Two stories, one about the dangers of contaminated spinach and another on the NY Times’s ignoring of irradiation as a preventative for food borne illness, show us how the moral posturing and emotional hysteria of the anti-nuclear-power left have not only vastly contributed to global warming, mercury poisoning, strip mining, general air pollution, etc. but have also been responsible for the deaths and maiming of virtually everyone who suffered from food-borne microbial illness in the last 40 years.
Food irradiation is a process by which foods are zapped with a sudden burst of radiation that kills microbes but leaves the food otherwise unaltered. It’s exactly the same process as pasteurization except that it uses radiation instead of heat, with the added benefit that it doesn’t alter the taste or nutritional content of the treated food. It leaves zero radiation in the food. The technique was first developed during WWII and during the next 20 years it was tested, retested and tested again for safety. They force fed generations of lab rats massively irradiated food and never found the least hint of problem. By the early ’60s at the latest, it was proven beyond all doubt that irradiation was a safe and highly effective means of preventing microbial contamination of food.
Despite this overwhelming scientific evidence, ever since the mid-1960s anti-nuclear leftists have demonized irradiation and created such anti-irradiation hysteria that for decades no politician could even think of allowing the irradiation of food, no matter how many lives it would have saved. Virtually everyone who has gotten sick from eggs, meat, vegetables, etc. in the last 40+ years has done so needlessly. The hundreds of immune-compromised people who die of salmonella every year didn’t have to die that way. All of the hundreds of people, many of them children, crippled or killed by E. Coli did not have to suffer. The people killed and maimed by contaminated leafy vegetable didn’t have to die.
How do leftists justify this callous disregard for human suffering? Hubris.
Just as they always do, leftists give more weight to highly hypothetical dangers they imagine decades down the road than they do to people suffering and dying right here, right now. They trust their own self-aggrandizing theories more than they trust the evidence of their own eyes. They have such confidence in their intellects that they can easily convince themselves that people dying now is much better than the far worse consequences that their infallible intellects tell us with divine certainty lie down the road should we not listen to our intellectual betters. So, in their arrogance, they stand by and watch children die while confidently stating that the children’s deaths forestall even worse horrors in the future.
They use the exact same arrogant process to block genetically-engineered foods, even foods engineered to prevent specific short-term harms like blindness caused by Vitamin A deficiency.
We should be glad that with irradiation and genetically engineered food we got off relatively easily. The same hubris led the same people to unleash Pol Pot on Cambodia. They confidently predicted that the people of Cambodia would be better off living under the rule of an insane, totalitarian communist than they would be fighting off the communists. Most of the evils of extreme socialism have been justified in the West on the same premise, that it’s better for people to die now for the good of the future that it would be to save lives now and deal with the real (as opposed to the imagined) future when it comes.
Fortunately, in the case of irradiation, deaths from contaminated vegetables have led even vegans to begin to support irradiation to save lives. It’s forty years too late but I suppose we must take what we can get. We can’t always count on being that lucky. We need to be more aggressive in calling leftists out for their willingness to let people die for the sake of their theories. As the stakes get bigger, such as with global warming, we could be looking at body counts too high to measure.
“Magnetic Resonance Imaging” (MRI) is based on the technology that was originally known as “Nuclear Magnetic Resonance.” I don’t know what PR genius decided to drop the “nuclear” from the name, but he has surely saved a lot of lives.
You might also mention that the C-Rations and later MRI’s were and are irradiated. I know of no reports of our soldiers suffering from them and you can open a can of C-Rations today and it’s still safe to eat.
Dear Shannon Love: I wouldn’t have thought it possible for you to get heatstroke this late in the year, but I see I am wrong. You put this icebag on your noggin and lie down, and I’ll explain for you, viz:
“Just as they always do, leftists give more weight to highly hypothetical dangers they imagine decades down the road than they do to people suffering and dying right here, right now.”
This is why in 2004, the Left yelled that the highly hypothetical danger of housing price collapse, mass foreclosures, and high bankruptcy rates leading to a serious recession that might even turn into a depression was SO GREAT that they rammed through legislation and regulations prohibiting subprime and Alt-A home mortgages and forbidding Freddie/Fannie from purchasing directly or indirectly those already in existence…
Or maybe not.
Clearly SL is on to something with food irradiation, but his habit of writing at full decibels has, once again, unhinged him. How can we take the special case SL is writing about and make it apply generally. I’d suggest this:
Leftists will always act to increase their power, preferably nownownow, but if patience is needed, later.
