Reblogged:Antibacterial Soap and America’s Drift into a Sleepy Totalitarianism

[Michael J. Hurd Ph.D.]

Today the Food and Drug Administration announced that it is pulling a wide range of antimicrobial soaps from the market, citing a lack of evidence that they work—and reinforcing the idea that they actually might exacerbate the looming threat of antibiotic resistance.

The FDA first proposed the ban on antimicrobial soaps back in 2013. Since then, it’s asked soap manufacturers to submit data showing their products did a better job of keeping disease-causing germs out of the body than plain soap and water, without adverse health effects. The agency found the results either incomplete or unconvincing. “We didn’t get confirmation that these products are harmful,” said FDA spokeswoman Andrea Fischer. “But there’s not enough data to make the case for their effectiveness.”

Since when did manufacturers and producers become obliged to prove to the federal government that their product is worthwhile? Why do soap manufacturers have to sell their ideas and products to the government? Isn’t it their job to sell their product to the customer?

The issue here is not science. It’s coercion. Government is not merely informing people here. Government is ordering people on what they may or may not buy, regardless of what their own judgment, experience, or various informed opinions on the subject may suggest. Big Mommy Government is trying to decide, for all people in all situations, whether it’s valid to buy a certain soap product. It’s not a new precedent, but the indifference with which the “American sheeple” greet such edicts is disturbing, at least if self-responsibility, individual rights and liberty are things you value.

For once, I’d like the burden of proof to be on the government agency, rather than the business, to justify its reason for existence. And remember, when government clamps down on a business, it’s clamping down on customers as well. People who currently don’t wish to buy or use antibacterial soap won’t care, one way or the other. But those who do, and believe they have found some use from doing so, now must follow the orders of the government. By what right does the government do this?

It’s a slippery slope, not just with soap, but with anything. The government big and powerful enough to tell you what soap you may use will eventually tell you what food you may eat, what medical services you may or may not use, what books or websites you may read, and many more things. (It’s already happening, of course.) Don’t people realize that totalitarianism like Communism or Nazism starts with little tiny attacks on freedom? Those attacks accumulate over time and one day you wake up to hear that … the government is shutting down websites, or forbidding certain candidates from running for president. Why? Because some agency or another has determined that these ideas or people are not good for you. It’s the exact same reasoning they used to take away your soap a few years earlier. It’s happening with just about everything else in society: cars, clothes, soap, food, water pressure in your shower, things now too countless to name or identify. Don’t you think it’s just a matter of time before they go after your minds, in the realm of ideas, as well? Does anyone even care?

Agencies like the FDA (along with the FCC, the FEC and so many others) don’t protect us, as most erroneously believe. We’re capable of protecting ourselves, if we apply thought, reason, personal experience and personal experimentation with matters like soap products. And these agencies are not accountable to anyone. They issue direct orders with only theoretical control from Congress or the Supreme Court. As our country moves towards essentially one-party rule, where the two nominal parties agree and cooperate on everything with only rare dissension, there’s less and less wiggle room for the minority of individualists who still exist to think and act for themselves.

The controversy over antibacterial soap is a scientific one. The government, if it insists on taking action, could simply inform people of the arguable risks and benefits of antibacterial soap and leave it to people to decide for themselves. Of course, a private organization with a good reputation could do that job even better than a government agency, but that’s a separate point. The only point that really matters here is that increasingly, government interferes with our rights and our functioning as reasoning, thinking, independent and autonomous human beings. Increasingly, it’s all command-and-control from Washington DC. They do our thinking for us and we let them.

The reaction to this decision is the one you typically hear. “Oh, so now they’re saying this soap isn’t good for you.” Who is “they,” anyway?  Is it “their” job to tell us what’s good for us? Or is it our own job, responsibility and right to do so for ourselves? Or others might counter that the soap is good for you. Almost nobody will challenge the government’s right to impose this decision on everyone. They only wonder if the edict is the right one, or if there should be a different edict. This is not the mentality that won America’s freedom from the British, the North’s victory over the South in the Civil War, nor World War II. A nation of sheep cannot function or defend itself, its economy will not continue to thrive, and ultimately such a nation will not survive.

