Kevin Pezzi, MD

Disagree with something I wrote? So do I! Read more

“To avoid criticism, do nothing, say nothing, and be nothing.”

— Elbert Hubbard, American editor, publisher, and writer (1856–1915)

Trivia: He and his wife, Alice Moore Hubbard, the noted feminist and writer, died aboard the RMS Lusitania, which was torpedoed and sunk by a German submarine on May 7, 1915, when they were heading to Europe to cover the war and interview Kaiser Wilhelm II of Germany.

If you disagree with something I wrote, feel free to challenge it. Some of my viewpoints are the antithesis (exact opposite) of what they once were. That isn't flip-flopping; that is changing opinions with scant evidence to support them into convictions with a firmer foundation of facts.

My political philosophy is an amalgamation of libertarian, conservative, and liberal principles. My opinions have changed so significantly that my conservative friends might be horrified by how I strongly believe that liberals are correct on certain issues. I've previously written about some of them, but to make this more fun, I will present others as challenges in which I offer $100,000 to the first person who can refute the logic I used in forming that opinion. Please note that due to my limited time and difficulty using my hands after I broke my neck, I cannot quickly update my previously published opinions. However, now that I am balancing the promptings of head and heart, I strongly disagree with many opinions I expressed in my writings.

I like finding people who make me think, not necessarily those who agree with me. Genius Robert Heinlein said, “I never learned from a man who agreed with me.” If you can educate me, I'm all ears.

“Few people are capable of expressing with equanimity opinions which differ from the prejudices of their social environment. Most people are even incapable of forming such opinions.”
— Albert Einstein

“Great spirits have always encountered violent opposition from mediocre minds.”
— Albert Einstein

“What I would like to see more often in this nation is an open and intelligent conversation, not people just casting aspersions at each other … it's unbelievable to me the way people act like third graders. And if somebody doesn't agree with them, they're this and they're that … it comes from both sides. And it's just so infantile.”
— Dr. Ben Carson, neurosurgeon

“The ultimate ignorance is the rejection of something you know nothing about and refuse to investigate.”
— Dr. Wayne Dyer

“If everyone is thinking alike, then somebody isn't thinking.”
— General George Patton

“Man's mind, once stretched by a new idea, never regains its original dimensions.”
— Oliver Wendell Holmes

“A lot of people risk their lives in a brief act of heroism, which is kind of cool, but Jill has what I call slow heroism. She is risking her professional life on something that her own calculations show may not work for a thousand years—may not ever. So I like to support people that are risking their lives.”
— ex-Microsoft billionaire brainiac Nathan Myhrvold speaking about Jill Tarter, who inspired the character played by Jodie Foster in the movie Contact. It takes a brilliant person to see that others who go against the grain of conventional wisdom may be sages although lesser minds often ridicule their ideas.

“I am not young enough to know everything.”
— Oscar Wilde

“You have enemies? Good. That means you've stood up for something, sometime in your life.”
— Winston Churchill

“Talk sense to a fool and he calls you foolish.”
— Euripides, Greek tragic dramatist (484 BC - 406 BC)

“It is socially unacceptable to be right too early.”
— Robert Heinlein

“I'd rather stand alone on the truth than with millions on a lie.”

“The most distinctive mark of a cultured mind is the ability to take another's point of view; to put one's self in another's place, and see life and its problems from a point of view different from one's own. To be willing to test a new idea; to be able to live on the edge of difference in all matters intellectually; to examine without heat the burning question of the day; to have imaginative sympathy, openness and flexibility of mind, steadiness and poise of feeling, cool calmness of judgment, is to have culture.”
— Arthur H. R. Fairchild

“It is not the critic who counts: not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood, who strives valiantly, who errs and comes up short again and again, because there is no effort without error or shortcoming, but who knows the great enthusiasms, the great devotions, who spends himself for a worthy cause; who, at the best, knows, in the end, the triumph of high achievement, and who, at the worst, if he fails, at least he fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who knew neither victory nor defeat.”
— Theodore Roosevelt

“It has been my experience that folks who have no vices have very few virtues.”
— Abraham Lincoln

This reminds me of something stressed by one of my psychology professors, who said that society imposes rigid boundaries for what behavior is acceptable, and applies tremendous pressure trying to force people to conform to the behavioral expectations. Some of the most brilliant and productive outside-the-box thinkers led unconventional lives. One of the side effects of forcing people to think inside the box is that by lopping off outside-the-box behavior, potentially great outside-the-box ideas are lost, too.

