📘 2+2=4 Vol. 3: First Do No Harm

Covering topics from COVID-19 to the next POTUS, transgenderism and misogyny.

(Source: Freepik)

These days, I am often reminded of a famous phrase from the French Declaration of the Rights of Man and of the Citizen of 1789, one of the most important documents of the Age of Enlightenment. Its fourth article states: “Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others.”¹ The meaning and interpretation of this powerful statement hinges on the definition of its central verb: “harm”. How can we objectively define “harm”? The Merriam-Webster dictionary says that “to harm” means “to damage or injure physically or mentally”, but this definition still remains complicated: What one person might consider physically or mentally harmful, another one might consider harmless or necessary or even helpful. Everything is in the eye of the beholder, especially in today’s post-truth era.

Today’s selection of articles and podcasts is about questioning our belief about what constitutes “harm”. Covering a variety of topics from the lies of pharmaceutical companies during (and before) the COVID pandemic, the looming 2024 Presidential Election, the dispute over race and class as well as gender ideology and its destructive effect on children, women and women’s rights, it becomes clear that the meaning of the Hippocratic Oath (First Do No Harm) – both in its narrower, medical sense and in its broader, philosophical and moral sense – has been hollowed out.

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#1 The Joe Rogan Experience with Dr. Aseem Malhotra

by Joe Rogan (The Joe Rogan Experience, published on April 29, 2023)

Once a proponent of the COVID-19 vaccine, Dr. Aseem Malhotra changed his mind when his own father died of cardiac arrest six months after receiving the jab. Since then, he has been trying to sound the alarm bell and make governments suspend COVID-19 vaccinations until there is better, more reliable and independent data available. Malhotra, a certified cardiologist, recounts how challenging the COVID-19 vaccine narrative has elicited smear campaigns against him, quite similar to when he questioned the efficacy of statins – another yearly billion-dollar business – around ten years ago. In his intriguing conversation with mega-podcaster Joe Rogan, it becomes once again clear that Big Pharma is always connected to Big Money – and that everything else, including harmful side effects, is simply collateral damage.

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#2 The Crazy Contours of the Crazier 2024 Election

by Victor Davis Hanson (American Greatness, published on May 1, 2023)

“Crazy” is certainly an apt adjective to describe the current political playing field in the US. With concision, insight and a sprinkle of sarcasm (which I always appreciate) Victor David Hanson outlines the strange situation on the Left (who has a senile President and no viable alternatives for a strong candidate) and the even stranger situation on the Right (who has an ex-president fighting against an indictment and a certain Governor of Florida still strategically hesitating to announce his candidacy). The only thing that is clear is that everything is unclear: At this point, the race for the 2024 US Presidential Election is as unpredictable as it gets.

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#3 It’s Class, Not Race

by Robert Lynch (Areo Magazine, published on May 4, 2023)

Robert Lynch’s article is a much needed scientific dissection of economic differences in the United States that lays out how class much more than race determines the probability of financial success and social mobility. Class itself is a complex, multi-factorial concept that exists across all ethnic groups; in fact, Mr. Lynch points out how Black children born to rich parents “are more than twice as likely to become rich adults as white children whose parents are in the bottom quintile.” To tackle the problem of social inequality, the government needs to tackle the country’s economic caste system, not harm the country even more by making everything about race.

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#4 The privileged ignorance of Daniel Radcliffe

by Julie Burchill (Spiked Online, published on April 14, 2023)

There is a very fine like between writing a hit piece on a famous starlet and a biting commentary on his dubious behavior, and Julie Burchill does an excellent job at walking it. After calling out Daniel Radcliffe’s media-effective public defense of half a dozen “trans children” and his unequivocal dig at J.K. Rowling by calling all non-affirming adults “condescending”, Ms. Burchill breaks down the dangerous belief of gender ideologues that children as young as four should socially transition and how trans ideology effectively promotes the sterilization of children. Radcliffe, however, showered with privilege and therefore in need of virtue signalling, perfectly ignores all of this by boarding the woke gender affirming train.

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#5 Not so Keen on free speech

by Helen Joyce (The Critic, published in May 2023)

Once again, Ms. Joyce makes the reading list, this time with a worthwhile piece about how radical transgender activism is harming freedom of speech – more specifically, women’s freedom of speech. Whether it be Kellie-Kay Keen who is advocating for the protection of female-only spaces, Professor Kathleen Stock who is arguing that all lesbians are females, or swimmer Riley Gaines who is campaigning for keeping sex-based categories in women’s sports, women’s voices are being silenced by violent mobs of trans activists. Defending these women is not just about defending sex-based rights, it has become a matter of defending freedom of speech.

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#6 Yes, The Trans Movement Is Coming For Your Kids

by John Daniel Davidson (The Federalist, published on May 3, 2023)

In the debate about transgenderism and gender ideology, I strongly believe that people from all sides of the political spectrum must come together to protect children. Left or Right, Democrat or Republican, Liberals, Conservatives, Moderates, it doesn’t matter. In his piece for Conservative online magazine The Federalist, Mr. Davidson outlines the worrisome connection between the trans movement and the push for the legalization of pedophilia, or in other words the new acceptance for so-called “minor-attracted people”. What has started with “Drag Queen Story Hour” and children’s books about coital positions, is bound to go somewhere much, much more disturbing.

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#7 The Only Way Out of the Child-Gender Culture War

by Helen Lewis (The Atlantic, published on May 4, 2023)

Any article in a major mainstream media outlet that questions the safety and efficacy of so-called “gender-affirming care” for “trans children” must be chalked up as a victory in the fight to protect children. While I do not agree on everything Ms. Lewis outlines in this article, she nevertheless draws one important conclusion: In order to deescalate the culture war and prevent gender dysphoric children from “potential” harm, more research and scientific data on transition, detransition and the effects of hormone blockers and cross-sex hormones are necessary. However, she (deliberately?) overlooks one crucial point: How are we supposed to obtain reliable data when most academic institutions have been ideologically captured by gender ideology?

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#8 Andrea Long Chu’s Pulitzer win is an insult to women

by Joan Smith (UnHerd, published on May 12, 2023)

And another institution has fallen into the abyss of gender ideology: A porn enthusiast named Andrea Long Chu who identifies as a “transgender woman” has won the Pulitzer Prize for literary criticism. Apparently, loving “sissy porn” and describing the anus as “a kind of universal vagina through which femaleness can always be accessed” (not a joke) now qualifies you for a pole position in the race for a Pulitzer. Ms. Smith’s well-written commentary is spot-on in her analysis of how utterly disgraceful this decision is and how, once again, misogyny is being propagated in the guise of transgenderism.

1. “La liberté consiste à pouvoir faire tout ce qui ne nuit pas à autrui.”