What’s the world’s greatest lie? the boy asked. It’s this: that at a certain point in our lives, we lose control of what’s happening to us, and our lives become controlled by fate. That’s the world’s greatest lie.
― Paulo Coelho
Later I saw a young lady offer herself to him for a night’s pleasure, he turned her down in a suave, polite & gentlemanly way, then turned around & walked straight into a door —Simon Gray on Julian Casablancas, 2006 (via slicehishand)
Ronald Reagan created a mythological character — the “Welfare Queen” — and taught America that it was OK to be racist, OK to hate poor people, and OK to resent paying taxes. More than 30 years later, a substantial number of Americans still believe that lazy black women make millions of dollars a year by popping out babies and signing them up for welfare.
In an article in Politico, Rand Paul attempts to create a mythology that he hopes will convince Americans to hate science. Paul knows that if he can get voters to resent scientific research as much as they resent minorities and poor people, then he and his fellow Republicans will be free to ignore inconvenient facts about climate change, population trends, and other data that goes against the Republican agenda.
Paul questions the wisdom of paying for research funded by the National Science Foundation (NSF). NSF is the primary source of government funding for research in economics, mathematics, computer science, and social sciences — basically things that Republicans don’t understand. [….]
Just as Reagan wanted us to believe that it is OK to be racist, Rand Paul wants us to believe that it’s OK to be ignorant. It’s OK to resent money spent on scientific research, regardless of the potential benefits of that research.
Rand Paul wants us to believe that science is too expensive, a luxury that we cannot afford. The reality is that Republicans cannot afford an informed electorate that engages in critical thinking. We cannot afford to stop learning. We can’t afford to stop asking questions.
If the Congressman wants to portray the Republican War On Science as a budgetary crisis, then he might want to check his facts.