Liberty, freedom and individual rights are not duties. They are the natural and inevitable outgrowth of independent and self-responsible thinking. How in the world are we to be mentally healthy people of strong character if we let this one-party government rule our every move? What happens when they spread their will into the areas covered by the First and Second Amendments, the only two freedoms we really still have? Stay tuned, because that’s the next chapter in our history.

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[DonAthos]

On 9/3/2016 at 2:25 AM, Michael J. Hurd Ph.D. said:

Since when did manufacturers and producers become obliged to prove to the federal government that their product is worthwhile?

I agree with Hurd on antimicrobial soaps (obviously). It isn't the government's role to interfere in the economy, which is really a violation of individual right. He's also right to talk about the accumulation of such abuses and the groundwork being laid for further abuse (the "slippery slope").

But I think he goes too far here:

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As our country moves towards essentially one-party rule, where the two nominal parties agree and cooperate on everything with only rare dissension, there’s less and less wiggle room for the minority of individualists who still exist to think and act for themselves.

"One-party rule" is a significant concept with meaningful historical roots. It conjures Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia (which Hurd also alludes to in this very post, so I don't think it accidental), which criminalized political dissent and allowed for zero political alternatives -- no legal means of changing the course of governance.

This is so radically different from the current United States (which is suffuse with dissent, as Hurd himself demonstrates through this very essay, and many legal political alternatives) as to be an intellectually insulting comparison. Yes, as Objectivists, we can see the underlying similarity in thought between even avowed enemies on the "left" and "right" -- their statist commonalities -- but this is mostly philosophical in character, not legal. If everyone currently in the political system agrees on certain things -- things we know to be bad -- then that's unfortunate, but it is not the same thing as "one-party rule." We cannot equate the ongoing disagreement of the majority with Objectivist political theory to legal disenfranchisement, yet I believe that's exactly what Hurd is doing.

And this is not merely some academic objection I'm raising, but many Objectivists are familiar with the ongoing debate over the circumstances under which some kind of "revolution" may, in theory, be justified. Very often the threshold is held to be "dictatorship," and when we cross that threshold, all bets are off. Well, "one-party rule" is one of the hallmarks of dictatorship, not alone in reality or by my say-so, but also explicitly, per Rand:

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There are four characteristics which brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship: one-party rule—executions without trial or with a mock trial, for political offenses—the nationalization or expropriation of private property—and censorship.

I should note that with Rand's phrasing here, an argument could be made that a dictatorship need not necessarily have all four: these are merely the things which "brand a country unmistakably as a dictatorship." Elsewhere, she has also said, for instance:

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Volumes can be and have been written about the issue of freedom versus dictatorship, but, in essence, it comes down to a single question: do you consider it moral to treat men as sacrificial animals and to rule them by physical force?

But my point is that "one-party rule" is a very significant milestone on the road to totalitarianism, and one which is in fact almost synonymous with dictatorship. It is a specter that ought not and cannot be raised lightly, as for instance in the course of a blog about restrictions on antimicrobial soap (however much that might be a bad thing in its own right). The notion that the United States has descended -- or is descending -- into "one-party rule" is the kind of thing which may inspire folks to drastic action, because were it true, drastic action might actually be defensible or even necessary.

It is a dangerous accusation.

Now perhaps a case could be made that Hurd buys himself some space in that he does not say that the United States has one-party rule currently, but only that our country "moves towards" it "essentially"... though "essentially" is a funny qualifier. How exactly are we to measure the "essence" of "one-party rule" apart from counting political parties, or examining those laws and political decisions which criminalize political action outside of the ruling party? Is this something one feels his way to, or is there a proposed metric?

