Next to the Last Refuge No Protection

Aberdeen American News ^ | March 12, 2002 | Art Marmorstein

[ancientart]

"Violence," said Isaac Asimov, "is the last refuge of the incompetent." In a democratic society, this is certainly so. Democratic government depends on the rule of reason rather than the rule of force, and whenever one side of a political issue resorts to violence rather than persuasion to gain its way, democratic government begins to collapse.

But there is a warning sign just before a society gets to the violence stage. The political conversation changes tone. Words cease to be tools of reason and become weapons. And then we get the next to the last refuge of the incompetent: the sneer.

Now the sneer has some advantages. It will do for any issue. It requires no evidence. You don't even have to be in the right to sneer effectively. And, as William Paley told us, it's unanswerable: "Who can refute a sneer?"

But the sneer is a dangerous weapon. It closes out the possibility of compromise and mutual understanding. It has a tendency to backfire, alienating people you might like as your allies. And it encourages, almost forces, the other side to retaliate in kind.

Leonard Pitts' message to Focus on the Family president James Dobson (Feb. 24 American News Opinion page) shows the problems with relying on the sneer. Pitts' goal is to defend the Colin Powell position on condoms. Like Powell, Pitts thinks that, although we wish kids would abstain from sex, they won't-and so we ought to encourage them at least to use condoms as the lesser of evils. A plausible argument, worth considering. But instead of stopping here, Pitts, like Powell, has to sneer at those with a different view.

It's worth noting that Powell went out of his way to offend conservatives with his MTV interview. "Forget about taboos," he said, "forget about conservative ideas with respect to what you should tell young people about."

But it is apparent that Powell and Pitts have missed something important in what conservatives like Dobson have been saying about condom use. Dobson's message is that, quite aside from the morality of the issue, encouraging the use of condoms is a public health mistake. Why? Because, condoms apparently are not effective at all in stopping the spread of most STD's.

A study released last year by the National Institute of Allergies and Infectious Diseases, the National Institutes of Health, and the Department of Health and Human Services gives us some rather bad news about condoms. It concludes that condoms do indeed provide protection against AIDS, reducing the risk of getting HIV/AIDS an impressive 85 percent.

The bad news is that condoms provide no clinically demonstrable risk reduction for syphilis, herpes, chlamydia, human papillomavirus (HPV), trichomoniasis, or chancroid. And, while condom use limits the risk of contracting gonorrhea for men, there's no demonstrable benefit at all for women.

Further, Dobson points out that even AIDS-ravaged Uganda has had considerable success in reducing HIV infection rates with a different approach: the abstinence-until-marriage "True Love Waits" program.

Now it's not altogether certain that condoms are as ineffective as the government study says, nor would I place complete reliance on the Ugandan ambassador's testimony to the effectiveness of "True Love Waits."

But doesn't it seem that there are issues here worth rational discussion, and enough common ground to make that discussion fruitful? Sixty-five million Americans are living with an STD of one type or another: a major public health problem, if not a crisis. With this many carriers, millions more are certain to be infected. We ought to be doing our best to figure out what really is the best strategy in stopping the spread of sexually-transmitted diseases. And, while we're at it, maybe we could do something to limit verbally-transmitted diseases as well - starting, perhaps, with the sneer.

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Art Marmorstein, Aberdeen, is a professor of history at Northern State University. Write to him at the American News, P.O. Box 4430, Aberdeen, SD 57402, or e-mail at americannews@aberdeennews.com. His columns run occasionally.