Richard J Grant

Published in The Tennessean , December 27, 2009 Those who take medical risks get Congress' help By RICHARD J. GRANT "When I use a word," Humpty Dumpty said, in rather a scornful tone, "it means just what I choose it to mean — neither more nor less." "The question is," said Alice, "whether you can make words mean so many different things." "The question is," said Humpty Dumpty, "which is to be master — that's all." We can only wonder what Humpty Dumpty would have said about health insurance. The word "insurance" used to have a clear meaning. But as insurance has come increasingly under the control of our masters in the various levels and branches of government, the thing itself bears less and less correspondence to the word we use to describe it. Life comes with a natural uncertainty, and each of us must find a way to handle this fact. We can identify and, in many cases, measure the various risks that we face....

Published in The Tennessean , December 20, 2009 Constitution keeps us on the straight and narrow Richard J. Grant In Homer's epic, The Odyssey, Ulysses knows that he, like other men, will not be able to resist the Sirens' song and the temptation to get closer and turn his ship into the rocky shores of destruction. He wants to lead his ship and crew safely past the land of the Sirens, but he also wants to hear the Sirens' song and to know when he has passed the danger. So he orders his men to fill their ears with beeswax and to bind him tightly to the mast so that he can take no action that might endanger the ship as his men continue to row. Each of us has lived a similar story in that we have adopted rules of conduct that might at times clash with our temptations but guide us safely through the challenges of life. Sometimes we adopt these rules consciously and take responsibility for living up to them. But for the most part we absorb such rules, as part of our growing up, f...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, December 13, 2009 Don't confuse environmentalism with science by Richard J. Grant Truth is not determined by majority vote. Any talk of a "consensus" in science is best not taken as the final word. As Somerset Maugham once put it, "If 40 million people say a foolish thing it does not become a wise one, but the wise man is foolish to give them the lie." Climatology is a science, not to be confused with environmentalism. The heart of environmentalism is not to be found in the natural sciences. It is ideology and nothing more. That is why it ends in "-ism." Environmentalism is itself not a monolith, but its dominant strand is distinctly statist in character. As such, its main nemesis is the science of economics, not climatology or any of the other natural sciences. A sound understanding of economics is all that is needed to discredit the emerging interventionist social agenda of the environmental movement. The methods...

Published in The Tennessean , Sunday, December 6, 2009 Fudged global-warming data melt under scrutiny by Richard J. Grant Have you noticed how often it is assumed that people in business are ruthless, greedy and unprincipled in their pursuit of profit, but that people in government are assumed to be selfless, benevolent and unerring in their pursuit of social justice? Is there something about the two types of service that magically transforms human nature, or is there just some mysterious sorting mechanism? Here's an example. A corporation, let's say a big oil company, gives a monetary grant to a group for the purpose of funding research related to the issue of climate change. Around the same time, a government agency gives a monetary grant to another group, also for the purpose of funding research related to the issue of climate change. Is there a difference? Are the results of the two grants portrayed in the media in exactly the same way? If the research results cast doubt on...