* Anti-science, Dims or Rips?
Topics: Technology
14 Sep 2007
From: Ervan Darnell
Bush's anti-science attitude is obvious in his opposition to stem cell research warm and fuzzy feelings toward Creationism, and turning a blind eye to studies on what works for STD prevention. I'll pass over this list quickly as we've all heard it.
But the Dims are not obviously that much better. First, they like to deny most economic research as much as Rips are troubled by biological sciences. You can argue the econ as it's not as cut and dried, but the Dim position is more to ignore it as an inconvenient truth. But even on hard science there is trouble:
A few years ago the Dims (mostly) passed a law that allows parents of "special needs" children to sue school districts to get an 'appropriate education' (I have forgotten the exact legal phrase). The cost was irrelevant to the formulation. I recently heard a piece on Forum (on NPR) about parents refusing to accept the government's school program for autistic children (already expensive) and instead suing for $80K/year for a private school for their autistic child. They won at one court level and were then in appeals. This is a disaster. As a social investment, 8 average kids, who could profit from an education, are denied one in the interest of sympathy for one disabled kid, who will not profit much (in a social investment sense). Yes, it helps the outcome for the one kid, I'm sure, but that's only half the equation.
Conversely, parents of smart kids have no right to sue for the government schools failing to provide their kids an education adequate to their talent.
On a different tack, the whole idea of "mainstreaming" (placing "special needs" children in normal classes) may be good for the disadvantaged, but it drags down the average and is bad for the good students. This too is obviously a liberal idea, sacrificing the productive and bright to subsidize the slothful and dim. Even were we to increase government school taxes, this problem would still exist.
I see that Time Magazine has an article echoing these themes:
http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1653653,00.html
Stepping back a bit, it was the liberal push for federalizing education that opened the door to this mess in the first place (of the feds creating mandates without funding). Though Bush has jumped on that bandwagon too. Now, it's much harder to flee bad ideas by finding a better district.
So, while Bush may be opposed to funding biological sciences on philosophical grounds, the Dims are opposed on philosophical grounds to educating the children smart enough to be the next generation of scientists. The Dims are also (more) opposed to high talent immigration than the Rips. Thus, Dim policies are quite anti science in their own way too.
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Ervan Darnell
ervan@kelvinist.com http://www.kelvinist.com
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