The Enemy Within

American can't be defeated from outside. We have too much military and economic power, as well as too many armed citizens, for that to happen. But we can be weakened from within, and there's a group working hard to do that.

I don't speculate about people's inner motivations. That's a game for idiots. I judge people based on their actions, and my judgment of the Republican/Tea Party is that they represent the greatest threat America faces today, because they're attacking one of the pillars of American strength.

America is strong for a lot of reasons, such as our military and agricultural capabilities. We're also strong because America is good at science. Science is vital to America's well being because it feeds our technology, and our technology promotes our security and prosperity. Science is the tool that makes all our other tools work better.

If you want to destroy America, destroying our scientific capability is the most effective method, because the rest of the civilized world isn't giving up their science.

There's plenty of low-grade science denialism on both sides of the political aisle. Anyone who reads the Huffington Post knows that. But only one party in America attacks the idea of science itself, and that's the GOP/TP.

They attack science education time and time again by trying to inject the religious opinions of creationists into our schools. If the fail to achieve that, they move to a fallback position, like relabeling creationism as "intelligent design" or insisting that teachers raise doubts about evolution.

But the worst part of the GOP/TP's anti-science agenda centers around anthropogenic global warming (AGW). Party propaganda on this issue has convinced a lot of Republicans to believe that scientists are inherently untrustworthy. The idea is that scientists can't be trusted, because they'll say anything to keep their grant money rolling in.

Did you ever notice who makes that accusation? It comes mostly from politicians and talk-radio entertainers, two of the most unreliable sources of information on the planet, because, unlike scientists, politicians and talk jocks actually will say anything to make a dollar.

It's not just the honesty of scientists that the GOP/TP attacks, they attack the competence of science too. The party has convinced many of its followers that the average man on the street is better qualified to render a scientific judgment than the people who have years of training and experience in their fields.

These attacks on science are especially dangerous at a time when America is trying to build its STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) capabilities in order to remain competitive in the modern world. While some people are trying to encourage more young Americans to pursue education and careers in STEM, the GOP/TP ridicules science, which is bound to discourage some of those young people.

The GOP/TP's denial of AGW has some other bad effects. First, by insisting that America either can't or shouldn't do anything to deal with the problem, they've turned America from a leader into a follower. Although many of these people claim to believe in American exceptionalism, they want America to hang back and see what other countries do.

Second, AGW poses a direct threat to America's well being by destabilizing our climate, which threatens our agricultural capabilities. We've seen the effect of droughts and heat waves in the center of America in recent years, especially here in Texas. We're seeing it again is California. What does the GOP/TP tell its followers? That we shouldn't risk making the situation worse? No, they claim that more carbon dioxide and a warmer climate might be better for America. They're willing to roll the dice on America's future.

Here's the weird thing about this. Conservatism is supposed to be cautious about the unintended consequences of our actions, yet the GOP/TP, supposedly the organized political expression of American conservatism, tells us that we shouldn't worry about the biggest unintended consequence in human history. We've changed the composition of our atmosphere, and that's changing our climate. Every thinking conservative in the country should be screaming about that, because we're opposed to reckless change.

Science is one of the pillars of American strength. The GOP/TP is attacking that pillar by weakening science education, ridiculing science, and ignoring a threat to America's agriculture. Like I said, I don't speculate about people's inner motivations, but I doubt that many people in the GOP/TP really want to weaken and ultimately destroy America.

Yet that is exactly what they're doing. Wake up, my conservative compadres. Quit letting politicians and entertainers tell you what and how to think. Quit letting them seduce you away from genuine conservatism.

Quit trying to weaken America.