Think Again: The Conservative War on Knowledge - Eric Alterman

[Bill USA]

http://www.americanprogress.org/issues/2012/05/ta_052412.html

(emphases my own_Bill USA)

The United States finds itself in an odd political predicament. One of its two major political parties is increasingly dominated by a faction of people that simply denies those aspects of reality it finds to be inconvenient and demands that any candidate who wishes to gain its support does so as well.

How else to explain the fact that while 97 percent of credentialed climate scientists concur that global warming is both extremely dangerous and caused by human activity, every one of the 21 Republican candidates who ran for Senate in 2010 denied that this could be the case?

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As evidenced by the global warming “debate,” Tea Party-style conservatives have a problem with reality. More than that, though, they have a problem with knowledge, particularly honest scholarship that leads to knowledge, as the more voters know about a given issue, the more they find the far right’s purposeful ignorance inconsistent with their interests, even though it might be flattering to voters’ vanity.

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Now conservatives have revived this effort to defund the entire National Science Foundation and, barring that, cut all government funds for political science research.
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[lastlib]

1. "An insightful and informed citizenry is the archenemy of tyranny." - T. Jefferson

"An insightful and informed citizenry is the archenemy of the GOP." - Me

Educated people who are capable of clear rational thinking are a threat to their dream of a feudal corporate-fascist state. Government funding for science is, to them, theft of their property. They won't tolerate it. If it cuts into the profits of the one-percent, they want it eliminated. So any education or research that doesn't help them is targeted for killing.

They.Must.Be.Defeated.

[central scrutinizer]

2. ignorant and damn proud of it

A unemployed plumber trumps Nobel winning economists, Sarah Palin, W, we could go on and on

[Stuart G]

3. K and R

[Fumesucker]

4. Reminded me of this cartoon..