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http://www.nytimes.com/2012/11/23/opinion/krugman-grand-old-planet.html
Earlier this week, GQ magazine published an interview with Senator Marco Rubio, whom many consider a contender for the 2016 Republican presidential nomination, in which Mr. Rubio was asked how old the earth is. After declaring “I’m not a scientist, man,” the senator went into desperate evasive action, ending with the declaration that “it’s one of the great mysteries.”
It’s funny stuff, and conservatives would like us to forget about it as
soon as possible. Hey, they say, he was just pandering to likely voters
in the 2016 Republican primaries — a claim that for some reason is
supposed to comfort us.
But we shouldn’t let go that easily. Reading Mr. Rubio’s interview is
like driving through a deeply eroded canyon; all at once, you can
clearly see what lies below the superficial landscape. Like striated
rock beds that speak of deep time, his inability to acknowledge
scientific evidence speaks of the anti-rational mind-set that has taken
over his political party.
By the way, that question didn’t come out of the blue. As speaker of the
Florida House of Representatives, Mr. Rubio provided powerful aid to
creationists trying to water down science education. In one interview, he compared the teaching of evolution to Communist indoctrination tactics — although he graciously added that “I’m not equating the evolution people with Fidel Castro.” Gee, thanks.
What was Mr. Rubio’s complaint about science teaching? That it might
undermine children’s faith in what their parents told them to believe.
And right there you have the modern G.O.P.’s attitude, not just toward
biology, but toward everything: If evidence seems to contradict faith,
suppress the evidence.
The most obvious example other than evolution is man-made climate
change. As the evidence for a warming planet becomes ever stronger — and
ever scarier — the G.O.P. has buried deeper into denial, into
assertions that the whole thing is a hoax concocted by a vast conspiracy
of scientists. And this denial has been accompanied by frantic efforts
to silence and punish anyone reporting the inconvenient facts.
But the same phenomenon is visible in many other fields. The most recent
demonstration came in the matter of election polls. Coming into the
recent election, state-level polling clearly pointed to an Obama victory
— yet more or less the whole Republican Party refused to acknowledge
this reality. Instead, pundits and politicians alike fiercely denied the
numbers and personally attacked anyone pointing out the obvious; the
demonizing of The Times’s Nate Silver, in particular, was remarkable to
behold.
What accounts for this pattern of denial? Earlier this year, the science
writer Chris Mooney published “The Republican Brain,” which was not, as
you might think, a partisan screed. It was, instead, a survey of the now-extensive research
linking political views to personality types. As Mr. Mooney showed,
modern American conservatism is highly correlated with authoritarian
inclinations — and authoritarians are strongly inclined to reject any
evidence contradicting their prior beliefs. Today’s Republicans cocoon
themselves in an alternate reality defined by Fox News, Rush Limbaugh
and The Wall Street Journal’s editorial page, and only on rare occasions
— like on election night — encounter any hint that what they believe
might not be true.
And, no, it’s not symmetric. Liberals, being human, often give in to
wishful thinking — but not in the same systematic, all-encompassing way.
Coming back to the age of the earth: Does it matter? No, says Mr. Rubio,
pronouncing it “a dispute amongst theologians” — what about the
geologists? — that has “has nothing to do with the gross domestic
product or economic growth of the United States.” But he couldn’t be
more wrong.
We are, after all, living in an era when science plays a crucial
economic role. How are we going to search effectively for natural
resources if schools trying to teach modern geology must give equal time
to claims that the world is only 6.000 years old? How are we going to
stay competitive in biotechnology if biology classes avoid any material
that might offend creationists?
And then there’s the matter of using evidence to shape economic policy. You may have read about the recent study from the Congressional Research Service
finding no empirical support for the dogma that cutting taxes on the
wealthy leads to higher economic growth. How did Republicans respond? By suppressing the report.
On economics, as in hard science, modern conservatives don’t want to
hear anything challenging their preconceptions — and they don’t want
anyone else to hear about it, either.
So don’t shrug off Mr. Rubio’s awkward moment. His inability to deal
with geological evidence was symptomatic of a much broader problem — one
that may, in the end, set America on a path of inexorable decline.
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