The anti-science, nearly Luddite, liberals

There are enough and more instances in this blog as evidence for why the left-leaning folks easily mistake me for a Republican, though I think I am one committed liberal.  The hassle arises from the fact that I am not ideologically predisposed in favor of the left when thinking through, and opining about, many public policy issues.

Take climate change, for instance.  I routinely post about how by forcing the developing countries to abandon nuclear energy, we end up forcing them to use more fossil fuels--after all, their energy needs have to be met somehow, right?  The liberals in democratic developing countries like India sing the same ideological tunes and make it difficult to pursue reasonable energy policies.

In my classes, whenever I discuss issues related to food and agriculture, students let loose arguments, almost as a knee-jerk response, critiquing Monsanto--the ideas they have picked up from other classes or readings they did on their own.  I then have a tough time engaging them about these important issues.

Michael Shermer has a thoughtful column on this in the Scientific American:

Whereas conservatives obsess over the purity and sanctity of sex, the left's sacred values seem fixated on the environment, leading to an almost religious fervor over the purity and sanctity of air, water and especially food.

 Exactly!  I am so glad to know that I am not all alone in this.

Surveys show that moderate liberals and conservatives embrace science roughly equally (varying across domains), which is why scientists like E. O. Wilson and organizations like the National Center for Science Education are reaching out to moderates in both parties to rein in the extremists on evolution and climate change. Pace Barry Goldwater, extremism in the defense of liberty may not be a vice, but it is in defense of science, where facts matter more than faith—whether it comes in a religious or secular form—and where moderation in the pursuit of truth is a virtue.

Good luck to us in our attempts to engage with people on all the urgent issues of the day.

Marx is back

A great follow-up to the blog entry on how ideologues don't just die nor fade away.
This might seem like a believe it or not report ....

Marx is back
Hasan Suroor
LONDON: With capitalism in crisis, Karl Marx has become fashionable again in the West. Das Kapital, his seminal work, is set to become a best-seller in Europe.
In his native Germany, copies of Das Kapital are reported to be “flying off the shelves” as failed bankers and free-market economists try to make sense of the global economic meltdown.
Jorn Schutrumpf, head of the Berlin publishing house Dietz, is reported as having said that the sales of the works of Marx, and Friedrich Engels, have trebled. “Marx is fashionable again…We have a new generation of readers who are rattled by the financial crisis and have to recognise that neo-liberalism has turned out to be a false dream,” he told The Times.
A dramatic rise has been reported in the number of visitors to Marx’s birthplace in Trier. And film-maker Alexander Kluge is planning to turn Das Kapital into a movie.
Western leaders who once sneered at Marx’s dense tome, breezily dismissing it as a “doorstop,” have been seen flaunting Das Kapital in recent weeks. French President Nicolas Sarkozi has been spotted “flicking through” it, German Finance Minister Peer Steinbruck has said nice things about it, and even the Pope has praised the book for its “great analytical” quality.
Archbishop of Canterbury Rowan Williams recalled Marx’s analysis of capitalism , saying: “Marx long ago observed the way in which unbridled capitalism became a kind of mythology, ascribing reality, power and agency to things that had no life in themselves.”
Free-market cheerleaders such as The Times and The Daily Telegraph have become interested in Marx. There has been a wave of soul-searching analyses of whether he was right, after all.