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The Republican War on Science, A Buzzflash Book Review

** I suggest you purchase and read this important, highly informative, well-written book. ------ Annamarie

August 26, 2005

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The Republican War on Science
by Chris Mooney

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America has long prided itself on its dynamic industrial and scientific innovation. We boasted of our investment in research to produce new technology, products and medical breakthroughs, because we were a country always moving forward. Born of a revolution that rejected the stultifying constraints of Monarchist governments, we were unleashed to invent a future without constraints.

So historians, in a few years, may look back on the era of right wing Republican rule and wonder how we became saddled with a government that is intent on moving the nation backwards instead of forwards. It's as if you were a passenger in a car speeding down the expressway at 60 miles per hour and suddenly the driver threw the gear into reverse.

In this fascinating dissection of the "The Republican War on Science," author Chris Mooney skillfully explores what is behind the GOP attempt to turn a country on the cusp of innovation backwards into the Middle Ages of skepticism about science and evolution. Mooney guides the reader through this unfathomable undertaking that is an organized Republican effort to undo our national heritage of innovation and scientific advancements.

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There are really two main forces at work in the Republican right, which has reached its pinnacle of power in the reign of George W. Bush, Dick Cheney and Tom DeLay. On the one hand, you have the extremist religious "base" that supports Bush no matter what his latest egregious failure or betrayal is. To them, science is an enemy because it, ipso facto, deals with discoveries, research and explanations of life and the world that conflict with literal interpretations of the Bible. Forget about the canard of "Intelligent Design," which is just another Frank Luntz euphemism -- in this case for creationism. The religious right fully endorses the war on science because science is born of human research, and human research inevitably comes into conflict with the fundamentalist interpretation of divine intent.

The second major camp behind Bush's war on science is the corporate world, particularly the depletable natural resources companies who are championed by Dick Cheney. They believe that science gets in the way of their pillaging and plundering the environment for a quick profit. If science proves, as it has, that global warming is accelerating rapidly, then what good is it? It will only lead these companies -- headed by big Republican contributors -- to a short-term reduction in profits. Or so they believe.

In Bush's world, as with the war in Iraq and economic forecasts, science is only of value when the books are cooked on research so as to support a specific Bush policy that either endears him to the fringe religious right or to the "loot and pollute" corporations.

In a tragically ironic way, these two Bush groups of supporters synergistically support each other. Because if the earth's environment is truly being destroyed by unfettered industrial pillaging, it might only hasten the Armageddon so ardently anticipated by the holy rollers. Who cares what happens to our planet, if "good Christians" will soon meet in heaven?

Bush is certainly a man with a lot of wars on his hands. But Mooney's book reminds us that the Iraq War shouldn't overshadow the severe damage that the Busheviks are doing to America's extraordinary heritage of scientific accomplishment. With a few more years, they will grind it into dust.

This is an Administration that wants us to return to a period before the Age of Enlightenment, which some might call the "Dark Ages."

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posted by Annamarie at 12:11 PM