This explains food irradiation and subprime mortgages. It even allows the coldest of cynicism: why have irraadiation against a danger that is a)small enough not to likely endanger The Left personally but b) plenty big enough for the wrecking crew at the plaintiff’s bar to rush forward bawling for loot (a cut of which will be funnel to the Left.) Another source of money = still more power.
This also explains the now-you-see-it-now-you-don’t public option in the health care ruckus that is going on now. The useful idiots on the bottom howl Nownownownow. The more supple, longer-visioned prehensile scoundrels will settle for regulations that will stack the deck against private coverage, making single-payer much more easy to get next time. They’ve already taken care to exempt themselves from any federal labyrinth that the rest of the citizenry (pardon me, I almost forgot the illegal immigrants who aren’t covered now, but will be when the amnesty bill comes up soon.)
It’s a mess. What to do? SL is right to say “fight ’em” though the dreadful archness and mock-put upon tone of such comments as “I suppose we must take what we can get,” make it hard to rally to the banner. This nation was not founded by fearful men, still less fearful women, nor even the ambiguously named who won’t identify themselves so they can addressed properly. If irradiation causes this much of an uproar among the Chicago Boyz, imagine what they will do when, say, the Iranians fire off a nuke at Israel. An epileptic dog with rabies that’s had a big meal of locoweed would have nothing on this exhibition. Steadiness and stamina are needed these days.
Here’s another icebag. I’ll let myself out.
Sincerely yours,
Gregory Koster
It’s not hubris… at best it’s profound ignorance, but really I think it’s the left’s overwhelming desire to keep “the darkies down on the farm.” Only, now they define “darkies” as everyone not among the Enlightened Ones and the farm has transformed into the ghetto.
They don’t want nuclear power, solar power satellites, irradiated food, bio-engineered food, or any of the other advantages modern technology can supply — it gives people choices and they want there to be only one — the government, in the form of the Enlightened Ones.
This ex-Consumer Reports guy – from before Consumer Reports became a dirty socialist propaganda organ – he fingers Public Citizen as the group most responsible for the anti-irradiation campaign.
scroll down for wisdom from white-coated fascist douchebag Howard Rudominer. Doctors are disproportionately warped and neurotic individuals. Have you noticed that? I sure have.
It’s for your own good is their cry
As they prate not pop but faux sci
All Radiation is bad
So it is just sad
If you get food poison and die
….nnnn..’o.o’..uu!u….algie
Illegitimi nOn carborundum
Irradiation? Are you insane?!? We’ll all grow third arms and spidey-senses!!!
How many people died of foodborne illness in IN-1, Peter Visclosky’s district? How many of them would have been saved by irradiation? Run that through all the congressional districts, all the state districts, and you have a statistic. Convert that to a death clock and you have the seed of a political campaign. Whenever google news alerts kicks up a food illness story toss over an info kit to the reporter that permits them to do a cheap followup about how so many of these deaths are unnecessary.
The tools are available to do this sort of thing if we exert ourselves. As for me, I’m exerting myself. I’m working to create some tools to do exactly this sort of thing. It’s certainly not as flashy as Gregory Koster’s snark against Shannon Love but I’d like to think it’s going to actually do something.
Gregory Koster,
This explains food irradiation and subprime mortgages.
While the pursuit of power is a constant, the love of theory over empirical evidence is a defining characteristic of leftism. However, the theory isn’t always about future dangers, sometime it’s about ignoring dangers long established by experience in favor of a theory that says there is no danger. In the case of the mortgage crisis, it came about because leftist ignored the dangers of government programs designed to encourage lending far beyond what the free-market would support. Their theory said there would not be problem so they ignored all the warnings from 90’s onward.
The love of theory over experience grows stronger the farther left one goes until you reach communist who are willing to murder millions in the present for the sake of utopia in the future.
David Foster – it still is called Nuclear Magnetic Resonance by chemists and physicists. In the form of non-imaging instruments, it is a principal tool to identify unknown organic compounds, and every pre-med, chemist, biologist, and physicist learns the technique by the name NMR in their first or second year of undergraduate school.
The MDs, realizing what “Nuclear Medicine” meant to most people, i.e. cancer therapy, wisely decided to keep the “nuclear” out of the imaging technique’s name.
