American Ayatollahs are doing their best to destroy science.

[Cyrano]

Whether it's Darwin, stem cell research, or life-begins-at- insemination, the right-wing Talibans in this country are doing everything possible to drive us back into the dark ages. We're talking about people who thought that the Salem witch trials, and burning people at the stake, were just dandy.

The most visible evidence of their efforts is trying to stop the teaching of evolution in schools. These are, for the most part, fundie Bush supporters who want "intelligent design," or "creationism" taught in schools either along with, or in place of, Darwinism. In other words, "Fuck science. God rules."

And what do we hear from our supposed political leadership? Nothing.

Education is a local issue, but the know-nothings have been all too successful in silencing everyone else. And given a president who believes he was selected by God, and a population that is being coerced into believing that science is bullshit, we are so, so fucked.

And worse yet. If we continue down this path, we are finished as a democracy.

[robbedvoter]

1. Democracy, illuminism are

targets - next stop - the Dark Ages.

[Skidmore]

2. Yup, 4th century, here we come.

[KurtNYC]

3. Many Americans have only a loose grip on science to begin with

Jimmy Carter proposed a program to have the USA join the rest of the world on the metric system. Reagan derailed it (while he was removing the solar panels from the White House).

The nation is like a stumbling drunk being overserved a with a daily pitcher of fantasy courtesy of our bartender media. And reality equals sobriety.

[larryepke]

4. "Americans don't do science anymore."

http://www.fareedzakaria.com/articles/newsweek/112904.html

This Newsweek story from November concerned how new visa procedures are keeping would be science students from non-white countries out of American universities. In there, author Fareed Zakaria says "Americans don't do science anymore." In fact, Americans aren't ALLOWED to learn science anymore. In contrast to the (public) schooling I received in the 1950s and '60s, today's students are being discouraged from learning the basics of science for political reasons.

If this continues, American leadership in technology will disappear.

[Cyrano]

5. It's gone already. India is turning out more engineers than we are.

And Bangalore, India is the new Silicon Valley.

[0007]

6. No sweat! The earth is being flatten again day by day. Who

knows we may even see the four corners again?

[rkc3]

7. First off, I agree with your comments.

With NCLB, however, education is no longer done locally.

[El Fuego]

8. The year 2000 was the beginning of the new dark ages.

There was a great article in Salon recently entitled "The New Monkey Trial":

http://archive.salon.com/news/feature/2005/01/10/evolution/index.html

The christian zealots now think they have momentum for creationism because * was elected.

They want equal time for "intelligent design" in public schools? In that case I say equal time for SCIENCE in the churches. Churches are publicly funded by virtue of their tax exempt status.

It is a very scary thing. If we continue down this path, it will be more than the end of democracy, it will be the end of western civilization as we know it in the U.S.