“We must not confuse dissent with disloyalty. When the loyal opposition dies, I think the soul of America dies with it.”
— Edward R. Murrow, American journalist (1908-1965)

“You will not do incredible things without an incredible dream.”
— John Eliot

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Liberals who are like crabs

In response to another article, I received the following comment from a person I met on Facebook:

Kevin, I have treasured our friendship and have really missed you not being on Facebook.

I have witnessed first-hand the contempt the liberals have for you. I have read and combated many comments on liberal walls on Facebook. You are friends with none of these people but yet your name still comes up in discussion. They insult everything from your background as a MD, to your sheds, to your inventions. They character assassinate you because they can't debate you on your intellectual level. They are zero match for you so they start with the insults, then threats, then call you racist. It's a play I have seen many times by libs.

You had always clearly welcomed debate from both sides but libs don't feel comfortable talking about reality.

You have shown great dignity in the face of evil. When I go to these lib walls, it takes a few minutes for them to go through my profile and notice you are a friend of mine, and that's all it takes for the attack to begin.

I am a stay-at-home mom and wife, a Mormon, a non-smoker, married to my kids' father, Pro Lifer, Pro Capital Punishment, Conservative and being friends with you. All these things make me a target and I proudly take that on. I say “Bring It!”

If I have a debate issue, you are always helpful in giving me the ammo I need if the topic was above my head. I miss you but happy I can still come to your blog and find you :)

Love you always,
Misty

REPLY FROM KEVIN PEZZI: Thank you for your very kind comments, Misty! I miss you, too. :-)

Here's something to keep in mind when dealing with far-left libs:

The rabid liberals who attack me don't realize that I purposely say provocative things to draw their attention. I used to be a liberal, so I know that smart, thinking people can change their opinions when presented with enough evidence in the correct way, over time—it took me a few years to wake up. I've met and interacted with people who persuaded me that my pro-liberal and pro-big-government opinions were wrong. While I no longer classify myself as a liberal, I strongly agree with some of their positions. For example:

• I think that anyone who understands science would not denigrate others on the basis of their gender preference.
• I used to be strongly pro-war, but I now realize that most of our wars are bankrupting us but are not essential to our national survival. In another article, I explained how this lavish spending may give us a slight immediate increase in security, but at a catastrophic future cost. I illustrated this with the analogy of a woman living in a dangerous area who spent so much beefing up her home security that she ended up homeless and more vulnerable than ever. That's us, folks, in the not-too-distant year of 2025, when we must choose between domestic and defense spending, or draconian cutbacks in each. That dire prognostication is not a doom-and-gloom forecast but an inescapable conclusion from crunching the numbers. I agree with Marine hero General Smedley Butler, who said that he eventually realized how he had spent most of his time “being a high class muscle-man for Big Business, for Wall Street and for the Bankers. In short, I was a racketeer, a gangster for capitalism. I suspected I was just part of a racket at the time. Now I am sure of it.” We've spent trillions of dollars fighting Communism, but why? If Communism is as economically disadvantageous as we have been led to believe, Communist nations are bound to implode on their own or perennially be unable to compete with us. General Butler, like me, was an erstwhile fan of far-flung military involvement who eventually realized that it is preferable to focus on national defense instead of meddling in myriad countries around the globe. Ironically, many people—and politicians—who profess to deplore big government support military policies that make big government (and high taxation) inevitable. Had most of our military spending been instead poured into alternative energy research, we wouldn't need to intervene in the Middle East, which triggered terrorism that trillions of more dollars cannot fully extinguish. I know what the alternative energy naysayers claim: that alternative energy is hopelessly in the future. Hogwash. For example, I modified my clothes dryer to harness a free and easily tapped source of natural energy instead of propane, and I implemented a simple modification to my home that enabled me to be warmer than ever in a long, cold winter without turning my furnace on once. We're in dire straights because too many of us leave the thinking to leaders who excel at demagoguery and campaigning, not thinking. Most of us also leave our thinking to corporations who leave the inventing to engineers who can pass engineering courses but not think outside the box. Pressing problems often cannot be solved with inside-the-box solutions. Our nation is much less innovative than it could be, and we are paying a heavy price for this stagnation.

The dumbbells who react without thinking and don't care what is right and what is wrong will never change their small minds, but some liberals do listen, realize they were either wrong or supporting policies that don't work, change their minds and stop voting for liberals. Thus, political discourse is often but not always fruitless. It doesn't have to work 100% of the time, or anything close to that, for it to achieve its intended effect: WINNING IN 2012, AND EVERY ELECTION THEREAFTER. Considering the generally small margin of victory in most elections, persuading just a few percent of liberals is all we need to ensure victory.

Misty, I commend you for having the courage to debate liberals. This is exactly what we need to do for the reason mentioned above: get through to the intelligent ones who will listen. David Horowitz is a shining example of a former liberal who realized he was wrong. I cannot think of a comparable example of a similarly intelligent conservative who now ardently espouses all elements of liberal ideology.