And then I wonder about the idea of our "moving toward" one-party rule -- by which Hurd actually means political agreement between parties: where is the evidence for that? 2016 is, to my reading, a particularly strange year to make this observation. He describes his version of "one-party rule" as where "the two nominal parties agree and cooperate on everything with only rare dissension." I should note, first of all, that we have many more than two parties, whether "nominal" or "actual." If our "third parties" do not have much political traction (accounting perhaps, at least in part, to our own routine arguments as to dismiss third parties in our political strategizing and engagement), that is still something other than Nazi Germany or Soviet Russia, which did not allow third parties, or even second parties, but only one party: which is actually what one-party rule is all about.

And then, do our "two nominal parties" agree and cooperate on everything "with only rare dissension"? Does that sound like American politics in 2016 (or in any other year)? Does it seem like the agreement and cooperation have been increasing, of late? Is there even agreement and cooperation within these "two nominal parties"? As one possible measure of "cooperation," consider "gridlock." Here's a discussion of one study (albeit one, and I have not looked very deeply into it) which suggests that gridlock is on the rise (and consequently that cooperation is on the decline). Anecdotally, I will report that, though American politics has always seemed fractious to me, it has seemed much more so of late. Perhaps that's not compelling data, but if anyone would like to take up the claim that agreement and cooperation between the parties has been demonstrably growing, and dissension "rare," I will happily do more research, because I just cannot imagine that this is the case, in reality.

And really, though I generally prefer to leave these sorts of things to Rand (and those who try to ape her style, though without her genius, and typically without merit), I am left wondering how Hurd can make this (almost sneaked-in) remark about "one-party rule" in the face of a reality which seems to me so screamingly the opposite. How can he suggest that the two (major) parties "agree and cooperate on everything with only rare dissension," or that this is even increasingly the case, in a time when that has seemingly never been further from the truth?

What sort of mentality does that require? And what is the endgame?

Consider that his remark about one-party rule, and how we are "essentially moving towards" it, was not a one-off, offered and then forgotten. Later in his post, it comes back, but without the dubious qualifiers. Here it is merely taken for granted that we do indeed have one-party rule:

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How in the world are we to be mentally healthy people of strong character if we let this one-party government rule our every move?

I do not know properly how to describe or define this methodology, this intellectual malfeasance, but I find it deeply, deeply distressing.

___________________________

As one last note, I anticipate that perhaps some might feel I'm being unfair to Hurd, in seizing on such a minor aspect from a blog which is expressly devoted to other issues. I have sometimes been accused of focusing on the wrong things. But as correct as I believe Hurd is with respect to the issue of soap, to me that does not excuse the errors he makes in prosecuting his arguments. Just as means matter to ends, so too do our arguments matter to our conclusions.

Many times (the great majority, really), I let such things go unremarked. I hardly have the time (let alone the interest) to comment upon everything in the world that strikes me funny. But as I've mentioned above, I think that this is a significant error, and one which leads me to question Hurd even more deeply than his ongoing advocacy for Trump, and related issues of immigration, and etc.

[New Buddha]

There are two points in the OP that I think are relevant to discussion.

1.) What role does/should the government play with regards to false-advertising?  Is false advertising a "breach-of-contract" ? (I say yes, it is)  If so, can the government prevent en masse a company from advertising that their product "kills bacteria", even if there is no evidence that it does so?

2.)  Per the article, there might be some evidence that low-levels of anti-microbial additives in hand soaps help to develop more resistant strains of bacteria.  Is the prevention of the wide spread use of these soaps any different than laws that were enacted to prevent people from dumping human waste into the public water supply (i.e. colorea prevention measures) ? 

Edited September 5, 2016 by New Buddha

[bluecherry]

1 hour ago, New Buddha said:

1.) What role does/should the government play with regards to false-advertising?  Is false advertising a "breach-of-contract" ? (I say yes, it is)  If so, can the government prevent en masse a company from advertising that their product "kills bacteria", even if there is no evidence that it does so?

Actually, I'm pretty sure the bacteria killing is pretty well established. The question is just whether killing the bacteria (what the antibacterial soaps do) really provides any significant health advantage over just removing them (what regular soaps do).