“When polls said only about half of all Americans would take a vaccine, I was saying herd immunity would take 70 to 75 percent,”  Dr.  Anthony Fauci, director of the US  National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and public face of the federal government’s response to the COVID-19 pandemic, told the New York Times in December. “Then, when newer surveys said 60 percent or more would take it, I thought, ‘I can nudge this up a bit,’ so I went to 80, 85.”

If you’re startled by Fauci’s admission that he lies to the public depending on what polls say, you shouldn’t be. It’s not the first time.

In March, he told CBS’s 60 Minutes “there’s no reason to be walking around with a mask.” Months later, as mask mandates became the political establishment’s preferred “we gotta order people to do things” measure, he claimed he’d previously been lying so that people wouldn’t rush out and buy up masks needed by medical personnel.

In that case, he seems to have been lying ABOUT lying — scientific evidence for the efficacy of masks in preventing viral transmission still looks inconclusive at best — but the obvious motive was the same. Anthony Fauci, like most politicians and bureaucrats, is perfectly willing to lie to you if he thinks lying to you will get you to do as he demands.

In the Times interview, though, Fauci  points his finger at a real problem, probably not realizing that that finger points right back in his direction: “We need to have some humility here. We really don’t know what the real number is.”

Nearly a year into the pandemic, there’s still a lot we (including Dr. Fauci) don’t know about it and about how to get through it. But instead of having some humility about that, Fauci alternates between two approaches:

Approach One: Feign certainty, and use that certainty as an excuse to order you around.

Approach Two: Admit uncertainty, and use that uncertainty as an excuse to order you around.

Fauci’s far from alone in those approaches. Demands for authority, whatever the cost to those upon whom it’s inflicted, are the sacraments of the Cult of the Omnipotent State.

The US Food and Drug Administration held up approval of Moderna’s COVID-19 vaccine for seven months after Phase I trials had demonstrated that vaccine’s basic safety. Their uncertainty (and, more importantly, their authority) trumped your health.

Months after killing thousands with his order that nursing homes full of vulnerable seniors accept COVID-19 patients, New York governor Andrew Cuomo is back, threatening million-dollar fines on hospitals that administer vaccines to people not on a government-approved list rather than throw away vaccine which will expire if it isn’t used. What he lacks in competence, he tries to make up for with unshakable certainty of his right to run your life.

COVID-19 is certainly a terrible disease and has killed many Americans.

Fauci et al.’s cravings for authority and demands for obedience are likewise terrible diseases — diseases which have undoubtedly increased the COVID-19 death toll.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

• “Yes, Dr. Fauci, You DO Need to Have Some Humility Here,” by Thomas L. Knapp, OpEdNews, 01/05/21
• “Yes, Dr. Fauci, You DO Need to Have Some Humility Here,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Anchorage, Alaska Press, 01/05/21
• “Yes, Dr. Fauci, you do need to have some humility here,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Exton, Pennsylvania Mainline Media News, 01/05/21
• “Yes, Dr. Fauci, you do need to have some humility here,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Richmond, North Carolina Observer, 01/05/21
• “Yes, Dr. Fauci, you do need to have some humility here,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Pottstown, Pennsylvania Mercury, 01/05/21
• “Yes, Dr. Fauci, You DO Need to Have Some Humility Here,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Hopkinsville, Kentucky New Era, 01/06/21
• “Yes, Fauci, you do need some humility,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Madill, Oklahoma Record, 01/06/21
• “Yes, Dr. Fauci, You DO Need to Have Some Humility Here,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, 01/06/21
• “How about a little humility?” by Thomas L. Knapp, Orangeburg, South Carolina Times and Democrat, 01/11/21
• “Dr. Fauci should have some humility too,” by Thomas L. Knapp, Kingsport, Tennessee Times News [web and print editions], 01/11/21

New Year’s Eve partiers had good reason to celebrate at the stroke of midnight on January 1. If the end of 2020 felt like a farewell to the missteps of more than one previous year, in a way it truly was. The culture of the year 1925 broke free from shackles imposed in 1998.

That year’s Sonny Bono Copyright Term Extension Act was far from the first of its kind. The United States Congress had reinterpreted its Constitutional mandate to grant an “exclusive Right” to creative works “for limited Times” to encompass increasingly longer periods of time. When George Washington signed the original Copyright Act into law, copyrights spanned at most 28 years. Bill Clinton’s pen bumped them from 75 years to 95.

What was unprecedented was that the additional decades didn’t just apply to new works whose creators might possibly be incentivized, but to Jazz Age classics already due to enter the public domain. A 1995 New York Times article quoted a representative of Houghton Mifflin on how they would “like to publish a successful book exclusively forever;” the 1998 Copyright Term Extension Act was close enough, setting the precedent for further re-extensions in the future.

