “disinformation.” Moreover, “Follow the science,” he shouted. “Everyone knows the world is flat.”
The professor then asked, “What was the appropriate judgement of the court?” The correct response was “Guilty.” The test question was “Why?”
An ‘A” paper explained that courts, like government in general, are not supposed to explore the leading edge of science. Novel theories may turn out to be true; but, more often, as science progresses. they are found to be both misguided and unhelpful. The idea that all diseases could be cured by manipulation of the spine or that all cancers could be cured with Laetrile were once promising ideas. But the reality set in quickly when patients took those “cures” and died.
Indeed, people should be held to the standards of society, but not to the avant-garde notions of even the best thinkers of the time. Neither courts nor government should base their mandates on such ideas until they are generally accepted. To do otherwise would be to turn the lives of law-abiding citizens into a social experiment. Such would gratify only the fascist instinct and the lust for control exhibited by the “intelligentsia” who seek to remake the world in their own image.
Unfortunately, the Radical Democrats who now control our national government never took my professor’s course. Their governance is an untested social experiment. And people are dying.
For instance, there was no empirical evidence that emptying prisons and de-funding police would lessen crime or even lead to a more just society. Yet, the program was implemented. The results were record murders featuring dead cops, dead children and random killings by career criminals, unafraid of punishment.
Nor was this trend of mass social experimentation lost on the education community. The new social order required that teachers affirm the ‘wise choices” of often confused adolescents suffering from gender dysphoria. There was little evidence that such amateur counseling and psychoanalysis led children to greater student success. But the avant-garde insisted that this was the way to “build back better.”
As the untested experimentation continued, biological males (called “trans-women”) were placed into women’s bathrooms and prisons. The result was sexual assault and rape. And, as it all progressed, the fastest growing biological gender in some women’s sports became biological men.
But maybe it was all worth the hassle. What about “The Green New Deal”? That unproven social experiment poured trillions of dollars into non-nuclear renewable energy. It ruined the livelihood of thousands of oil and gas workers as it raised the cost of food, transportation and life itself. The unproven notion was that human beings could change the weather. The collateral damage, of course, was borne by the poor as the cost of food, fuel and shelter combined with inflation to aggravate their poverty.
And the weather remained the same.
Now, radical, unproven social experimentation is not new to history. It just rarely turned out well. Lenin and Stalin’s Communist experiments come first to mind followed by those of North Korea, Cuba and Zimbabwe. These were all radical social experiments imposed by those who thought they knew best how everyone else should live.
Similarly, in their lust to re-imagine a world where the obedient masses follow their better educated masters, the American Radical Democrats forgot the most basic rule of democracy: “Governments derive their just powers [only] from the consent of the governed.”
Hence, the forced imposition of most untested utopia generally ended badly. It is why the Soviets failed and why Cubans even now risk their lives as they exit their island prison. It is also why the current reign of the Radical Democrats will end badly. It is why government must abandon social experiments and recommit to democratic consensus.