I am now working on a series of articles to explain my overall strategy so that other conservatives can draw the attention of many liberals, as I have, and influence some of them. If just one conservative in twenty succeeded in changing even one liberal's mind, that's all we need.

Millions of liberals have read my websites and books. If I changed the opinions of just one liberal in 1000, that's thousands of minds I've changed. I know I've changed minds because people have written to me saying that they previously held an opposing opinion, but I really made them think and presented unassailable logic, so they now agree with me.

Genius Eric Hoffer said, “A war is not won if the defeated enemy has not been turned into a friend,” so I try not to be too harsh with liberals. However, they are manifesting exiguous intelligence and judgment by attacking me in the way they do. I'm not perfect, but most of the attacks are dead-wrong, as I am proving in a series of articles addressing the far-left smears. Future articles in that series will present even more ways they are wrong.

Incidentally, I don't blame them for one of the attacks, because the evidence Media Matters presented for one smear did seem pretty convincing, but even that was wrong, as I discussed in an article.

What really gets under the skin of liberals is that I've left them in the dust in terms of accomplishments. Not one of my critics could do even half of what I've done in medicine, inventing, or even building sheds. In fact, I'll give $100,000 to my first critic who has done even 10% of what I've done. No liberal will bother applying because they generally don't do much; they just whine.

The liberals who discuss me are showing what small people they are.

Frankly, I am not worth discussing. Perhaps some of my ideas, inventions, and accomplishments are … but me? Why would anyone bother when there are so many problems to solve?

Ultimately, that is my goal: proposing solutions, not just talking about problems. If liberals think they are so smart, let's see their great ideas. I thought of a way to ensure that welfare recipients would receive as much as they now do and potentially much more, while reducing the welfare burden on taxpayers.

I discussed an outside-the-box way to save energy, how we could leave China in the dust, and I gave proof that the rags-to-riches American Dream is still possible, offering to give some of my inventions to people to help them achieve their dreams. I asked nothing in return except that anyone I helped would agree to help others when they become successful.

I explained a proven example of how a bankrupt economy in total collapse can be quickly transformed. As countless Americans worry about our future and the possibility of a devastating economic collapse most experts now say is possible, I used that tidbit of history to show how we could recover from it.

I also wrote about the perfect way to kickstart our economy and put people back to work, in addition to other blog articles proposing solutions. I will write many future articles, including one in which I will discuss a solution to what is arguably our greatest current political problem.

Could my liberal critics, even collectively, offer better solutions? I doubt it, but I wish they would do something constructive. However, the ideas that most liberals have for improving the world are so unrealistic that they do little to nothing to help people, often resulting in net harm, so it isn't surprising why they are so threatened by me.

If liberals wanted to attack someone worthy of condemnation, they could have a field day with a nut on Facebook who wrote about shooting a specific Member of Congress a specific number of times in a specific spot—definitely a threat that Jared Loughner would approve of. After the shooting of Rep. Gabrielle Giffords, people who make such threats are viewed as lunatics, which that person is. But why discuss a person who favors settling disputes with bullets when they can criticize me and my sheds? It's what small minds do.

How some liberals act like crabs

Small-minded liberals (and others—more about that in a subsequent article) excel in finding the negative in others, and delight in cutting people down to their level, whether or not those attacked are warranted. Other simple creatures—crabs—also like keeping others on their low level. Buckets holding crabs don't need tall sides or a top to keep crabs in their place; all it takes is at least two crabs. If one tries to climb out, another will pull it back down. Thom Singer correctly noted that many people “are so threatened by anyone else reaching for the stars, that they work hard to pull them back down to earth.”

I am not the problem, but I hope to be part of the solution. By attacking me, liberals are helping me achieve my objectives, as I'll explain in an upcoming article. To prove how some liberals are ruled by emotions, not logic, I will clearly spell out how they are helping me combat liberalism. If they were smart, seeing that should make them stop, but I predict they are so incorrigibly impulsive and lacking circumspection that they will continue and perhaps escalate their petty personal vitriol. Small minds are easy to read and easy to defeat.

I typically eschew laughing at others, but I might make an exception in the case of the loony liberals who are so imprudent that they insist on continuing to do things that will ultimately help me defeat them.

He who laughs last, laughs longest.

Related articles:

Online incivility triggered by minor differences of opinion

Liberals claim to be more tolerant and civil—but are they?

Liberals who react, not think, and fall for smears that are obviously untrue

Ridiculing good new ideas

Not all liberals want more of your money

1. A new way to pay taxes: with a smile
2. How to slash welfare without hurting anyone

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