Copyrights with no effective end point might seem to be simply be the “intellectual property” equivalent of the physical kind. To the contrary, as Ayn Rand observed, they “would become a cumulative lien on the production of unborn generations, which would ultimately paralyze them.” If “Jack London fought as fiercely to control the copyright on his work as he fought for” the revolutionary socialism advocated in his writings (as noted by The Radical Jack London editor Jonah Raskin, who adds that the expiration of their copyrights that made the 2008 collection possible “would no doubt rankle him”), free-market radicals have fought to get copyrights under control.

Self-described “Ayn Rand freak” Michael S. Hart founded Project Gutenberg to give away royalty-free electronic books “for the most selfish of reasons — because I want a world that has Project Gutenberg in it.” James M. Buchanan and Milton Friedman were among the laissez-faire luminaries who detailed the economic losses of excessive copyright terms in a legal brief endorsing the overturn of the Copyright Term Extension Act.

This challenge, culminating in the the Supreme Court’s Eldred v. Ashcroft decision, was unsuccessful. Yet the absence of a follow-up Extended Extension Act has allowed some of the “limited Times” to eventually reach their limit. Publications from 1923 finally entered the public domain in 2019, and the rest of the Roaring Twenties are gradually following suit. Meanwhile, some creatives are releasing their copyrights early. This past October, Tom Lehrer waived copyright restrictions to his songs, so that nobody will have to wait until 2061 to update his satires of New Math and Hubert H. Humphrey.

The 2020s face many problems, but a failure to learn from the 1920s need not be one of them.

New Yorker Joel Schlosberg is a contributing editor at The William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY

1. “Let the Twenties roar free” by Joel Schlosberg, Anchorage, Alaska Press, January 2, 2021
2. “Let the Twenties Roar Free” by Joel Schlosberg, Ventura County, California Citizens Journal, January 3, 2021
3. “Let the twenties roar free” by Joel Schlosberg, The Lebanon, Indiana Reporter, January 5, 2021
4. “Let the ’20s roar free” by Joel Schlosberg, Claremont, NH Eagle Times, January 6, 2021
5. “Let the Twenties Roar Free” by Joel Schlosberg, Roundup, MT Record Tribune & Winnett Times, January 6, 2021
6. “Let the Twenties Roar Free” by Joel Schlosberg, OpEdNews, January 7, 2021

“Military leaders are worried about the shrinking pool of young people who qualify for military service,” Gina Harkins reports at Military.com. “More than 70% of young Americans remain unable to join the military due to obesity, education problems, or crime and drug records.”

Mission: Readiness, a group of retired military officers, wants the US Department of Defense to create an “advisory committee on military recruitment,” with a view toward getting the next generation in shape so that they’re qualified, as the old saying goes, to “travel to exotic, distant lands; meet exciting, unusual people; and kill them.”

I’ve got a better idea: Instead of trying to trim fat off America’s adolescents, trim fat off the US Armed Forces.

The US military employs nearly 1.4 million active duty personnel and about 850,000 reservists.

The latest National Defense Authorization Act — vetoed by President Trump but looking likely as I write this to be passed over his objection — calls for $740 billion ($2,300 for every man, woman, and child in the country) in theoretically “defense”-related spending next year.

The US, which is separated by oceans from all credible potential enemies and hasn’t fought anything resembling a defensive war in 75 years, boasts the third largest (after India and China, far more populous countries with real adversaries on their borders), and far and away the most expensive, military apparatus on Earth.

While the US defense budget and the armed forces’ staffing levels could probably be cut by 90% without significantly degrading actual national defense capabilities, I understand the impulse to moderation.

So how about a 50% cut in military spending and active duty troop levels over five years, with an upward bump in reservist numbers to a full million?

That would leave the US with 700,000 active duty personnel (still the world’s fifth largest military), and still the world’s number one military big spender (about twice as much as China, three times as much as Saudi Arabia, and nearly five times as much as Russia or India).

With 2 million Americans reaching military age each year and some veterans re-enlisting, the Pentagon would have little problem finding the skinny, literate, non-criminal people it needs to fill its ranks.

Yes, some US arms manufacturers would take big hits to their lavish corporate welfare paychecks, but they could retool — every American taxpayer would be better off by about $1,250, meaning fatter markets for products that don’t kill people.

It’s time to put the Pentagon on a diet.

Thomas L. Knapp (Twitter: @thomaslknapp) is director and senior news analyst at the William Lloyd Garrison Center for Libertarian Advocacy Journalism (thegarrisoncenter.org). He lives and works in north central Florida.

PUBLICATION/CITATION HISTORY