The Green Party and Science

I have been looking a bit into far left parties. Writing these posts, despite their lack of a big audience to date, has made me think more seriously about my political views and my reluctance to take strong political stands, a reluctance whose roots lie in my naturally deep and profound skepticism toward all claims of knowledge. This may look like an abrupt turn from many of my earlier posts from just a few weeks ago that criticized progressives, but, as I noted then, it wasn't so much progressivism that I disagreed with as it was a certain attitude endemic in progressivism that I (still) find annoying.

Anyway, now I am indulging my leftist tendencies. Seeing the total corruption of the Democrats makes me more and more skeptical that capitalism and democracy can co-exist, so I have been looking even further left.

I may have more to say about that in the future. In the meantime, one of the leftist parties I was looking at is the Green Party, and today I ran across this post. The author points out that the Green Party's platform is in favor of mandating insurance coverage for alternative healthcare such as acupuncture and homeopathy. The author's objection is that these things are "quack medicine." I agree that homeopathy in particular is nonsense; some, like acupuncture, have some limited evidence of their efficacy. Either way, the question should clearly be whether a particular medical practice is backed up by evidence. In a capitalist society, unfortunately, therapies that do not make a lot of money for corporations do not receive enough research, so I'm not sure how (again, in a capitalist society) combining a focus on evidence-based medicine with universal health insurance would improve things for promising alternative therapies.

Either way, the fact that the Green Party takes this position is quite disappointing for me, since I like its emphasis on environmentalism. This isn't to say that I would never support a Green candidate. On the other hand, in many ways the Green Party seems to be simply a more progressive version of the Democrats, including its capitulation to working in a capitalist society, so I am doubtful how much good they could do if the they supplanted the Democrats or became a major third party.