re: #694 lostlakehiker

Ludwig, if the voters of America were all physics professors, the GOP could argue its case based on the philosophical and economic works of Ludwig von Mises, Milton Friedman, and so on. But Republicans, like Democrats, must argue their case before the voters we’ve got, and that means simplifying.

It also, unfortunately, means that pandering sometimes pays. (Sometimes)?

The way the electorate gets around to correct decisions is that it watches the consequences of what the parties do. Any coach can talk a good game, but does his team win? It’s the same with parties. The Republicans came through the past decade with a C-. Now the Democrats are working to snatch a D from the jaws of a B-.

All they had to do was fix up energy, push real science education in the schools, and do some salvage work to keep the economy from a shock-and-awe sinking.

Instead, they’ve been obsessing about “winning” a health care bill, while ignoring every other aspect of governance.

I agree and dissagree with what you are saying.

As always, it’s an excellent post you wrote.

However, this is not about everyone being a physics professor. This is about being able to find other countries on a map and having the most basic understandings of things like economics, science and history - three topics which are the first things you need to know in order to judge policy in the modern world.

An educated voter who has a clue votes on issues and has a notion of cause and effect. Morons vote on moron issue like belief that evolution didn’t happen or that communism is the same as fascism, or death panels or birth certificates, or how many memes can we go into that any even moderately educated person would call insanely stupid, but are bought hook line and sinker by the ignorant?

My point is, for example, you do not need to be an atomic physicist to know that Uranium production requires very very large industrial facilities of the sort that cover acres, because uranium centrifuges are really big and you need thousands of them.

You may need to know nuclear physics to calculate how much U235 you need for a bomb, but an understanding on the NOVA special level is sufficient to know that it is not a small undertaking.

If we had science up to the NOVA special level - which is not a very high level, Bush could never have lied to this nation effectively about WMD in Iraq and we would now be in a position to do something about the very real program in Iran.