Do you know of a good primer on the regulations in effect that prevent food irradiation? I have various scattered questions on the subject that aren’t addressed by this blog post.
For example, is it illegal to buy radioactive materials for the purposes of irradiating? Or perhaps radioactive materials are simply surrounded with so many permits/security checks as to make it impractical? Is it illegal to sell food that’s been irradiated? Or do current regulations require sellers of irradiated foods to use unappetizing labels, obscure distribution methods, or something else that would make it technically-legal-but-impractical?
Thank you.
So why don’t we just call it something like Radio-Thermal Meat Pasteurization?
And when you get beyond the deaths and losses of productivity and quality of life caused by food borne ilnesses, the benefits keep coming. We’re talking about increasing the shelf life of fresh produce from days to weeks or months. Packaged food can last even longer, even decades. Think of the colossal food waste that would be eliminated, all the hectares of land currently under till that could be left to go wild or put to other use, less landfill use, fewer delivery trucks running back and forth, and of course the money saved that could then be used to purchase or invest in other things. We’re talking about across the board efficiencies that stand to be gained.
But getting social validation for one’s leftist environmental fantasies?
Priceless.
This article is a fair description of the Left. It is also a fair description of the Right. I could easily post a long list of issues where the Right resists proven ideas due to some irrational fear of some future catastrophe. But I won’t. You should be able to think of a few on your own, if you are not completely biased.
LL
If the list is so long Laura should be able to post one or two off the top of her head. This is also a standard lefty tactic. Claim “the right does it too” and refuse to list examples because it’s just so darn obvious.
Laura,
I could easily post a long list of issues where the Right resists proven ideas due to some irrational fear of some future catastrophe.
No you couldn’t. Left and Right are not merely photo negatives of each other. Instead, each side has significant differences in how they validate ideas. The right believes something is proven to work if a long period of real world experimentation has demonstrated it will. Leftist believe something is proven if someone creates an articulated argument that it is true. The canonical examples of this are Marxism and Freudianism. Leftist believed in such ideas passionately even through neither doctrine had any empirical basis.
There are no similar sweeping articulated theories on the right. There is no rightwing equivalent to all encompassing doctrines like communism and fascism. No one has ever sat down and written a “Capitalist Manifesto” (save in jest.) No conservative has ever suggested completely reengineering the entire planetary tech base and economy on the basis of untested computer models.
The failure of the conservative right (but usually not the libertarian right) is that they will stick to what works and resist experimentation. Even this is usually not a problem because they are usually resisting the sweeping, top-down “experimentation” of the left which seeks to reorder the whole of society using the force of the state based on some idea they had last Tuesday while sitting on the can. They do generally allow small scale experimentation, especially in economic and practical matters. After all, society evolved and changed long before the modern left showed up and it will continue to do so long after the left is gone.
Actually Laura is right – it’s human nature not ideology. You can look at the last 2 POTUS and see the right thought Bush believed in small gov’t principles and would be a small gov’t POTUS and the left now thinks that the warmed over college liberal policies of Obama are going to do anything except bankrupt the country.
Shannon Love wrote: There are no similar sweeping articulated theories on the right. There is no rightwing equivalent to all encompassing doctrines like communism and fascism.
Hate to break it to you, but fascism is a rightist doctrine; in fact, fascism was a philosophic counter to communism motivated in part by the belief (correct, I would say) that communism created class conflict. Sound familiar?
If your argument is that the conservative position is somehow rooted in reason while liberalism, in all its hoity-toity ignorance, believes anything that sounds good (“Ooh, his speeches are so ELOQUENT! He must be THE ONE!” Where do you people come up with this crap?), you’ve wandered completely off the farm.
How’s this – from the Wiki article on the politicization of science:
A petition, signed by more than 9,000 scientists, including 49 Nobel laureates and 63 National Medal of Science recipients,[8] followed the report. The petition stated:
“When scientific knowledge has been found to be in conflict with its political goals, the administration has often manipulated the process through which science enters into its decisions. This has been done by placing people who are professionally unqualified or who have clear conflicts of interest in official posts and on scientific advisory committees; by disbanding existing advisory committees; by censoring and suppressing reports by the government’s own scientists; and by simply not seeking independent scientific advice. Other administrations have, on occasion, engaged in such practices, but not so systematically nor on so wide a front. Furthermore, in advocating policies that are not scientifically sound, the administration has sometimes misrepresented scientific knowledge and misled the public about the implications of its policies.”
