New Yorker's Scientific Illiteracy In Attacking Ron Paul

The Republican Party has often been the party of science and technology. Abraham Lincoln created the National Academy of Sciences and earned a patent on shipping technology. The creationist Democrat William Jennings Bryan twice lost to the Republican William McKinley. Dwight Eisenhower was perhaps the most forceful Oval Office advocate for science and technology of the last century. By the nineteen-seventies, Republicans—particularly Richard Nixon—had begun to view scientists as agitating liberals. But through the Cold War, Republicans often backed the greatest scientific and technical schemes: from missile defense to the ARPANet. Now, tragically, science has been made partisan, and the tech world, with its liberal Silicon Valley center, is headed that way. In 2003, Nicholas Lemann, writing for The New Yorker, asked Karl Rove to define a Democrat. "Somebody with a doctorate," Rove said. "What was Daniel Bell's phrase? The information class." The divide, however, is not total. The Democrats still have their Bryans, and the Republicans still have their McKinleys. In the spirit of giving the most pro-science and pro-tech members of the G.O.P. their due, here's a ranking of the six remaining Presidential candidates ... – New Yorker

Dominant Social Theme: When it comes to science, Republicans simply do not respect the creative aspirations of big government, nor the insights of the bureaucrats that work for it. Ron Paul is a real crackpot in this regard.

Free-Market Analysis: Late last week, in a blog called "Notes on arts and entertainment from the staff of The New Yorker," this august and once-witty magazine launched an astonishing attack on libertarian candidate and US Congressman Ron Paul, casting him as a scientific ignoramus.

In fact, the attack was larger than that, painting the entire Republican Party as "anti-science" and then going through the various candidates one by one to show off their scientific quackery. When it comes to the mainstream media, we live in depressing times.

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