On the GOP and Science

A new book about the President's mother quotes her as saying “Don’t conclude before you understand. After you understand, don’t judge.” This is a noble sentiment, and of course one that informs the life of a careful researcher in the physical or social sciences? But can it be of use to those of us who are a bit more partisan? I have spent a life time watching the two parties joust for control of Washington. I think I understand what sets them apart. And I am afraid that I must judge one as being worse for America than is the other.

I long ago concluded that the Republican Party is wrong-headed about everything on its agenda. Nothing it or its standard-bearers advocate strikes a responsive chord with me. And I know where this attitude of mine began. Raised in a New England GOP household, I was fooled into believing that Richard Nixon actually did have a secret plan to end the war in Vietnam. I soon learned the folly of my naivete. Nixon perfected the art of saying anything to get elected, and the GOP surfed that cynicism to victory again and again over the coming decades. For further proof, think of RMN's despicable "southern strategy", replete with race-baiting and appeals to the crackers and good old -boys of the formerly solid Democratic south. (more on this some other time)

But at least Nixon wasn't anti-science, as is the current lot of Bible-thumping GOP wannabees. Isn't it astonishing that his environmental policy record would put even the last two Democratic Party presidents to shame. In fact, the current GOP, base and insiders alike, would never nominate him for high office. His legacy includes Watergate, G. Gordon Liddy, dirty tricks, Donald Segretti, bombing Cambodia, and Spiro Agnew. But it also includes the EPA, the Endangered Species Act, and many other signature enviromental moments. We yearn for such a steward now.

So ethnographers can adopt the President's mother's mantra: href="http://www.nytimes.com/2011/06/03/opinion/03iht-edcohen03.html">“Don’t conclude before you understand. After you understand, don’t judge.” I choose to understand, but I simply must judge. The GOP's rabid anti-science views on climate change are just plain wrong. Track the record of the adults in that party and you will see that until they contract Potomac fever they tend to believe the science.