Entitled to Their Own Country
Antonin Scalia generally detested science. It threatened everything he believed in. He refused to join a recent Supreme Court opinion about DNA testing because it presented the details of textbook molecular biology as fact. He could not join because he did not know such things to be true, he said. (On the other hand, he knew all about the eighteenth century. History books were trustworthy; science books were not.) Scientists should be listened to only if they supported conservative causes, for example dubious studies purporting to demonstrate that same-sex parenting is harmful to children. Scientists were also good if they helped create technologies he liked, such as oil drills and deadly weapons.Rules and norms can be confining, but they can also be empowering the way science defines physical reality, and Internet protocols and international standards make communication possible and business transactions predictable. But in politics, where once there was truth, now there is truthiness. Where once there were facts, now there are “true facts.” People who decry government “entitlements” behave as though they are entitled to their own facts, to their own president, their own government, and their own country. All others are illegitimate.
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