Time For A War On Error

Although I rarely reprint items from the newspaper in their entirety on this blog, occasionally someone says something so succinct and insightful that I can't resist. Roman Haluszka from Newmarket has the lead letter in today's Star that underscores the crucial role of critical thinking skills in today's world. Here it is:

Time for a War on Error

What we desperately need is a War on Error. We face these errors today economically, scientifically, historically, and socially.

Our economic errors are centered around budgetary issues as we spend far too much in providing subsidies to industries that don’t need them, from computer game makers to the oil and gas industry to agro-conglomerates and, of course, our wealthy elites (who pay far too little in taxes).

To pay for these errors we have been over-taxing the middle class, and are now engaged in dismanteling the “social safety net” that mainly benefits the middle class and the poor.

In the scientific realms we have allowed fundamentalist religious cranks the freedom to claim that Darwin’s Theory of Evolution is false, and substitute the utter nonsense of Creationism in its place.

We also allow (mainly conservative cranks tied to the oil and gas corporatocracy) to challenge climate change and the impact of human-caused pollution on it.

History is constantly being revised in Orwellian ways to justify invasions of other countries, territorial grabs from subjugated peoples; and the careful omission of facts is used to misplace focus on one group of people for all acts of terrorism, despite that group having ties to only 3 per cent of all terrorist acts around the globe.

Socially, we have allowed error to lead too many people to misjudgment of others, from Mike Harris claiming unemployed single mothers would spend welfare cheques on beer, and that teachers only work 4.25 hours per day, to Stephen Harper’s claim that Canada’s biggest terrorist threat is Islamicism.

Society is becoming more racist in its views, thanks to these politicians and the likes of Fox News and Sun TV.

An attack on error is not only overdue, it is essential to our well-being as a society.

Please sign this petition urging Prime Minister Harper to stop threatening Michaela Keyserlingk and to stop exporting asbestos.