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 The Reagan Legacy, Theocracy and The Foundations of Anti-Science Politics July 10, 2004 7:15 AM

Ronald Reagan reversed President Eisenhower and left a legacy of destroying science and scientific facts in US government. General and Republican President Dwight David Eisenhower was the last US President to respect science and use it impartially. Do not even think about calling this article "liberal" because that would be a lie. We are dire conservatives here. The Eisenhower Presidency was the last time when scientists' voices were heard and heeded at the highest levels of policymaking. When the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's James Killian served as President Eisenhower's science advisor in the 1950s, the two men forged a close and mutually respectful working relationship. This proved to be the pinnacle of science's influence in U.S. policymaking circles. Anti-science principles have replaced the dignity and respect between government, the military and science epitomized by General and President Eisenhower who was the last pro-science politician in power in the USA. Scientists learned these lessons well and are vigorously engaged in a project to serve a more useful role in society. We aren't decision makers, and we understand that we can't be decision makers. What we can do is play their part in helping society to govern itself. That role is to create knowledge and communicate with society. The cumulative effects of increased knowledge are subtle, pervasive and powerful. Government should not undermine science. Jefferson said, "Enlighten the people generally, and tyranny and oppressions of body and mind will vanish like evil spirits at the dawn of day." All his life he believed in education as the cornerstone of republican society. Restoring America to the values of Jefferson and Madison is the only tradition that the USA need follow. Here at this website we are advocates of science, pro-business and capitalism. We recognize the role of business in government and applaud it. George Washington was the wealthiest man in the USA at the time of the Revolutionary War when he broke his oath on the Holy Bible to the Crown of England and led un-uniformed rebels and revolutionaries at the risk of his life, assisted by an exclusive group of Freemasons including every single member of his staff, all of whom were Freemasons, and assisted by an International crew of Freemasons including the Marquis de Lafayette, head of the French Freemasons, and Count Kosciusko, the head of the Polish Freemasons.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:16 AM

We do NOT respect not applaud anyone who is anti-science or the misuse of science in government. We decry advocating for instant changes to abandon the use of oil and petroleum products to the detriment of the US economy. The only thing worse than this kind of madness are the damnable lies of US President George Bush and his Vice-President Dick Cheney claiming that global warming does not exist when there are math models that show the predictability of global warming that you can see and read about. The Bush administration has 50% less PhD advisors than any previous modern presidency. Consider the factual statement that: "Universities should not subsidize intellectual curiosity." This oxymoronic statement was uttered by none other than then candidate for the governorship of California Ronald Reagan in the late 1960s. The astounding thing is not that somebody like Reagan would actually say something so outrageously stupid, but that this helped him winning the election and ushering a new era of official anti-intellectualism in America. This is continuing to this day, witness the fact that the current president, George W. Bush, has run a campaign as the champion of the everyday man against the "pointed-head" intellectualism. Ronald Reagan's free market economics definitely had fundamental flaws: the gigantic debt it ran up. The webmasters here are Libertarians. We support free market economics--albeit without deficits anathema to free markets. Reagan said one thing about big government and did the opposite. What he said is why he is being lauded. What he did is the most wretched and deplorable pack of lies foisted on an ignorant population since Mao, Lenin, Hitler and Stalin lied to their respective publics. We also applaud anti-communism and decry socialism in any form. Leaders being anti-science liars exceeds the evils of communism. Because Mr. Bush seems to be cut from the same cloth as Reagan, can we expect the same results—i.e., deficits as far as the eye can see? Yes, we can. The damnable deficits are there right now.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:17 AM

Look at these photos to see the factual legacy of actor Ronald Reagan. Reagan was an unethical a charlatan and a liar from his earliest forays into public life. The photos and ads prove it. Reagan was interested in power, money and success at any cost which is why he switched political parties. Unscrupulous degenerate, and decadent actor-politician-President Ron Reagan always consciously did anything for money - see these photos for concrete proof. Mr. Reagan never smoked. Reagan knew tobacco was harmful because he was an athlete. Reagan always sold tobacco products. Reagan epitomized anti-science politics that were pro-business to the detriment of human health and a civil society. There is Ronald Reagan as he appeared in a 1932-33 promotion when he worked as a sportscaster for WHO radio in Des Moines, Iowa. This is an actual postcard which was sent to people who wrote to Reagan at WHO. Reagan, who never did smoke, is pictured with pipe and dog, Peggy in this advertisement for Kentucky Winner cigarettes and Kentucky Club pipe tobacco. Then we see the ads ad for the Liggett Tobacco Group featuring Ronald Reagan that was published in 1948 in Life Magazine. No one can argue with this evidence. Reagan told the public that tobacco was healthy and good for them. He was well-paid to do so and he knew better. He never smoked. http://groups.msn.com/SpaceSatelliteSensing/ronreaganlegacy.msnw?Page=1  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:19 AM