Yeah, that’s the BUSH administration they’re referring to.
But you didn’t actually read anything before you wrote this, did ya? No? Just listened to a little Glenn Beck, and yeah, that sounded about right?
That’s some good journalism there.
lol liberalize Latin American economies by death sqauds? what a joke. Pinochet? Menen anyone?
“Hate to break it to you, but fascism is a rightist doctrine; in fact, fascism was a philosophic counter to communism motivated in part by the belief (correct, I would say) that communism created class conflict. Sound familiar?”
That must be why they called it National Socialism ? And why Mussolini was editor of a socialist newspaper ?
Anonymous moron wrote:
lol liberalize Latin American economies by death sqauds? what a joke. Pinochet? Menen anyone?
Actually, no. Liberalize Latin American economies by promoting free markets. There is no connection between economic freedom and death squads except in the imaginations of ignorant leftists such as you.
As Peter Jackson above points out, increasing the shelf life of foods has tremendous benefits. not only would this lower the price of food since it wouldn’t be wasted, it would also help ease hunger for that same reason, getting better quality produce into the hands of poorer people.
It also would increase the quality of food. Right now a lot of produce is picked earlier before its peak ripening, esp. if you are importing it from south american when it’s winter in the north. Then they gas it to make it look right. This leads to rather bland produce, less sweet fruit, white chicken. The only place to get such fresh food now is a farmer’s market or move to the country. With irradiation, we could let food ripen on the vine and pick it, meaning farm fresh produce for people thousands of miles away.
Technology would make our lives much easier and better if so many luddites weren’t out there trying to control it and us.
Ben Says:
“Hate to break it to you, but fascism is a rightist doctrine; in fact, fascism was a philosophic counter to communism motivated in part by the belief (correct, I would say) that communism created class conflict. Sound familiar?”
Fascism and Communism as practiced are both statist philosophies so both in my book qualify as the same. Simply because Fascism was created to counter communism does not make it rightist. As the late great Robert Heinlein wrote: Political tags — such as royalist, communist, democrat, populist, fascist, liberal, conservative, and so forth — are never basic criteria. The human race divides politically into those who want people to be controlled and those who have no such desire. The former are idealists acting from highest motives for the greatest good of the greatest number. The latter are surly curmudgeons, suspicious and lacking in altruism. But they are more comfortable neighbors than the other sort.
JohnnyL – It’s a good quote, but not really apt, as the dichotomy it’s talking about is not left v. right, but governed v. anarchist. That may well be your position, but then you’re hardly the man to answer for the article above.
I’ll say, though, that if that is your position, I would encourage you to reconsider; it’s a brutal world that rejects all collective authority. The social contract is a wonderful thing; its alternative isn’t freedom from government but tyranny imposed by your fellow men.
If one ended up disabled because of food poisoning, is there anyway they can sue the anti-irradiation activists for damages received by the food not being irradiated? I think these people should be held accountable for their actions.
Ben,
Hate to break it to you, but fascism is a rightist doctrine.
The idea that fascism is a rightwing version of communism is an invention of Joseph Stalin and generations of leftists have echoed Stalin ever since. Fascism and Communism are branches on the same socialist tree. Once a person had decided that totalitarian socialism was the way to go, they then had to choose which flavor of socialism to adopt. They could choose the international class-based socialism of Communism under Stalin or they could choose the ethic-based socialism of Fascism. Many people jumped effortlessly back and forth between the two. Many Fascist, such as Mussolini, were ex-communist and vice versa. Stalin desperately needed to differentiate Communism from Fascism so he invented the argument that Fascism was a rightwing phenomena that represented the end state of capitalism in the evolution all all human societies as predicted by Marx. Communist and fellow travelers propagated this marketing idea and it is now revealed wisdom on the left.
Communist and Fascist are always at each other throats not because they are polar opposites but because they are so similar that each can bleed off support from the other. They have to differentiate themselves in the market place of ideas so they claim to be opposites. It’s just like a private company. A computer companies major competitors are those companies that produce products the most similar. PC clone manufactures compete against each other first and Apple second. No computer company spends any thought to competing against abacus makers.
