Dr. Forbush Thinks

The radical right knows what it likes and it likes what it knows. However, the truth isn’t what it knows. Instead, they have an ideology and they would like to have their books and information to supersede all other books and information.

This can be seen on the website: www.humaneventsonline.com. The website has published a list of the 10 most harmful books of the 19th and 20th century. There is nothing like getting a little negative to stir the pot. This is one step below censorship. Instead of declaring that the books be burned they just rank the books to be harmful. This may seem to be a minor step, but who wants children harmed?

Why would I suggest that these books could harm children? The truth is that they would not be harmed by these books, but the effect of publishing this list is bound to have repercussions among the general public who doesn’t quite understand the value of knowledge. Instead, they see a list of harmful books and they run off to the library to make sure that harm isn’t happening at the library. It is well known that top ten lists of books promote the sales of books. Why wouldn’t we expect that the opposite result wouldn’t be true?

We need to keep in mind that we need to be aware of history and the history of human thought so that we are not doomed to repeat history. If the books on this list begin to be found less and less around the country we will find someone who will not have read these books. This person is bound to come to similar conclusions and they will begin the populace on the same road we traveled to the Soviet Union or Nazi Germany. We should remember that the Inquisition caused pain, suffering and death, not the puritanically clean population desired by the church. We should remember how the evils began.

But, we should consider some of the books on this list. “The Communist Manifesto,” “Mein Kampf,” and “Quotations from Chairman Mao” round out the top three. These are books that have been treated like the Bible to justify evils. The Bible, which also caused many harms when used in this way is not considered because it wasn’t published in the 19th or 20th century. Lucky for the creators of this list, because the Bible would rank number one if earlier publications could have been considered.

Number four on the list “The Kinsey Report” should be a surprise. This was the first attempt at a scientific study of sex. Many aspects of sex were studied and this was the foothold of understanding. Many of the initial studies were slightly wrong, but that shouldn’t justify putting the book on a list of harmful books. Actually the reason for placing the book on this list is more likely to be because the radical right doesn’t believe in understanding the truth about sex and sexual activity. Being prudish by nature they would rather have the book labeled as dangerous in order to justify eradicating it from the libraries and schools.

I didn’t intend to cover all ten of the books, but the tenth book is another interesting book. It is “General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money” by John Maynard Keynes. This book is chastized by this website because he “…argued, the government should run up deficits, borrowing and spending money to spur economic activity.” So, this is something that George W Bush must have read. To bad they didn’t have this list out in time to prevent the President from borrowing money to give tax cuts to the wealthy in order to spur the economy.

Check out the list at: link. There are quite a few honorable mentions as well. But keep this in mind when the radical right starts banging the drum of censorship based on lists like these.


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I was thinking about the insanity of our current administration. It is hard to imagine that the American system works when I think about what these guys get away with and how the American public accepts their action as a “matter of fact.”

When the Vietnam war was ending and the protesters began to attend the Discos instead of the protest rallies activists asked themselves why the public wasn’t more engaged with the many other issues facing the country. The consensus seemed to be “We saved the country from the stupidity of the government. We know that this will never happen again, because we have shown the government what the limits to their reach are. We have done what good rational Americans should do to save our country from the brink of disaster. Now we can rest assured that it won’t happen again and we can go party.”

Many people lost friends and relatives in a stupid war that meant nothing for Americans but something for the oil companies that thought that the Gulf of Tonkin held large amount of oil. My mother’s friend lost her boyfriend. My father lost some friends as well. These weren’t people that I knew, but I knew that the war hit hard at home and no one felt that it was worth the blood and treasures being wasted on it.

But, it isn’t the soldier’s stupidity – it’s the government’s stupidity for sending soldiers to fight a useless and needless war. When the government uses lies and deception to build support for a war Americans need to be vigilant.

So, I was thinking about a different timeline in a different world. This is a gedanken experiment into what life would be like if we had George W Bush as president during 9/11 but the cold war was not over. Would we even be here at all? Chances are that playing loose with the facts as the Bush administration continues to do then we would find ourselves in a much different America.

