10 hours ago
- Health
- Wall Street Journal
What Would We Do Without Experts?
The question in today's headline has often been asked by this column with a sarcastic chuckle, though sometimes it's been hard to find the humor in an age afflicted by the abuse of academic credentials for political ends. It certainly wasn't funny during the Covid panic when medical authority was used by government officials to silence dissent, restrict human liberty and impose enormous and unnecessary burdens on America's children. But today one has to be feeling a little better about the ability of a free people to make democratic choices without having to bow before an ideological agenda dressed up as scientific consensus.
Last December, while it remained unclear who was running the U.S. Government, the nominal Biden administration attempted one last effort to use the court system to take power over a controversial question away from voters. Specifically the government attempted to persuade the Supreme Court to block states from deciding whether sex-transition treatments can be administered to minor children. Team Biden defended such practices with a dubious appeal to expert authority, as if it was settled science that such treatments are appropriate and necessary. Thank goodness the Supreme Court didn't buy this last heaping helping of Biden-era malarkey.
