Archive for July 7th, 2004

The 43-1 Myth

When George Washington got pneumonia in 1799 his university-trained doctors of medicine bled him. They took out a quart and half of his blood and he died. Today, when the population is in physical danger from criminals, the university-trained doctors of philosophy demand that every honest endangered citizen be stripped of any means of self-defense.

Medicine was a primitive study in 1799. Social science admits it is a primitive study today. But the fact that thousands like Washington died from bleeding made no difference to MDs back then, and the fact that defenseless people are being killed on the streets right now makes no difference at all to today’s PhDs.

I explain this in my latest book, Why Johnny Can’t Think. I give example after example of statements that pass for truth in academia and in the liberal media they talk to, statements that are not only false, but are silly on their face.

My favorite is the 43-1 myth. For years professors said that for every person who defends his home with his gun, 43 people who try it have their gun taken away from them are shot by the brave, cool, professional burglar.

Usually no one ever questions insane statements like that when professors make them. But finally career policemen started writing letters to the editor pointing out that they had known many cases of people defending their property with guns, but they had never even heard of an incident where the brave, cool, professional criminal had taken the gun away from an armed citizen, much less shot him with it.

Everything about today’s social sciences stinks of the fallacies of all primitive fields of study. It is time for a wholesale firing of those professors, a revolution against them which is demanded in Why Johnny Can’t Think: America’s Professor-Priesthood.

This book is not another whine about leftist bias on campus. It is a demand for revolution.

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