Commentary

When I read the headline, “Death of the Consensus,” over the piece by Geoffrey Ingersoll, Editor at Large of the Daily Caller, a signal was sent to the prefrontal cortex of my brain, providing me with the memory of a blog I wrote on consensus.

Thank goodness it directed me to my archives where I found it with the same title as this edition, dated May 22, 2021.

The late Sen. John McCain often spoke of “reaching across the aisle to find common ground.  I asked, “Which half of the socialist New Green Deal are you willing to accept?”

Pew Research, I noted, learned that the majority of likely voters preferred politicians who stick to their principles without compromising.

President Reagan’s definition of compromise succinctly … “We win, they lose.”

With the transition of the Trump administration, I believed it was appropriate to revisit my 2021 edition, in which I cited examples of the “three Cs.”

Since I already considered consensus dead, I was curious to read Ingersoll’s article. The primary focus was on Robert F. Kennedy Jr’s suggestion that fluoride be removed from water.

I had to laugh at Ingersoll’s description of Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN), laboring, nearly out of breath, indicating she was “shocked” that RFK would suggest removing fluoride from water, all while she was explaining how she was “confident” Harris would win.

Ingersoll quoted Dr. Linda Birnbaum, who told the Daily Caller. “there’s sufficient data now … that early life exposure to fluoride is associated with an increased risk of IQ loss.”  Birnbaum, a board-certified toxicologist, who directed the National Toxicology Program in HHS 2009-2019, is now an adjunct professor at the University of North Carolina Gillings School of Public Health, while continuing her research for HHS.

Think about other health matters that gave us The Consensus.  “The government food pyramid,” Ingersoll reminds us. “It made people fat.”

Two months ago, the New York Times reported that nearly three-quarters of U.S. adults are overweight or obese and almost half of all U.S. teens and young adults – ages 15-24 – are either overweight or obese … giving wide-reaching implications for the nation’s health and medical costs.

Another Flawed Consensus

With Biden’s ill-conceived Green New Deal initiative to alter climate change, my writing on consensus has been limited to what is termed scientific consensus, and I have collected a stack of reports and articles on the subject

While most of it discusses scientific consensus on climate change, fellow blogger Fransis Menton, who views much of consensus on climate change to be fake, recently strayed into the consensus on transgenderism and the origins of the Coronavirus pandemic.  It’s all documented in his blog, “A Safe Bet: Consensus ‘Science’ Is Wrong.”

 In The Conversation, they claim “despite overwhelming evidence, (there are those who) still cast doubt on the role of humans in driving climate change.”

Examining peer-reviewed literature, it reports that US researchers have found that 99 percent of climate scientists now endorse the evidence for human-induced climate change.

Then there’s the report in Springer Nature’s piece, “The Scientific Consensus on Climate Change:” How Do We Know We’re Not Wrong?” It states that “numerous independent studies have affirmed that anthropogenic climate change is underway … that there is a broad expert consensus on this point … it does not prove that the scientific consensus is correct.  Even if we accept the fact of scientific consensus, how do we know that this consensus is not wrong.”

As I was concluding my thoughts on the “three C’s,” still another headline appeared, “A Bipartisan Consensus in Justice Reform,” an op-ed by Michael Romano in the Wall Street Journal, in which he sees justice reform as a “rare policy area where progressives and conservatives can agree.”

I doubt it, even though he states that “Mr. Trump has a proven record of bipartisan reform,” and adds that 80 percent of likely voters say they support expansion of the First Step Act

Finally, while scanning Amy Copperman’s guide, “How to Build Consensus Effectively,” the sentence, “Consensus building is the process of collaboratively working with a team to reach a decision everyone can support, even if it’s not everyone’s first choice,” I was reminded of a remark made by former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher:

“To me, consensus seems to be the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies.  So, it seems it is something in which one believes and to which no one objects.”

I’m for majority rules  If you’ve got the votes, to heck with consensus.

May God continue to bless the United States of America