Do You Remember Moynihan?

On Thursdays during dialysis, I sit back in the recliner and read the latest New Yorker. Besides cartoons, the magazine always has several long, long articles. Before I started dialysis, I complained that it took me a month to read each issue – and one came every week. Now I read The New Yorker for three and a half hours every Thursday.

This week’s copy had articles on Aung San Suu Kyi in Burma; a doctor’s solution to health care costs, AOL’s future, and California Congressman Darrell Issa’s shady past. Whew!

One New Yorker article which stuck in my mind for months was about Daniel Patrick Moynihan. I’ve been thinking about it since last fall. I’ll be writing about Iceland and Denmark for the next month, but today I’ll give you a break from my travels and write about Moynihan.

The article was prompted by replacement of New York’s Penn Station with a newly remodeled building to be called Moynihan Station. Also, the publication of a book of his letters. (“Daniel Patrick Moynihan: A Portrait in Letters of an American Visionary” by Steven R. Weissman, published by Public Affairs, $35).

I’d forgotten Moynihan. Daniel Patrick Moynihan, senator from New York, ambassador to the United Nations, adviser to Presidents. . . . and writer. His comments are quotable. “Guns don’t kill people, bullets do.” But one, repeated in other publications since Weissman’s book came out, impressed me especially:

“EVERYONE IS ENTITLED TO HIS OWN OPINION BUT NOT TO HIS OWN FACTS.”

I was reminded of this on Sunday when a young man on CBS reported on a study showing how people get false information stuck in their brains and won’t believe the truth even when presented with scientific evidence. Parents refuse to have babies vaccinated even though the doctor who said vaccination causes autism has been totally discredited.

I am surrounded by people who insist God created the World and all its creatures in one week in 6000 B.C. “Believing in The Bible” gives them comfort. Who would deny an old person a belief which enables them to face death with hope for a better life in Heaven?

Still, I can’t help but feel annoyed when evolution is mentioned and a nice old lady says gently, “That is just your opinion.”

“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion but not to his own facts.”