There are far, far more points of agreement between Fascist and contemporary leftist than there are points of agreement between Fascist and contemporary rightist. Fascist hated free-markets, free-trade and held the commercial classes in contempt. Sound familiar? They believed the government had the right and duty to intervene at will in any economic function or to override any economic or property right for the greater good. Sound familiar? The held traditional morality and social order in contempt and wanted to use the power of the state to recondition the people to behaviors they chose. Sound familiar? These similarities force modern leftist to continually scream that they are utterly and completely different from Fascist lest people start to notice.
Yeah, that’s the BUSH administration they’re referring to.
(1) Scientist have a long history of exaggerating scientific knowledge in the political arena. Remember eugenics? For nearly 50 years it was considered established mainstream science and widely adopted in the political sphere. Remember the energy crisis when all the scientist said we were out of oil? (2) The left is every bit as bad about politicizing science and I think actually worse because they so often rely on psuedo-science to justify their flights of theory over experience. You should read Holder’s (Obama’s science advisors) writings from the 70’s. He confidently predicted several catastrophes (ice age, over population, resource depletion etc) that never occurred but which , by utter coincidence, could be avoided by radical socialization. And of course we have things like Freudianism and even Marxism sold as “science”. 30 years ago leftist claimed to have scientifically proven that all human behavior was learned and that genetics played no role. As late as the early 1980’s, I was called a fascist for asserting homosexuality in males had biological origins. Now they’ve done a 180 even though the evidence hasn’t changed.
I would notice that you didn’t actually refute my main point i.e. that unscientific anti-nuclear hysteria on the left has actually killed people, wasted resources and damaged the environment. Frankly, I don’t think that a “the right is just as stupid as we are” is as compelling an argument for your views you seem to think it is.
But you didn’t actually read anything before you wrote this, did ya?
The history of science and the sociology of science is one of my areas of specialization. I have read hundreds of books on the subject. As a libertarian/classical-liberal, I have a special interest in the use of science as a justification for state power. I can guarantee that I know far, far, far more about the subject than you ever will.
Just listened to a little Glenn Beck…
I’ve never listened to or watched Glenn Beck. Beyond the fact he claimed to scalps in the Obama administration, I know nothing about him. I don’t watch or listen to any kind of broadcast news on a regular basis.
That’s some good journalism there.
I am not a journalist and I am given to understand that Beck is just an editorialist. Not sure what your point was.
[quote]”Fascist hated free-markets, free-trade and held the commercial classes in contempt. Sound familiar? They believed the government had the right and duty to intervene at will in any economic function or to override any economic or property right for the greater good. Sound familiar? The held traditional morality and social order in contempt and wanted to use the power of the state to recondition the people to behaviors they chose. Sound familiar? These similarities force modern leftist to continually scream that they are utterly and completely different from Fascist lest people start to notice.”[/quote]
Simply put, Fascism is the concerted effort of the State to control Beliefs, Business and Behavior
Certainly more of a contemporary lefty system but can apply to the right as well. Mostly it’s anti-libertarian from end to end.
“The only place to get such fresh food now is a farmer’s market or move to the country.”
To the commenter above and anyone else who might frequent farmer’s market:
I strongly urge you to conduct a small experiment with these markets in your town. Get up early. I mean like 3 am kinda early, pack your bike and head down first to the Sysco, Alliant or U.S. Foodservice retail/wholesale warehouse. In moderate sized cities there are usually a set of big distribution centers outside of town and a retail/wholesale warehouse in a downtown/light industrial area. Spend from about 4 am to about an hour before your market opens just hanging around. Maybe get your bike out and cruise the blocks around or just stake it out. Watch who goes in and out loading up on produce. Make note of the names on the trucks and look for those dressed like the “farmers” at your market. Ignore the guy’s in Chefwear and the guys in trucking uniforms.
Now you can go to your farmer’s market and have your eyes open, or at least start to identify those few who are really farmers and who are just guys running a stall in a market, buying from one wholesaler and then scamming you with it. Farmer’s markets rarely have COOL audits (Country of Origin Labeling) and it’s just too easy for anyone to rent a stall and load up a small truck with cases of boxed produce from anywhere.
For best results visit early twice. Once to the wholesaler and once to the market. Many times you’ll see Wholesaler trucks delivering to the farmers right there at the market site. Best take your bike for this one, because the market usually has some control of the surrounding streets in the hours before market opens providing for access for the farmers and any other trucks that drop off.
Most (but certainly not all) Co-op’s or bulk delivery services are similarly corrupt.
