LP Best Choice For Skeptics

U.S. Air Force Academy Computer Science Professor Barry Fagin, in an article appearing in the May/June, 1997 issue of Skeptical Inquirer, says that opponents of quackery and pseudoscience seeking a political philosophy compatible with their insistence on reason and evidence should consider the Libertarian Party.

''If [skeptics] are to successfully reconcile their politics and their skepticism . . . they should apply the same techniques of of critical inquiry toward the institutions of politics that they apply to to all other institutions. The institution of government and the use of coercion as a social tool, the two central characteristics of politics, should be examined critically. In my judgment, economic theory, the evidence of history, and simple daily experience suggest that government is a very poor tool for solving social problems. If this view is correct, then it has very profound implications for the politics of skepticism.''

Fagin goes on to explain how liberals and conservatives alike eschew objectivity and critical inquiry when proposing solutions to social problems, relying instead on personal moral preferences which they are prepared to impose upon others by force. ''Skeptics who wish to be politically active have a limited number of choices,'' he says. His recommendation: ''affiliate with the growing libertarian movement and the Libertarian Party, which has an historically informed view as to the limited sphere of action in which government can effectively operate and accepts public choice theory as the one most compatible with existing evidence.''

Skeptical Inquirer is published by the Committee for Scientific Investigation of Claims of the Paranormal (CSICOP), an organization of scientists, philosophers, and other scholars devoted to the critical examination of claims of ''psychic'' powers, UFO sightings, medical quackery, astrology, and other so-called ''paranormal'' phenomena. CSICOP Fellows include noted Harvard logician W.V.O. Quine, DNA codiscoverer Francis Crick, biologist Stephen Gould, several Nobel Prize winners, and until his recent death, astronomer Carl Sagan.

----GM