I’ve found myself thinking about a couple of 17th and 18th century political philosophers whose writings I read during college days: John Locke and Jean-Jacques Rousseau (“The Social Contract”).

I couldn’t fully appreciate them at the time, but I realize how important their philosophies are in this day and age. Their theories, which grew out of unhappiness with the monarchies that dominated in those days, underlay our constitution. Boiled down, these political pioneers argued that governments gain their legitimacy from the backing of the people. The philosophers also suggested a continual balancing act between individual rights and government power.

The ongoing discussion about my previous post is really about this essential balancing, and how it seems to have shifted toward ever growing government power. In a complex society like today’s, we definitely need regulators. But, as Steve Bemis suggests, the regulators are often cast in the position of making the judgments about the balance, and increasingly, they are reacting too much like the monarchs Locke and Rousseau so abhorred.

Something else that got me recollecting these two philosophers was, strangely enough, reading through the article on raw milk in the upcoming January issue of the journal, Clinical Infectious Diseases (“Unpasteurized Milk: A Continued Public Health Threat”). Now, this is the last place I’d expect to be prompted to think about political philosophy. But, in many respects, this article is more a political document than a scientific document, and it’s a document that is getting lots of press in established media (see the last item in the Boston Globe article I linked to). Its “science” is really a repetition of familiar FDA arguments about the dangers of raw milk.

But unlike the FDA, the paper’s writers acknowledge the raw milk community:

“Despite the overwhelming scientific understanding of pathogens in milk and the public health benefits of pasteurization, there is considerable disagreement between the medical community and raw-milk advocates concerning the alleged benefits of consumption of raw milk and the purported disadvantages of pasteurization.” The authors then repeat a number of lies—for example, “Raw milk advocates suggest that unpasteurized milk products are completely safe…” and “Scientific evidence to substantiate the assertions of the health benefits of unpasteurized milk is generally lacking.”

What interests me, though, is their conclusion about how to cope with “raw-milk advocates”: “When the public is presented with a large body of conflicting information, their decision-making process does not always yield the same results as that of experts. This problem is particularly complicated by the fact that individuals with established attitudes not only seek information that is supportive of their views but also unconsciously process information in a biased fashion. That results in a population that is not easily persuaded by informational messages alone.”

So, what do you do about knuckleheads who just don’t “get it”?  “…message clarity, message repetition, and source credibility.” In other words, keep repeating your points, regardless of what “raw-milk advocates” say.

And if that doesn’t work? Resort to old-fashioned threats, even against your colleagues who may sympathize with the knuckleheads, as the article concludes: “…physicians, veterinarians and dairy farmers who promote, or even condone, the human consumption of unpasteurized milk and dairy products may be at risk for subsequent legal action.”

The notion of fundamental human rights being at stake and an informed group of people making informed choices (and accepting the slight possibility that they or their children could become ill), isn’t really important to these self-appointed dictators. Just keep hitting the idiots over the head with “the facts” and they’ll come around. Maybe the regulators, scientists, and doctors need some refresher history and government courses. 

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The Fresno Bee reports on official settlement of the criminal case against Mark McAfee and Organic Pastures Dairy Co. over interstate sales of raw milk, which I’ve reported on several times over the last few months.