Mr. Natelson rejects the idea that the Constitution addresses problems that no longer exist and is therefore somehow long past its expiration date. He tells a different story. He tells an American story. He tells a hopeful story.
Mr. Natelson understands and describes with remarkable clarity how the Founders designed the Constitution to be timeless, to provide a framework by which challenges that they couldn’t imagine could be best addressed. The Constitution doesn’t attempt to solve any particular problem. Rather, it’s crafted so that future generations could best address new challenges as they appear.
There’s an analogous story to be told in my line of work. I’m a chemist. Chemistry and chemicals are viewed with great suspicion by a significant proportion of Americans these days. Accordingly, the story that I intend to tell is about risk, perception, and science.
In “Defending the Constitution,” Mr. Natelson makes two points worth repeating here, because they summarize themes so broadly applicable in today’s world. The first is his observation, “Our public discourse has been poisoned by misinformation and disinformation. ...” The second point is, “Some well-meaning but utterly unqualified people have set themselves up as experts. ...” and that these people “lure thousands of American patriots into attending classes and seminars that spread inaccuracies.”
Those two statements can be applied to virtually any modern issue that involves scientific or technical complexities and most certainly when those issues involve risk, or the perception of risk.
Given the rapid rate of growth in knowledge of all sorts and the ever-increasing need for specialists to work out the intricacies, it should be no surprise that most public issues involve some level of technical complexity. The problem isn’t only that people don’t know. The problem is there are so many people who don’t know that they don’t know. Put another way, we find faux “scientific” experts and people who rely on faux “scientific” experts throughout our world. Whether through ignorance or by intention, these “experts” distribute misinformation that their listeners confidently repeat.
At one time, the United States could be described as a society that was risk tolerant. Today, more and more Americans are risk obsessed. The former describes a healthy approach that carefully considers the risk part of a risk/reward proposition in a reasonable context. The latter describes those individuals who will consider no risks unless they approach zero and dismiss any possible reward unless the chances of achieving it are near certain. The risk-tolerant person looks before leaping. The risk-obsessed refuses to consider momentarily leaving the ground in the first place.
Given this climate of fear, it was inevitable that the United States would eventually engage in farcical and harmful overreaction to a perceived national crisis. It wasn’t surprising that COVID-19 triggered the sort of chaos that we experienced during that “crisis.” It was rather remarkable that that level of turmoil and angst hadn’t happened previously, when people are determined to be afraid and there are legions of people and organizations eager and able to stoke fear and exploit it. Transforming concern into calamity is rather easy in our modern age.
What we used to call the “pioneering spirit” of the United States hasn’t completely disappeared yet, but it’s fading fast. One hundred and sixty years ago, the average life expectancy in the United States was about 40 years. Today, it’s almost double. One might expect that the prospect of living longer would bring comfort. For many, it has the opposite effect. It nurtures fear.
A century and a half ago, with the exception of the very rich, most people lived in conditions that we would find extremely unhealthy today. Medicine hadn’t advanced all that much from medieval times. Most streets were slippery and muddy when it rained. A walk down the street meant dodging horse droppings and other fecal matter. Drinking water was often contaminated, and food safety wasn’t much of a priority.
Yet, in spite of—or maybe because of—the risks, people back then took chances. They crossed frontiers. They set up new towns and farms. They built railroads. And they did all of that, and so much more, without the benefit of today’s safety standards and practices. Many died as they built this still-young country. Can we imagine a construction project today that resulted in more than 1,000 deaths? Journalists and politicians would engage in a contest to see who could shriek the loudest. But that’s what building the transcontinental railroad cost: more than 1,000 dead. They called that “the price of progress.”
If our ancestors took too many chances back then, it seems that we don’t take enough today. Many cling to the idea of living as long as possible so tightly that they’re blinded to the quality, wonder, and purpose of life. They become misers of and in their own bodies, at times afraid of merely breathing lest some unknown substance find its way into their bodies, which they seem to think otherwise incorruptible.
With that in mind, I’m going to be taking a closer look at risk over the next several weeks. I hope to show readers how risks are often vastly over-inflated and how damaging that can be to our country and the most vulnerable part of the populace. I won’t speculate as to why certain risks are exaggerated, nor point fingers at those who might be spreading hyperbole. It’s my hope that at the end of this effort, readers will have gained a degree of clarity about science, technology, and risk that approximates a fraction of the clarity that Mr. Natelson brought to my understanding of the Constitution.