Imagine 9/11 happening again, but this time our number one enemy is still the Soviet Union. Would the Bush administration believe the truth, that Arab terrorists had conducted the plot? I believe that would feel that a “state” must be behind such a horrible attack. In fact the conservatives and radical right would be the first to accuse the number one enemy of the USA as being behind the plot. They must have been the ones to organize the plot, because the Bush administration surely couldn’t believe that a Saudi could mastermind the plot. The administration would surely ignore the truth as they did in the current case. They would call the Soviet Union on the carpet, because they surely must have been guilty. And, it may even be highly likely that even if the Soviet Union continued to deny the facts the Bush administration would surely call them liars and would certainly threaten them with a retaliation strike of some type to even the score.

It’s a scary thought to consider the stupidity of the Bush administration. We are just lucky to be living in the times that we do live in. But, it is easy to imagine that the Bush administration could still get us into a mess in the next three and a half years.


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Dr. Forbush Thinks – The Universe - Podcast

Editorial Opinion: (click here to download the mp3 file) The Universe

Robert Heinlein saw the cultural divide 50 years ago. He wrote about it and even made one of his stories into a radio play. What is the diference between conservatives and liberals?




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Editorial Opinion: (click here to download the mp3 file) Twenty Years From Now

What will the status of the abortion issue be twenty years from now?




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The Radical Right thinks that stem cells and abortion have something in common. In fact they think that these two things have everything in common.

From a legal point of view the definition of when life begins is at stake. If the definition were to allow the destruction of a few cells just after conception, then the issue of outlawing abortion would be hopeless. From the legal point of view one can not have deferent definitions for life for different processes.

So, I stand here today with hope for the pro-choice movement.

It doesn’t have anything to do with justice or rights for women. That wouldn’t rise high enough in priority for the Republicans with the money and power to be able to sway the political machine. It doesn’t really have anything to do with the life of the mother or the life of the fetus. No, it has to do with the life of the sixty-some year old wealthy Republican donors that actually control the direction of the Party.

Yes, the wealthy Republican donors are selfish.

What that means for this issue is that that is finally a crack in the wall that was put up with Roe v. Wade. The wealthy Republican donors are seeing the light through that crack. The wealthy Republican donors don’t want to suffer from life threaten and debilitating diseases. This means that the wealthy Republican donors are beginning to put pressure on politicians to do something about stem cell research. The vote in the House of Representatives this week illustrated the pressure that is beginning to build. And, as more wealthy Republican donors begin to realize that this is about their life they will put more pressure on the politicians to fix this problem. And, the definition of when life begins will be put off for a few months.

You see, the wealthy Republican donors never cared about the abortion issue. This is because the chances that a 60-some year old politician is going to have an unplanned pregnancy was very small. And, if the issue doesn’t effect one then one doesn’t really care to much about it. But, the Christian vote meant power to the wealthy Republican donors, so they were willing to concede some on this issue. But, now that it means life and death the issue has come to roost and the wealthy Republican donors that drive the action in the Republican Party are begin to wake up and smell the stem cells.

When George W Bush says it, then it must be true. Maybe it wouldn’t be true the first few times, but by the sixth time it’s got to be true. Right!?

Well, if you don’t believe it from me maybe you’ll believe it from George W Bush himself.

“Now, a personal savings account would be a part of a Social Security retirement system. It would be a part of what you would have to retire when you reach retirement age. As you -- as I mentioned to you earlier, we're going to redesign the current system. If you've retired, you don't have anything to worry about -- third time I've said that. (Laughter.) I'll probably say it three more times. See, in my line of work you got to keep repeating things over and over and over again for the truth to sink in, to kind of catapult the propaganda.”

This isn’t made up, it’s from his Propaganda Release May 24, 2005.

Why should we call it a “Press Release?” After all, he is telling us that he has to make us believe that he’s right. Now his truth is showing through. Maybe if we just passed a law saying that George W Bush can’t be wrong we could convince the rest of the people that he’s right.



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Freedom is a political buzzword used to argue many political points. This is because people find it difficult to argue against freedom. In fact the radical right has invented new vocabulary to talk about their ideas for limiting freedom. The left has been bashed when they are straightforward talking about limiting freedom. The truth of the matter is that government limits freedom no matter who is in charge. The question becomes whose freedom should be limited and why.

