It’s long been obvious to me that the route to success in America is to invent a disease and then sell the cure. The classic example is the disease of halitosis, invented by Lambert Pharmacal Co. in 1921, which was of course curable by using that company’s product, Listerine.
This technique extends beyond customer goods, of course. As I follow what passes for political discourse in our great republic this fall, I see that there is much that I should fear and take steps to protect myself from.
For instance, there’s a disease called “votes with Nancy Pelosi 98 percent of the time,” as though this outgoing grandmother were the Evil Witch of the West Coast. But why would the putative cure of “votes with John Boehner 98 percent of the time” be any improvement?
However, even if I’m not terrified by Nancy Pelosi, I should fear that “Barack Obama wants to take away our guns.” Except that I’ve never read of such a statement from the White House, and further, gun rights have actually expanded since Obama took office.
One expansion was a Supreme Court case, McDonald vs. Chicago, that he had nothing to do with. But the other was in a bill Obama signed, allowing concealed carry in national parks if allowed by relevant state law.
Granted, if you run an advocacy organization that depends on member dues, be it the Sierra Club or the National Rifle Association, you need to keep your members thoroughly terrified so they’ll keep sending you money to protect them from whatever apocalypse you just contrived. But a little truth once in a while would be refreshing.
Another thing to fear is “the imposition of Sharia Law in the United States.” I confess to profound ignorance about Sharia Law, though I’ve heard it’s strong on family values, what with adultery punished by stoning (little wonder Newt Gingrich opposes it).
My ignorance is deliberate because back when we published a little magazine, we had a subscriber who was an engineer working in Saudi Arabia.
Every month I’d have to fill out a declaration when I mailed it to him, and that required me to sign an affidavit that, to the best of my knowledge, there was nothing inside that was offensive to the tenets of Islam.
This made me glad to be an American with a First Amendment. It also discouraged me from learning anything about the tenets of Islam, so that I could be honest in signing the declaration — perhaps an ad for a liquor store or an article about a local winery could offend those tenets, and the less I knew, the better.
At any rate, the imposition of Sharia Law in the United States is much less likely than the selective imposition of Levitical law. It’s selective because “Thou shalt not lie with mankind, as with womankind: it is abomination” should be heeded, but it’s OK to eat shellfish even though “Whatsoever hath no fins nor scales in the waters, that shall be an abomination unto you.”
I’ve never heard an American politician cite Sharia Law to support a position, but I have heard quotes from Leviticus.
So let’s be realistic about where the most plausible threats are coming from, and it’s not Sharia.
We’re also supposed to be afraid of “Colorado’s job-killing oil-and- gas drilling regulations.” If killing jobs is what the regulations were supposed to do, they were a miserable failure.
The regulations took effect on May 15, 2009. In October of that year, according to the Baker-Hughes rotary rig count, there were 38 active drilling operations in Colorado. This October, there are 67. With that track record, perhaps our legislature should come up with more “job-killing regulations.”
Maybe we should be afraid, though, and develop a healthy fear of those who keep inventing stuff to fear this election year.
Ed Quillen (ekquillen@gmail.com) of Salida is a regular contributor to The Denver Post.