This hateful and anti-science policy of Ronald Reagan began in the late 1960s, when then-Governor Ronald Reagan approved the closing of most state-run mental health facilities, with the announced intention of transferring the responsibility to the community level. In reality, most de-institutionalized patients were simply dumped on the streets, contributing to the present crisis in mental health care. The affable actor made it possible for theatrics and glib scripting to successfully enable unqualified people to hold high office, pull the wool over the eyes of a gullible public, and to do the most inhumane things done this side of Hitler and the Third Reich. The world now spends trillions of dollars dealing with the consequences of AIDS and mental illness rather than spending that money wisely on adequate services when it could have been done. Reagan was the King of the Deficit in government. His only interests in life were personal gain. How much proof do you need with this "athlete" who never smoked doing this? Tell me this slob was ethical or public minded. For generations the notion that scientific theories represent objective, independent physical reality has been serious challenged by philosophers of science. Indeed, there are few today who adhere to such straightforward scientific realism. Among the many problems with the realist position is the fact that multiple, mutually incompatible theories can often be presented that equally account for a given body of experimental evidence. A philosophically unreflective approach to science gives the impression that objective reality screens out false hypotheses, leading to only one true theory. In fact multiple hypotheses are often put forth, and the choice among them is based on various human factors. Look at a particularly striking example of the hypothetical 'realities' of physics: The standard procedure in atomic physics, as well as various other branches of science, is known as 'retroduction'. In this process we regard a body of empirical evidence with a specific theory in mind. Much of the evidence is accounted for by the theory, so therefore imagine that some surprising phenomenon is observed in terms of our theory, it would be explicable if a physical entity - a new particle with attributes determined by the evidence - existed. We then conclude that the proposed particle exists.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:20 AM

So much for Reagan and science. Even Max Planck's famous idea of 'quanta' of energy is just such a proposition. The notion of 'quanta' provides us with an opportunity for explaining diverse and apparently incompatible microphysical phenomena, but more recently Timothy Boyer (see e.g. 'The Classical Vacuum' in Scientific American, August 1985) has outlined a concept which demonstrates that we can explain such phenomena without recourse to the notion of 'quanta'. In the world of microphysics, it has in fact never proved possible to made a direct observation of subatomic entities. We merely infer their existence from circumstantial evidence (e.g. the macroscopic effects - such as traces in a cloud chamber - they produce when they interact with certain measuring devices). In effect, we create a hypothetical concept which has an 'as if' reality, but this is not the same as demonstrating physical realities. And we cannot hide the fact that 'physics has never been able to demonstrate that its theoretical concepts uniquely account for the experimental facts' - hence the presence, common throughout physics, of the multiple incompatible theories which in their various ways can each be used to account for the same phenomenon. Problems arise not because such theoretical concepts only describe hypothetical realities, but because they are presented - at least to the student and the layperson - disguised in the trappings of physical reality.  [ send green star] 		 
Anti-Intellectualism in America July 10, 2004 7:21 AM

