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Conservatives' Trust In Science Has Fallen Dramatically Since Mid-1970s
An anonymous reader writes "While trust in science remained stable among people who self-identified as moderates and liberals in the United States between 1974 and 2010, trust in science fell among self-identified conservatives by more than 25 percent during the same period, according to a study by the University of North Carolina-Chapel Hill. 'Over the last several decades, there's been an effort among those who define themselves as conservatives to clearly identify what it means to be a conservative,' said the study's lead author. 'For whatever reason, this appears to involve opposing science and universities and what is perceived as the "liberal culture." So, self-identified conservatives seem to lump these groups together and rally around the notion that what makes "us" conservatives is that we don't agree with "them."'"
They DO declare their belief in science by asking to be treated by a modern medical facility. If they really didn't believe it would work, they wouldn't bother.
They're not stupid, they're hypocritical, and lying to themselves about what they believe as much as to anyone else.
There is no 'i' in team, but there is in fiasco...
Right, because all those guys who pointed out that burning coal releases mercury that shows up in your can of tuna, or the Day the River Burned Down was due to water pollution, were heavily invested in windpower companies and alternative methods of manufacture. Actually, turns out they were like the 'agenda-driven climate alarmists' of today: mostly university professors.
Believing that science has an agenda is to believe that thousands of independently-working and independently-paid researchers are all part of a vast conspiracy. That's practically the DEFINITION of 'The Paranoid Style in American Politics', which is actually not inherently right-wing at all (think most Kennedy theories), and goes back for centuries (the original essay traced it back to Illuminati fears in the 1700s).
But the paranoid style has steadily taken over the right wing in recent decades, until fact-based, or at least fact-conceding, old conservatives can hardly be heard (or found) any more. It's the paranoids among them that are anti-science, not the whole group.
Between 1974 and 2010 the demand for immediate practicality in order to obtain funds for scientific research has dramatically increased in all government and private sector funding agencies.
The meaning of "reality has a liberal bias" is only that conservatives like to call very solid facts and well-established science biased, rejecting reality. Agree or not, that's the meaning. See: Conservapedia.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
"fiscally conservative social liberals" is an oxymoron.
Truman, Kennedy, Johnson, Carter, and Clinton ALL come to mind. Every one of them decreased our debt relative to GDP. And all but Carter decreased the total debt .
It was under ALL 8 years of reagan, 3 years of Poppa Bush, and 7.5 years of W that massive increases in deficits/debt came about.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
You missed the biggest liberal idea. Prohibition of alcohol.
That was certainly NOT a liberal idea. It was pushed by the evangelical Protestant churches. It was accomplished with help of the "drys" - The Prohibition Party. You should educate yourself on what "liberal" means. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modern_liberalism_in_the_United_States
The conservative Christopher Buckley, son of William Buckley, traces the problem to a misplaced war on intellectualism by the right. His thoughts on this is that for the last half decade or so, conservative intellectuals had a tendency to go to Wall Street after college while liberal intellectuals had a tendency to go into higher education. Over time, colleges and universities had a more liberal personnel influencing future generations of students. Many conservative intellectuals like his father warned about this liberal intellectualism influence. The problem was the less intelligent members of the right would ignore the "liberal" part of the warning and the right grew to distrust all intellectuals regardless of their ideological views. People like Sarah Palin almost revel in their lack of knowledge portraying intellectuals as "elitists.". This is a very dangerous stance according to Buckley as it hinders progress and science.
Well, there's spam egg sausage and spam, that's not got much spam in it.