But don’t take my word for it, investigate for yourself. Please.
“If your argument is that the conservative position is somehow rooted in reason..”
As I read it, the argument was that the conservative position is rooted, not in reason per se, but in evidence. Reason alone is what gets the oh-so-intelligent members of the far left so often disconnected with reality.
The manufacturers don’t publicize it, for obvious reasons, but most tampons are sterilized by gamma irradiation during manufacture. This has dramatically reduced the incidence of Toxic Shock Syndrome. (TSS became a problem during the early 1980’s, after “superabsorbent” tampons were introduced.)
Does anybody have a link to a website that translates Gregory Koster to english?
And Ben:
Hate to break it to you, but fascism is a rightist doctrine
Any examples of the “rightist” nature of fascism?
Ben,
If your argument is that the conservative position is somehow rooted in reason…
Conservatism is rooted in empiricism usually of the trial and error kind. They stick with what works.
Reason is a dubious tool at best. Garbage into reason gives garbage out of reason. If reason alone was enough to guide us we would never require scientific experimentation. We could just sit on a stump and unravel the secrets of the entire universe. Instead, we must constantly test our ideas in the real world.
..while liberalism, in all its hoity-toity ignorance, believes anything that sounds good… you’ve wandered completely off the farm
Then explain Marxism, Freudianism or any of the dozens of other wacky, unproven and ultimately falsified ideas that leftists have embraced over the last century or more. Most leftists ideas are in fact based on nothing more than “it sounds good” or more accurately, “it looks good on paper.” Leftist actively shun the idea of implementing ideas on a small scale, testing them and then growing them progressively in scale testing all the while. Instead, they like to impose sweeping ideas on the whole of society based on nothing more than cleverly phrased arguments.
That must be why they called it National Socialism ? And why Mussolini was editor of a socialist newspaper ?
You know, you could work this all out with google, but here, I’ll help.
Wikipedia article on Mussolini, specifically detailing his rejection of socialism and the development of its counterpoint, fascism:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Benito_Mussolini
Or, for a more academic approach, see the Totalitarian Movements and Political Religions academic journal, specifically page 111:
http://www.nationalism.org/library/science/ideology/lukacs/Lukacs-TMPR-2002.pdf
Short version: Mussolini, by the time of his ascent into office in Italy, had long since disavowed socialism in favor of fascism, which is not merely a philosophic outcropping of socialism but its wholesale rejection. Furthermore, fascism was a distinctly Italian phenomenon; the National Socialism you refer to was (presumably) German, though national socialist movements occurred throughout Europe.
This isn’t merely academic. If you can’t even distinguish between fascism and socialism (which, let’s be clear, are basically polar opposites on the political spectrum), you’re probably not in a position to evaluate the relationship between political movements and rationality.
Ben,
Don’t you Wiki me!!! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Statism
“Economic Statism in practice
Definition: concentration of economic controls and planning in the hands of government often extending to state ownership of industry.
Statism reached its highest point in the centrally planned fascist and Stalinist countries, but exists in varying degrees in every country in the world.”
Simply put, Fascism is the concerted effort of the State to control Beliefs, Business and Behavior
Certainly this is more of an exemplar of a contemporary lefty system but can apply to the right, as well. Mostly it’s anti-libertarian from end to end.
Ben, instead of quoting the unimpeachable wonderfulness that is Wikipedia, how about telling us in your own words what made fascism rightist in nature?
I’m sure wiki has some stuff you could cut-and-paste…
Please don’t waste time arguing with Ben. He is surely a fool, although with some obvious erudition uncommon among fools.
The political spectrum is not linear, it is circular. Fascism and communism are one and the same, or at least right next to one another on the spectrum.
Looks like us lefties aren’t so crazy in Canada. This is taken off of the Canadian Food Inspection Agency’s website. Apparently I’ve been eating irradiated food for years; and the radical leftist in me isn’t at all upset.
-andy, ottawa.
Currently, onions, potatoes, wheat, flour, whole wheat flour, and whole or ground spices and dehydrated seasonings are approved for irradiation and sale in Canada.
Health Canada is proposing regulatory changes which would expand the list of irradiated food permitted to be sold in Canada. The proposed additions are: fresh and frozen ground beef, fresh and frozen poultry, prepackaged fresh, frozen, prepared and dried shrimp and prawns, and mangoes. Permitting irradiation on these foods will assist the food industry in enhancing the safety and quality of these products, while providing consumers with a product with a longer durable life.