Throughout the 20th century, there has been an ongoing battle between intellectuals, and people I like to refer to as anti-intellectuals. This battle, which does not appear to be nearing any end, any conclusion, still wages today in the 21st century, wherein Christian fundamentalists (the anti-intellectuals) constantly struggle in debate with the ideas and theories of evolutionary biologists, and other members of the scientific community. Fear that thought, or science, could destroy the foundations of faith, or belief in a major deity, helps fuel the belief of antirationalism. Antirationalism is defined as the belief that thought is cold and amoral. So, basically, to sit and think about anything, perhaps even about God, is ground enough for being sent to hell, or targeted in society as being an eccentric, or a witch. Fear that thought, or science, could destroy the foundations of faith, or belief in a major deity, helps fuel the belief of antirationalism. What does it mean to place unbelief in the Christian God as the root for Government? Religion? Education? To say that there should not be any Government, regardless that passages in the bible that suggest government institutions under the name of the God be established to keep order on Earth under the Laws placed down by God in Heaven. That Religion, in and of itself, is a direct descendant of disbelief, or that art is an evil created through the sin of human beings. That Education is evil because it doesn’t teach the doctrines of the Creation or the Church. It is insanity. As for a-morality, this view is best summarized in the words Puritan John Cotton in 1642 on higher education: "The more learned and witty you bee, the more fit to act for Satan you bee." I honestly never understood why God would not appreciate humor and culture. Then again, there is that story of Eve and Adam stealing the fruit of the tree of knowledge. .. right. Give me a break! Politicians are archaic anti-science NUTS today.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:22 AM

Anti-intellectualism has always been a powerful undercurrent in American culture, and it will probably play a major role in our society for a long time to come due to the political success of Ronald Reagan. Clinton and Gore are just as guilty as Reagan and Bush. Politicians are all dirty rotten anti-science scumbags and liars regardless of their party. Regardless of how depressing such thoughts might be, the first rule to win a war is to know thy enemy; which is why I'd like to discuss the major types of anti-intellectualism and how they threaten the very existence of a free society. The GOP has not always been the anti-science party. Republican Abraham Lincoln created the National Academy of Sciences in 1863. William McKinley, a president much admired by Karl Rove, won two presidential victories over the creationist Democrat William Jennings Bryan, and supported the creation of the Bureau of Standards, forerunner of today's National Institutes of Science and Technology. Again, the most pro-science president of the last century was Republican Dwight D. Eisenhower, a former West Point mathematics and engineering student, and later president of Columbia University. Eisenhower established the post of White House science adviser, allowed top researchers to wander in and out of the West Wing, and oversaw such critical scientific advances as the development of the U2 spy plane and federally funded programs to put more science teachers in public schools. At one point, he even said that he wanted to foster an attitude in America toward science that paralleled the country's embrace of competitive sports. Scientists returned the affection, leaning slightly in favor of the GOP in the 1960 election.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:24 AM

Another irrational doctrine of anti-intellectualism is anti-elitism: the idea that all intellectuals hold themselves above the other cohabitants of society and thus demand special privilege and treatment. The idea that those intellectuals feel they are at the apex of a caste system, the elite of society, and will do everything in their power to rule the ignorant and faithfully devout, helps feed this irrational fear of knowledge and science. Just because an individual exceeds exceptionally in academics, and is an expert in a field, does not grant that individual, in the United States, the right to rule supremely over the supposed ignorant of the society. Look at our President! If intelligence juxtaposed leadership, we would not be in the mess we are in today—with the US foreign policy, the presidents moral standards and his constant legislation of these morals, or the constant debasement of our most cherished and humbled accomplishments: Those of the Bill of Rights and the Constitution of the United States, two documents that insure freedom, equality, and tranquility for all (never mind what we truly have under the leadership, or dictatorship, or such a President as the one that now sits as an usurper to our metaphorical throne). However, the entire fundamentalists Christian coalition—the main adherents of this antirationalistic/anti-intellectual view on life—are ecstatic about George Bush holding presidency over this “great nation.” His position ensures that their ideas and values/morals are forcefully fed, intravenously, to the rest of society. I am quite certain that George W. Bush does consider himself to be better than most other Americans, or at least holds that America is a far superior “race”, if I dare call it that, than that of any other nation. Ironically, to such anti-elitists, this is more than acceptable. One can be anti-intellectual also by rejecting intellectualism because it is elitist. Anti-elitism is very peculiar to the American psyche, and it is virtually unknown in the rest of the universe. Most other people recognize that in matters of the intellect, as in any other human activity, there are people who do it better and others who are not quite as good. That does not (and should not) imply anything about the intrinsic worth (or lack thereof) of such people. Astonishingly, Americans don't have any problem with elitism per se: just watch the adoring crowds at a basketball game and the recursive tendency to set up athletes as "role models" for our youth. The underlying assumption seems to be that everybody can become an Olympic athlete, but that the way to science and letters is only reserved to the lucky few. Ironically, the truth is quite the opposite: while the chances of making it in professional sports are almost nil, a country with a large system of public education and some of the best schools in the world can give the gift of intellectual pursuit to millions of people.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:25 AM

