Form Versus Substance

Which is more important: the form of a thing, or the substance? The cover of a book, or the content? Perception, or reality?

I started thinking about this idea at the caucus earlier this month. Much of the debate over a primary versus a caucus stemmed from a question of when should Idaho take place in the presidential nominating contest. Had we waited until May, as the Secretary of State intended when he supported House Bill 138 last year, then Idaho Republicans would have had no reason to participate. Most presidential nominations are already sewn up well before the third Tuesday in May, so there’s no reason to bother voting, right?

What I learned talking to people at the caucus is that for some, that doesn’t matter. They just want to cast their vote in the box, because that’s part of the American tradition. That struck me as odd.

I think in many ways our society places more priority on the form than the substance. I remember a thought experiment I posted on Twitter many years ago in which I asked if it would be better to live under a benevolent dictator who protected our liberties than the totalitarian oligarchy we know today, but still have the right to vote.

Someone threatened violence for the mere suggestion of not being able to vote.

Clearly many people find the act of casting a ballot to be of sacred importance, no matter whether it actually impacts the way our governments run.

It’s the same thing with firearms. I saw a discussion on Twitter recently about how the 2nd Amendment has in some ways lulled us into a false sense of security. We believe that, because we are an armed population, we would never allow the sort of tyranny that took over Russia, China, Cuba, and many other less-fortunate nations.

Yet just four years ago, our governments shut down our schools, churches, and businesses, and arrested people for praying in public or visiting the park. The 2nd Amendment didn’t stop them. In fact, when several thousand unarmed Trump supporters protested what they called a stolen election, our government portrayed it as the worst insurrection since the Civil War and have been hunting down and arresting attendees ever since. The 2nd Amendment didn’t stop that either.

Once again we hold on to form despite lacking the substance.

I returned to this idea today after listening to Dr. Ryan Cole speak at Capitol Clarity on Thursday. He has been demonized and persecuted by the media and the healthcare bureaucracy because he dared contradict the official narrative regarding Covid. He didn’t hurt anybody — in fact, he said today that wealthy and powerful people quietly asked him for treatment options when they came down with Covid despite being vaccinated. Yet the persecution continues.

The healthcare establishment decided very early on that some things were unquestionable dogmas:

• Masks are essential
• Social distancing is necessary
• Ivermectin is for horses
• Vaccines should be mandatory

Rather than allowing any of these dogmas to be questioned, as scientific theories should be, governments at every level enforced them at the barrel of a gun. Skeptics were accused of being stupid, or evil, or both. Anyone stepping outside without a mask was accused of wanting to murder people.

Dr. Cole pointed out that Idaho had one of the lowest Covid vaccination rates in the nation, for which he was personally pilloried, yet we also had one of the higher survival rates as well. To the healthcare bureaucrats, however, that didn’t matter. All that mattered was needles in arms, because they had decided that was the only measure they cared about.

I used to watch YouTube videos featuring Dr. Paul Thomas, an Oregon pediatrician who shared the sorts of procedures he did in his clinic. Dr. Paul, as he liked to be called, was skeptical of the pediatric vaccine schedule. He wrote an entire book explaining the purposes and potential side effects of every vaccine on the CDC schedule, ultimately leaving it up to parents to decide which ones their children really needed.

That’s the sort of informed consent that is rare in the world of healthcare today.

Dr. Paul shared that information with his patients and their families, and many chose to delay, skip, or altogether avoid the vaccines on the CDC schedule. To the Oregon Medical Board, that was bordering on heresy.

Mere days after Dr. Paul published a peer-reviewed study showing that his pediatric patients without vaccines were healthier than children who were vaccinated, the Board issued an emergency order to suspend his license.

The actual health of Dr. Paul’s patients did not matter to the bureaucrats, as their only measurable variable was the number of vaccines administered in his clinic. The Board used number of vaccinations as a proxy for health, and so determined that Dr. Paul was mistreating his patients by not forcing them to take more shots.

Jeremy Hammond wrote a long article about Dr. Paul Thomas’ fight with the Oregon Medical Board, which is now in book form. Speaking with Dr. Paul about the vaccine for Hepatitis B, a sexually transmitted disease, Hammond wrote, “Indeed, the CDC’s stated rationale for administering this vaccine at birth is simply that there was insufficient demand for it among sexually active adults and intravenous drug addicts, and so the determination was made to vaccinate all babies at birth to achieve the policy goal of greater vaccine uptake.”

Once again, we see form being substituted for substance. The healthcare bureaucracy had replaced “health” as a goal with “vaccinations” long ago, and Covid only showed it ever more clearly. Actual outcomes did not matter, only the process.

Bureaucrats don’t get fired for following processes, so they dutifully follow orders. The buck stops with nobody. Government today is designed to avoid any single person having to take responsibility for the consequences of the bureaucracy’s actions. “Mistakes were made” is the cliche response to any error on the part of a government agency, yet the question never answered is who made the mistake?

Public education is another example of this paradigm. Just over half of grade school children in Idaho are proficient in reading and math according to the ISAT tests, but we’re continually told that the system is fine, it just needs more money. Leftists point to statistics that show Idaho is near the bottom in per-student funding despite several states that spend more having even worse scores. Just like vaccines were made a proxy for health, funding has been made a proxy for student success. Form has yet again replaced substance.

Once you see how our society has replaced substance with form, you’ll see it everywhere. Advertisers learned long ago that it’s better to sell the idea of a product rather than the product itself. I remember commercials for soda that said nothing about the taste or nutrition of a particular beverage, rather they showed attractive people consuming the beverage to make you want that lifestyle.

Any potential reform must start by returning to the substance of things. Let’s focus on the truth of the matter, no matter how difficult or complex, rather than comfortable proxies.

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