OPINION:
If you had any remaining doubt that the “progressive” left has become a party of emotions and fear rather than one of science and facts, question no further. Just consider this week’s news from our nation’s torchbearer of elite arrogance.
On March 13, 2020, the Cable News Network (CNN) proudly announced that its upcoming town hall on the coronavirus pandemic will feature 17-year-old Greta Thunberg, alongside a panel of other “medical experts.”
The program will be called “Coronavirus Facts and Fears,” and in addition to Greta, the panel will include Sanjay Gupta, Richard Besser and Kathleen Sebelius. Anderson Cooper will join the group as the program’s host.
Now, let’s consider the credentials of this panel of “experts” who will presume to lecture all the rest of us as to how we should live our lives.
Sanjay Gupta and Richard Besser are both MDs who hold terminal degrees in medicine, but Kathleen Sebelius, Anderson Cooper and Greta Thunberg do not. They have no such education and hold no such degrees.
Mrs. Sebelius describes herself as “a politician” who served as the secretary of Health and Human Services under President Obama. She goes on to say that, before becoming secretary, she served as the governor of Kansas. Mrs. Sebelius takes special care to remind us that she was only the “second woman to hold that office” and that she was the “first female chair” of the Democratic Governors Association.
But what of her education? Mrs. Sebelius has an undergraduate degree in political science and an MA in public administration. She has no education in medicine. She does not hold a terminal degree in anything. Her qualifications are essentially that she is female and a political hack.
What about Mr. Cooper? Well, his own bio states the following. He is an “American broadcast journalist and the primary anchor of the CNN news show ’Anderson Cooper 360.’” It goes on to say that Mr. Cooper does have an undergraduate degree but he has no advanced degrees. He has no education in medicine or science. Zero. His “expertise” includes that he’s gay, a celebrity and a Vanderbilt, i.e., he hails from one of the wealthiest families in our nation’s history.
Now on to Greta. As I am sure you know, young Greta is a “Swedish activist who has gained international recognition for promoting the view that humanity is facing an existential crisis arising from climate change.” In other words, we’re all doomed. “How dare you,” she shouts as she pretends to understand things that she doesn’t understand. Greta just turned 17 and has not graduated from high school. She has no degrees in anything, let alone any in science or medicine. Her fame is that she’s a precocious scold. Stated differently, her credentials are that she knows nothing.
Now, I’m the first to agree that Drs. Gupta and Besser have earned the right to be heard (However, for the sake of open debate, it might be nice to include at least one or two of the tens of thousands of MDs in the nation who disagree with them). But, why in the world should we listen to anything coming from Mrs. Sebelius, Mr. Cooper or Greta on these matters?
These are the best “experts” that CNN could find? Are we really to consider these three to be our betters when it comes to the science of contagion, pandemic, virology and immunology?
Stop and think about it.
These are the people who call us “science deniers” while ignoring their own “science.” These are the people who deny the truth every time they stumble onto an “inconvenient truth.” The science of “global warming” proves untenable so they switch to “climate change.” The science of “born that way” proves false, so they turn to “sexual fluidity.”
The science of “flattening the curve” proves insufficient, so they just move the target again and admit that their agenda all along was that if “it saves one life” the poverty, malnutrition, depression, violence, addiction and death that comes from putting 36 million people out of work “is all worth it.” It’s all for our own good after all. They are the ones who know what’s best for all the rest.
C.S. Lewis once said that “Of all the tyrannies, a tyranny exercised for the good of its victims may be the most oppressive. It may be better to live under robber barons than under omnipotent busybodies. The robber baron’s cruelty may sometimes sleep …; But those who torment us for our own good will torment us without end, for they do so with the approval of their own conscience.”
Why should you listen to anything coming from such “omnipotent busybodies” as Anderson Cooper, Kathleen Sebelius and Greta Thunberg? The answer is, you shouldn’t. They know nothing more than you do, but the frightening thing is that they do have the “approval of their own conscience.”
• Everett Piper, former president of Oklahoma Wesleyan University, is a columnist for The Washington Times and author of “Not A Day Care: The Devastating Consequences of Abandoning Truth” (Regnery 2017).
Please read our comment policy before commenting.