I speak with authority here because I spent 27 years in professional sports, and 25 years in University Teaching before retiring and I am teaching in a major university again at this moment. My mind works, but my body retired...maybe, because last year I became the oldest person ever to complete a major bicycle race. My body is declining to be sure. You decide if my thinking is valid and improving. Suppose you are a mathematician and you are attending a cocktail party. Somebody approaches you for small talk and asks: what do you do? Chances are you'd rather answer that you are a traveling salesman than that you spend your time contemplating problems in set theory. This is because you are afraid of a third form of anti-intellectualism, unreflective instrumentalism. This is the idea that if something is not of immediate practical value it's not worth pursuing. Hence, most of science and all of philosophy should be thrown out the window. The root of this attack on the pursuit of knowledge is to be found in capitalism at its worse. Andrew Carnegie, for example, once quipped that classical studies are a waste of "precious years trying to extract education from an ignorant past." But the very idea of a liberal (not politically, but as opposed to practical) education is that it is far better to train somebody to think critically than to give her specific skills that will be out of date in a few years. Yet, captains of industry are not interested in your mental welfare; what they want is a bunch of mindless robots who are especially adept at carrying out whatever tasks will turn the highest profit for the stockholders. In this sense, intellectualism is a very subversive enterprise, which explains its persecution by politicians who are definitely anti-science. The initial split between the GOP and the scientific community began during the administration of Richard Nixon. In the late 1960s and early 1970s, protests against the Vietnam War captured the sympathy of the liberal academic community, including many scientists, whose opposition to the war turned them against Nixon. The president characteristically lashed back and, in 1973, abolished the entire White House science advisory team by executive order, fuming that they were all Democrats. Later, he was caught ranting on one of his tapes about a push, led by his science adviser, to spend more money on scientific research in the crucial electoral state of California. Nixon complained, "Their only argument is that we're going to lose the support of the scientific community. We will never have their support." The GOP further alienated scientists with its "Southern strategy," an effort to broaden the party's appeal to white conservative Southerners. Many scientists were turned off by the increasing evangelical slant of Republicans and what many saw as coded appeals to white racists.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:27 AM

Scientists also tended to agree with Democrats' increasingly pro-environmental and consumer-protection stances, movements which both originated in academia. Gradually, as John Judis and Ruy Teixeira show in their recent book The Emerging Democratic Majority, professionals, the group of highly skilled workers that includes scientists, moved from the Republican camp to the Democratic. Yet that transition took a while, in large part because most professionals were still fiscally conservative, few sided with pro-union Democrats, and the Republican Party had not yet been overtaken by its more socially conservative factions. In the mid 1970s, for example, Republican President Gerald Ford showed a moderate streak while in the White House and reinstated the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Ronald Reagan oversaw a widening gulf between the Republican Party and academic scientists. During the 1980 campaign, he refused to endorse evolution, a touchstone issue among scientists, saying, "Well, [evolution] is a theory--it is a scientific theory only, and it has in recent years been challenged in the world of science and is not yet believed in the scientific community to be as infallible as it was once believed." Though he aggressively funded research for military development, he alienated many in academia with his rush to build a missile defense system that most scientists thought unworkable. George H.W. Bush tried to walk the tightrope. He pushed the Human Genome Project forward and elevated the position of chief science adviser from a special assistant to assistant. Yet he served during an acrimonious public debate about global warming, an issue that drove a wedge between academic scientists and the interests of the oil and gas industry--an increasingly powerful ally of the GOP. He generally sided with the oil industry and dismissed environmentalists' appeals for the most costly reforms. Yet he also tried to appease moderates by signing the landmark Framework Convention on Climate Change in Rio de Janeiro and helping pass the Clean Air Act, which aimed to reduce smog and acid rain. In the end, his compromising did him little good; and then nvironmentalists attacked him, and his rapprochement with liberal academic elites won him few friends with social conservatives. Bush faced a surprisingly tough primary challenge from Pat Buchanan in the 1992 election campaign, saw his support among evangelicals in the general election decline compared with 1988, and lost to the Democratic underdog Bill Clinton.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:28 AM

