What Will the Experts Demand Next?

If you watch or listen to what passes for mainstream news today, you will often hear from experts.  It seems we need experts to enlighten and guide us.

Unfortunately these experts are constantly given a platform to tell anyone listening that something utterly false is in fact true.  For instance, a man can be a woman. Naturally, this is not true.  Everyone knows this, whether you read the book of Genesis or a book on genetics.

Of course, many experts push the idea that there is no absolute truth.  There is ‘your truth and my truth.’  This is the only way they can justify the contradiction between what they want to be true with overwhelming evidence of what actually is true.

Much of what is expressed by these experts conflicts with Catholic teaching.  However, if you are Catholic, the ‘your-truth-my-truth’ argument seems to no longer applies.  This is because we Catholics, and really all Christians, are superstitious, uneducated bigots.

Where Did Experts Come From?

As civilizations grew and developed, a court of people surrounded most every king.  The dukes, governors, and other appointed courtiers acted as the king’s advisors and administrators.  These men were the educated folks who helped the king make decisions and then executed the king proclamations.  Since most people were illiterate, the few educated administrators were the experts of their time.

China’s forbidden city in Beijing is an excellent example.  Men voluntarily became eunuchs, trading their fertility, and its pleasures, for education and power.

With the fall of monarchies, courts disappeared for a period.  However, courtiers with a thirst for power did not.  They reinvented themselves.  They are the modern-day experts.  Look at any modern state (republic, democracy, or dictatorship), and experts hold positions of power.

Also, experts tend to imbed themselves in the bureaucracy.  Unlike heads of state that come and go, experts in many cases hold onto their positions for decades.

These elites create echo chambers of like-minded specialists. They define what an expert is, and then do not allow anyone into the club unless they have the same credentials and think along the same lines.  Then, these experts tell everyone they must listen to them.  They have given themselves a prominent place of authority.  Think Ellsworth Toohey, the antagonist in the book “The Fountainhead.”  (And yes, I know Rand was an objectivist and an atheist.  This does not change the portrait of the character she painted.)

It is not hard to determine who is an expert.  They will tell you.

Expert Track Record

Common people are asked to trust the advice of experts because the experts know better.  Here are some examples.

Experts claimed in the 1960’s that contraception would make abortion obsolete and out of wedlock births a thing of the past.  The experts were not only wrong, but as Mary Eberstadt has stated on many occasion, contraception brought many other catastrophic changes to the Western world.

Paul Ehrlich warned in the May 1970 issue of Audubon that chlorinated hydrocarbons such as DDT “may have substantially reduced the life expectancy of people born since 1945.  Ehrlich warned that Americans born after World War II had a life expectancy of only 49 years, and he predicted that if current patterns continued this expectancy would fall to 42 years by 1980.  However, recent CDC reports list the current life expectancy in the US to be over 78 years.

(There are 17 more “Spectacularly Wrong Predictions” made by experts in the above linked-to article.)

In June 2018, Greta Thunberg quoted James Anderson of Harvard on Twitter reiterating that, “climate change will wipe out all of humanity unless we stop using fossil fuels over the next 5 years.”  It is November of 2023, and we are still here.

In general, I have found that if someone needs to tell you they are an expert, they most likely are not.  These modern day Pharisees seem to spend more time telling than actually practicing what they preach.

Skilled and talented people do not need to tell you they are capable.  They show you by their actions.  These are the real experts hidden in our daily lives.  Some hold credentials.  Others are just practiced.

Consider the mother homeschooling her 9 children, each of whom is smart, polite, and joyful.  Is she any less an expert than Dr. Spock?

Coveting Thy Neighbor’s Decisions

All the advice seems to have a common theme.  Elite experts seem to covet other people’s decisions.  Do as I say or something bad will happen.  Moreover, it seems giving expert advice is not enough.  In many cases, they demand that their advice become law.

When I was younger, I attended a workshop where the instructor used this example to describe the difference between involvement and commitment.  “When serving bacon and eggs, the chicken is involved, but the pig is committed.”

In many cases, these elite experts demand to be involved in making decisions that commit others while they themselves remain uncommitted.

Freely Accepting Risk & Decisions

The early Christians snuck into the catacombs to attend Mass under penalty of death. Many of them became martyrs for the Faith.  Yet during these times, bishops did not forbid them from taking the Eucharist until the persecution rate fell to an acceptable level.

Throughout history, Catholics were known to go places of distress and minister to the sick.  St. Catherine of Siena and St. Brigid of Sweden both cared for victims of the plague (the Black Death) in Europe between 1347 and 1351.  Fr. Damien of Molokai cared for lepers.  And Father Whelan ministered to prisoners during the American Civil War.  Priests have risked their lives and often lost their lives sharing the Gospel like in Guatemala.

However, something changed.  In March of 2020, Catholic bishops abdicated decisions and even enforced the lockdowns for Covid-19.  Access to the sacraments was lost.  Even after months of empirical data showing that the experts were wrong and that the risk was low, few Bishops allowed their priests the freedom to administer the sacraments or  parishioners the freedom to choose to attend Mass.

Even now many parishes do not distribute the Precious Blood because it is not yet ‘safe.’  One can only conclude that “when it is safe,” in reality, may, in some cases, mean never.

What Will Experts Demand Next?

Looking at the current trend, how long will it be before experts encroach more and more into our daily lives? Moreover, are they in conflict with our Catholic values?

Experts told us we would be denied access to worship and the sacraments for 14 days.  In reality this lasted many months.  Experts also tell us that contraception and abortion are health care.  And experts tell us men can be women and women can be men.  Experts tell children (often without their parents’ knowledge) that there is a spectrum of genders.

Will experts demand that specific Catholic teachings be made illegal?  They have already tried.

How long before the Faithful will need to meet in secret to avoid the wrath of the experts?