Historical

Many of our dumb ideas have a common theme: short-term thinking. The grandaddy of them all may be China’s one-child policy.

America never loved communism. Party membership peaked in 1947 at just 75,000. That same year the House Un-American Activities Committee interrogated Hollywood writers, directors, and actors about their rumored associations.

Slavery helped build America and remains one of its worst sins. Dr. Joyce Hope Scott calls it the “greatest crime of all time, the theft of humanity and personhood which resulted in a permanent state of dispossession, exile, and homelessness.” African-Americans were bought and sold here for 246 years, which still comprises 60% of the history of English settlement.

Trofim Lysenko was named chief of Soviet agriculture by Joseph Stalin. For thirty years he dictated the Russian food supply, or lack thereof. You see, Mr. Lysenko was an unnatural disaster.

Cancer is not a contagious disease, thankfully. It takes enough lives as it is. But an American researcher said some infections can lead to cancer via complex interactive processes. Does this sound like a scientific controversy? You bet it is.

Here at “Dumb Ideas” we try not to judge previous generations with hindsight bias. But when smart people are faced with the truth in their own era and still choose folly, we have to call it out. Recent episodes exposed the pseudo-science of phrenology, the tragedy of asbestos, and the stupidity of dueling. Plenty of people saw through these abominations at the time, but they still wreaked havoc.

In 1960 Richard Nixon and John F. Kennedy campaigned to succeed Dwight Eisenhower as president. Foreign policy featured prominently due to the Cold War, and historian Christopher Preble called the missile gap a major component of Kennedy’s campaign.

People used to set their watches by the sun. At high noon it was twelve p.m. The system worked until the latter 1800s, when railroads brought us high-speed transportation. Flying down the tracks at 80 miles-an-hour, we could now go from Pittsburgh to Philadelphia in just hours, not a full week by coach. But as our train pulled into Philly we’d notice our watches are now 20 minutes behind the local time. Oops.

In 1968 Anne and Paul Erlich sparked a global panic with their book, The Population Bomb. Based on Thomas Malthus’s theories, they claimed that four billion people would starve to death by 1990, including 65 million Americans. It was already too late to stop the massive die-off, but drastic measures were justified to limit the damage of overpopulation. They wished India had imposed forced sterilization and that America had spiked the water supply with birth-control chemicals.

Austrian Count Bissingen had a quarrel with one of his best friends, who challenged him to a duel. After accepting, the two immediately made up. But their seconds insisted they proceed. Both men tried to shoot in the air, but the Count was mortally wounded. He left behind a wife, two small children and another on the way.