Newt Gingrich didn't make the same mistakes. When he became the House Speaker in 1995, Gingrich worked vigorously to cut budgets in areas with Democratic constituents--and he knew that by the time he came to office most scientists were supporting Democrats. The speaker took aim at research organizations such as the U.S. Geological Survey and National Biological Survey and dismissed action on global warming. He even abolished the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, which served as the main scientific research arm of Capitol Hill. Gingrich claimed that OTA was too slow to keep up with congressional debates; agency defenders argued that the cut was fueled by partisan dislike of an agency perceived as a Democratic stronghold. Indeed, several years prior, OTA had published a report harshly critical of the predominantly GOP-backed missile defense project, the Strategic Defense Initiative. By the mid 1990s, the GOP had firmly adopted a new paradigm for dismissing scientists as liberals. Gingrich believed, as Nixon did, that most scientists weren't going to support him politically. "Scientists tend to have an agenda, and it tends to be a liberal political agenda," explains Gingrich's close associate former Rep. Robert Walker (R-Pa.), the former chairman of the House Science Committee. In 1995, Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Calif.), then-chairman of the House committee dealing with global warming, called climate change a "liberal claptrap." In interviews with The Washington Post in 2001, Texas Republican Tom DeLay dismissed evolution as unproven, said that we shouldn't need an EPA because "God charges us to be good stewards of the Earth," and denigrated scientific Nobel Prize winners as "liberal and extremist." Ph.D. Phobia is the specific province of theocracy in politics that rejects science. George W. Bush embodies the modern GOP's attitude toward science. He hails from a segment of the energy industry that, when it comes to global warming, considers science an obstacle to growth. He is strongly partisan, deeply religious, and also tied to evangelical supporters. And, like Reagan, he has refused to endorse the scientific principle of evolution. During the 2000 campaign, a New York Times reporter asked whether he believed in evolution. Bush equivocated, leading the Times to write that he "believes the jury is still out." Imagine the stunned faces of fundamentalists being told that Charles Darwin was an Anglican Minister who said: "The Bible is the supreme authority for the governance of mankind." to the atheist officers of the HMS Beagle. Darwin simply observed the animals on the Galapagos and listed facts.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:29 AM

Bush has also learned from his father's experience that siding with scientists gains him little politically, and often alienates conservatives. Bush and Rove have tried to woo portions of other groups that traditionally trend Democratic--steel tariffs for unions, faith-based grants for African-American ministers--but scientists are different. They aren't a big voting bloc. They are generally affluent, but not enough so to be major donors. They are capable of organizing under the auspices of a university to lobby for specific grants, but they aren't organized politically in a general way. In short, scientists aren't likely to cause the GOP problems if they are completely alienated. Scientists have almost never turned themselves into anything like a political force. Even Al Gore, the apotheosis of many scientists' political hopes, received little formal support from them during the 2000 campaign. Consequently, the White House seems to have pushed scientific concerns down toward the bottom of its list of priorities. Bush, for instance, has half as many Ph.D.s in his cabinet as Clinton had two years into his term. Among the White House inner circle, Condoleezza Rice's doctorate distinguishes her as much as her race and more than her sex. Consider also the length of time the administration left top scientific positions vacant. It took 20 months to choose an FDA director, 14 months to choose an NIH director, and seven months to choose a White House science adviser for the Office of Science and Technology Policy. Once Bush had appointed a head of OSTP, he demoted the rank of the position, moved the office out of the White House, and cut the number of associate directors from four to two. An OSTP spokeswoman argues that the administration's decision to move OSTP was inconsequential and that reducing the number of associate directors was just a way of "reducing the stovepipes." But geography and staff equal clout in Washington, and unarguably signal how much the people in power care about what you do. Moreover, Bush appointed to one of the two associate director positions Richard Russell, a Hill aide credentialed with only a bachelor's degree in biology, and let him interview candidates for the job of director. "It bothers me deeply [that he was given that spot], because I don't think that he is entirely qualified," says Allen Bromley, George H. W. Bush's science adviser, who worked for some of his tenure out of prime real estate in the West Wing of the White House. "To my astonishment, he ended up interviewing some of the very senior candidates, and he did not do well. The people he interviewed were not impressed."  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:29 AM

