Every war has its innocent victims, those caught in the crossfire. So it is with the GOP war on science. The casualties here, as is often the case in war, are the young, the elderly and the infirm. At least those are the groups most likely to feel the impact of what the Associated Press recently identified as the growing number of parents who are refusing to immunize their children. In eight states, more than 1 in 20 kindergarten students do not get all their required vaccines—and that number is rising.
What, you might ask, does all this have to do with the Republican Party? Let’s suppose an organization spent massive amounts of energy trying to persuade the American public that it is unsafe to fly on two major carriers. And let’s suppose it was obvious that there was essentially no difference between these two carriers and the other carriers. We would not be surprised if the impact of this negative campaign were felt not just at two airlines but across the industry, nor would we be wrong to ascribe the cause for this reaction to those who sowed the original doubts.
Just so, Republicans, or at least their elected leaders, have been relentless in attacking two pillars of mainstream science: global warming and evolution. As NPR made clear in its recent collection of the candidates own words on these topics, Jon Huntsman is the only major GOP candidate who whole-heartedly accepts both claims (as he made clear in a recent Tweet). But if you attack two fundamental claims of mainstream science, it should come as no surprise when a growing number of the public becomes skeptical about scientific conclusions in general. Case in point: vaccines. According to that same AP report, a decrease in the vaccination rate has been linked in this country to measles outbreaks and a whopping cough epidemic in California, while the examples of what has happened overseas—polio breaking out in China, diphtheria in Russia—show that much dire things are possible when vaccination rates fall.
In light of the centuries-old antipathy of religion toward science and the GOP’s association with the more extreme elements of the faith community, it is not difficult to discern the Republican rationale for joining the religious right in attacking science. And while the less bright bulbs of the Republican pack can be forgiven for their ignorance, surely there are intelligent members of the GOP besides Jon Huntsman who know that science is giving us the truth on these matters.
The good news is that when reason confronts religious prejudice, history shows that it is reason that ultimately prevails. The bad news, at least for Jon Huntsman, is that victory can take centuries to achieve, and those who originally confronted religious prejudice in the name of reason and science (e.g., Socrates, Galileo) usually do not fare very well.
What, you might ask, does all this have to do with the Republican Party? Let’s suppose an organization spent massive amounts of energy trying to persuade the American public that it is unsafe to fly on two major carriers. And let’s suppose it was obvious that there was essentially no difference between these two carriers and the other carriers. We would not be surprised if the impact of this negative campaign were felt not just at two airlines but across the industry, nor would we be wrong to ascribe the cause for this reaction to those who sowed the original doubts.
Just so, Republicans, or at least their elected leaders, have been relentless in attacking two pillars of mainstream science: global warming and evolution. As NPR made clear in its recent collection of the candidates own words on these topics, Jon Huntsman is the only major GOP candidate who whole-heartedly accepts both claims (as he made clear in a recent Tweet). But if you attack two fundamental claims of mainstream science, it should come as no surprise when a growing number of the public becomes skeptical about scientific conclusions in general. Case in point: vaccines. According to that same AP report, a decrease in the vaccination rate has been linked in this country to measles outbreaks and a whopping cough epidemic in California, while the examples of what has happened overseas—polio breaking out in China, diphtheria in Russia—show that much dire things are possible when vaccination rates fall.
In light of the centuries-old antipathy of religion toward science and the GOP’s association with the more extreme elements of the faith community, it is not difficult to discern the Republican rationale for joining the religious right in attacking science. And while the less bright bulbs of the Republican pack can be forgiven for their ignorance, surely there are intelligent members of the GOP besides Jon Huntsman who know that science is giving us the truth on these matters.
The good news is that when reason confronts religious prejudice, history shows that it is reason that ultimately prevails. The bad news, at least for Jon Huntsman, is that victory can take centuries to achieve, and those who originally confronted religious prejudice in the name of reason and science (e.g., Socrates, Galileo) usually do not fare very well.
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