Ben,
If you can’t even distinguish between fascism and socialism (which, let’s be clear, are basically polar opposites on the political spectrum), …
No, the polar opposite of both fascism and communism is a diverse multicultural, liberal-democracy, with rule of law and a limited state. The only reason that anyone can make the argument that fascism and communism are polar opposites is that both fascist and communist claim they are opposites in their marketing material. Just because Mussolini, Hitler or Stalin claimed they were opposites does not mean they actually were because, and I hate to break this to you, mass murdering, sociopaths lie a lot.
Again, were talking about philosophies that are so close together in their actually real-world functioning that they must make a great deal of noise about being vastly different.
One of the systematic cognitive failures of leftists is the belief that rhetoric is reality. Mussolini says he’s not a socialist? Well, then that seals it for you. For non-lefitsts, words mean little and actions mean everything. For non-lefitsts, Mussolini and other Fascist are classified as socialist because they acted like socialist in all respects. Their policies were socialist in all respects including the disruption of the existing class structure in favor of a more egalitarian one driven by political “merit” instead of birth.
You would have us believe that the Fascist are evil and socialist are good because they each make speeches claiming to be the opposite of the others. I argue they are the same because they behave the same. I naive observer who nothing about labels or symbols would have been hard pressed to find any differences in the functioning of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. They have the the same hostility to individualism, same hostility to democracy, the same hostility to the rule of law, the same hostility to social diversity, the same hostility to traditional religion, the economic policies, the same militarism and most importantly, the conception as the state as the absolute center of society.
Contrary your echoing of Stalin, fascism was not created by capitalist or the general business class. It was not a middle class reaction to red socialism. Instead, it was nothing more than the abandonment of the red socialist cross-cultural philosophy in favor of socialist philosophy centered on a single ethnic group. Beyond that, the practical and functional differences are non-existant.
If I’m wrong, then you should be able to list, say, 10 real-world functional differences between fascist states a communist states. Of course, you can’t because they don’t exist save in the self serving rhetoric of their leaders.
Further, as proven by Stalin, Mao et al, all communist eventually abandon their cross-cultural philosophy in favor of one centered on a single ethnic group. In other words, all communist eventually evolve into something functionally indistinguishable from fascism.
I am a liberal. Having said that, I also trust the scientific method not opinion and false rhetoric. The risks and dangers of Nuclear power are something the average person does not comprehend and it is typical behavior for people to fear and hate that which they do not understand. Environmental groups (yes, even the Sierra Club) used to be pro-nuclear until radical anti-nuclear proponents caused enough ruckus that it was convert to the cause or be labeled anti-environmental. What can I say? There are idiotic ideologies on both sides. It doesn’t matter that food irradiation uses gamma rays which cannot make something the least bit radioactive or that fuel grade uranium used in a reactor can’t blow up like a bomb… There have been too many bad 1950’s movies about this stuff. If you REALLY care about this then I suggest you embark on a positive PR campaign that will win the left over instead of insult them. I am left and pro-nuclear, it can happen when the truth is plainly spoken!
Crazy Lefitsts,
The main point is not about nuclear power or food safety but rather holding leftists responsible for the consequences of the bad policies they advocate. Leftists like to advance the idea that they be judged only on their intention and not the consequences, even the easily foreseen consequences, of their actions. Instead, they need to be accountable by the same standards as the rest of us.
Perhaps more importantly, this episode shows how leftists let politics overwhelm there scientific or technical understanding of issues. The anti-nuclear power movement wasn’t grounded in the idea that nuclear power was dangerous, rather, it was grounded in the idea that crippling civilian nuclear power would eventually cripple America’s nuclear deterrence which would then trigger the world wide abandonment of nuclear weapons. The fabricated arguments about nuclear power being dangerous began as nothing more than propaganda its proponents knew to be false. They merely believed they had the moral obligation to lie in the service of a greater good. We see the exact same behavior today in environmental arguments were leftists argue they must exaggerate evidence and threats in order to accomplish their environmental goals.
As to convincing people by not insulting them, I say look in a mirror first. Leftists insult non-leftist continually and casually accuse them of horrible crimes up to and including mass murder. It might be novel for you personally to have even a milder version of that thrown back in your face but objectively you can’t say you haven’t ask for it.