For those of you who still doubt what I am saying I will show you an example as to how government limits freedom and why it is good.

The very obvious example is to limit the freedom of one person in order to protect other people in society. This doctrine allows government to write laws that range from preventing people from killing each other to making traffic laws that prevent people from harming themselves. Every law that is written limits someone’s freedom, but in turn society wins because the society becomes safer for everyone.

In fact the history of civilization is based on the idea that people come together to protect each other from the harshness of the world. Making laws to protect people from themselves was another step on the road to civilization. The reduction of personal freedom didn’t seem to be an issue until people started to pass laws, which were considered to over step the protection vs. freedom conflict. One could argue that passing drug laws could help society by protecting individuals from themselves which would make society safer in general. But, as the great experiment of prohibition proved, the law against alcohol harmed society in ways that were not imagined when the law was passed. Illegal businesses were not controlled by the government, which allowed many of them to buy massive amounts of weapons and take the power away from the government. Money from these illegal businesses was not monitored and taxed causing a loss of income to the government. Lack of oversight and protection of the production of alcohol allowed dangerous alcohol to kill and blind many people. So, freedom was taken away from the people and the society grew more dangerous. Libertarians argue that the same situation exists now with regard to drug laws.

So, instead of using freedom as a banner for the American Life, the honest discussion should be about what freedoms should be limited to protect society and what freedoms should not be limited because the limitation only minimally protects society.

This is where we get to the two major political parties in the USA. The Republicans have traditionally been the champions of not restricting freedoms on corporations. They have traditionally believed that government regulations erode the efficiency of business and hence would hinder economic growth. Following this argument to its conclusion we would conclude that corporations should be allowed to do anything that enhances the economic growth of the American economy. For example, mining resources from the National Park system, perhaps even making prisoners into slaves to work for free. But, why stop at prisoners? Perhaps making it as difficult as possible for people to leave their current job would allow companies to hire workers at the lowest possible wages with the least benefits. This would make the US economy much better as measured by GDP.

As you can see, freedom for one class likely means less freedom for another class.

It is quite interesting however that the radical right embraced the concept of freedom for corporate America, but they want less freedom for working class America. Their vision is to limit social freedom. They would like to create pure and holy people to make their “good society.” And they want to define what “good” and “holy” mean. They want laws that stop abortions – that isn’t anything new. But, if they got those laws today they wouldn’t be happy. They want to make laws that would censor what you could view on TV. They want to make it more difficult to get birth control and alcohol. In fact they would likely want to make laws against every “so-called” sin in the Bible. That would include homosexuality and living with a person of the opposite sex while not being married.

The radical right also likes the idea of an American culture. They would like to limit the freedom of others who belong to other cultures. They would like to make English the official language of America, and make it difficult for those who don’t speak English. They would prefer that non-Christian religions don’t have the same status as Christian religions. All in all they want to limit minority freedoms and enhance their own freedoms at their expense.

In summary, the radical right would like to limit social freedoms and enhance corporate freedom. This is because they believe that limiting social freedom will make a society of pure and holy workers who won’t question the low wages that they should be grateful to get working at the monopoly corporations. This is the radical right’s dream for America and it seems to be coming true.

Dr. Forbush Thinks - Culture of Life - Podcast

Editorial Opinion: (click here to download the mp3 file) Culture of Life

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The wealthy are getting wealthier. The poor are getting poorer. And the Republican dream of the middle class becoming poor is coming true.

Middle class support for the Republican Party is like the middle class shooting a machine gun at their head. The Tom DeLays, Karl Roves and Bill Frists continue to tell the middle class that they support the middle class. But where is the legislation that proves that? There isn’t any. The one chance the Republicans had to prove that they were the Party of the people they voted to give the wealthy a tax break. They middle didn’t get one and that’s a fact.

So, it shouldn’t be any surprise to see the latest economic data.
The Christian Science Monitor tells us that the gap between richer and poorer is getting larger, and those on the rich side of the gap are falling into the abyss to crawl out on the other side. This is the same trend that happened during the Reagan administration, and was reversed for a time during the Clinton administration. It is happening again and there is no looking back.



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Editorial Opinion: (click here to download the mp3 file) Drunken Sailor

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