An essential book is newly available. In his famous 1961 presidential valedictory speech, Dwight D. Eisenhower warned: “The prospect of domination of the nation’s scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present and is gravely to be regarded. Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific/technological elite. It is the task of statesmanship to mold, to balance, and to integrate these and other forces, new and old, within the principles of our democratic system – ever aiming toward the supreme goals of our free society.”
In fighting the Nazis as Supreme Allied Commander, and in that role having been present at the liberation of Nazi death camps, Eisenhower was acutely aware of the dangers of technocracy, of over-veneration of soulless technical “experts,” and the particular dangers of propagated pseudo-science. He was aware of the enormities of eugenics in his own country, and much of the world, as well as in Germany, where reverence for such madness reached its apotheosis. He learned a lesson which we all should have learned. Many did not learn. The vulnerability of human minds to hateful hysteria is unabated and today’s crazed anti-smoker movement is sure proof of this.
Rampant Anti-smoking Signifies Grave Danger: Materialism Out of Control, Vincent Riccardo Di Pierri’s sociological and psychological study of the fanatical antitobacco movement, is an urgent warning from a wise man. This important book has been out-of-print for a few years but is now newly available as an e-book in the PDF format (link bottom this page).
The lengthy study is scholarly in tone but accessible, and recommended, for all readers. Doctor DiPierri, philosopher and psychologist, sheds interesting light on all aspects of the collective mental illness that is today’s antitobacco movement. Readers will find Di Pierri’s insights highly informative, illuminating, and provocative. All of his perspectives are interesting. His fundamental message is trenchant and indeed grave. Rampant anti-smoking rots societal cohesion, morality, and cultural sanity.
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