Cynical Trials When required to seek input from scientists, the administration tends to actively recruit those few who will bolster the positions it already knows it wants to support, even if that means defying scientific consensus. As with Bush's inquiry into stem-cell research, when preparing important policy decisions, the White House wants scientists to give them validation, not grief. The administration has stacked hitherto apolitical scientific advisory committees, and even an ergonomics study section, which is just a research group and has no policy making role. Ergonomics became a politicized issue early in Bush's term when he overturned a Clinton-era rule requiring companies to do more to protect workers from carpal tunnel syndrome and other similar injuries. Late last year, the Department of Health and Human Services rejected, without explanation, three nominees for the Safety and Occupational Health Study Section who had already been approved by Dana Loomis, the group's chair, but who also weren't clearly aligned with the administration's position on ergonomics. Loomis then wrote a letter saying that "The Secretary's office declined to give reasons for its decision, but they seem ominously clear in at least one case: one of the rejected nominees is an expert in ergonomics who has publicly supported a workplace ergonomics standard." Another nominee, who was accepted, said that she had been called by an HHS official who wanted to know her views on ergonomics before allowing her on the panel. The administration has further used these committees as places for religious conservatives whose political credentials are stronger than their research ones. For example, on Christmas Eve 2002, Bush appointed David Hager--a highly controversial doctor who has written that women should use prayer to reduce the symptoms of PMS--to the FDA's Reproductive Health Drugs Advisory Commission. Bush has also taken to unprecedented levels the political vetting of nominees for advisory committees. When William Miller, a professor of psychology at the University of New Mexico, was considered as a candidate for a panel on the National Institute of Drug Abuse, he was asked his views on abortion, the death penalty, and whether he had voted for Bush. He said no to the last question and never received a call back. "Not only does the Bush administration scorn science; it is subjecting appointments to scientific advisory committees and even study sections to political tests," says Donald Kennedy, editor in chief of Science, the community's flagship publication.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:30 AM

Control Group Politics Any administration will be tempted to trumpet the conclusions of science when they justify actions that are advantageous politically, and to ignore them when they don't. Democrats, for instance, are more than happy to tout the scientific consensus that human activity contributes to climate change, but play down evidence that drilling in the Arctic National Wildlife Refuge (which they oppose) probably will have little impact on the caribou there. But Democrats will only go so far down the path of ignoring scientific evidence because they don't want to alienate their scientific supporters. Increasingly, the Republicans feel little such restraint. Hence the Bush administration's propensity to tout scientific evidence only when it suits them politically. For instance, though numerous studies have shown the educational benefits of after-school programs, the Bush administration cited just one recent report casting doubt on those benefits to justify cutting federal after-school funding. Meanwhile, the White House has greatly increased the federal budget for abstinence-only sex education programs despite a notable lack of evidence that they work to reduce teen pregnancy. The administration vigorously applies cost-benefit analysis--some of it rigorous and reasonable--to reduce federal regulations on industry. But when the National Academy of Sciences concluded that humans are contributing to a planetary warming and that we face substantial future risks, the White House initially misled the public about the report and then dramatically downplayed it. Even now, curious reporters asking the White House about climate change are sent to a small, and quickly diminishing, group of scientists who still doubt the causes of global warming. Many scientists were shocked that the administration had even ordered the report, a follow-up to a major report from the 2,500-scientist Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, the world's leading climate research committee. Doing that was like asking a district court to review a Supreme Court decision.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:31 AM

Experts in Exile This White House's disinclination to engage the scientific community in important policy decisions may have serious consequences for the country. One crucial issue that Congress and the Bush administration will likely have to confront before Bush leaves office is human cloning. Researchers distinguish between "reproductive cloning," which most scientists abhor, and "therapeutic cloning," which may someday allow researchers to use stem cells from a patient's cloned embryo to grow replacement bone marrow, liver cells, or other organs, and which most scientists favor. When the President's Council on Bioethics voted on recommendations for the president, every single practicing scientist voted for moving therapeutic cloning forward. Bush, however, decided differently, supporting instead a bill sponsored by Sen. Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) to ban all forms of embryonic cloning. John Marburger, the president's current scientific adviser--a longtime Democrat who says that he has good relations with Bush and is proud of the administration's science record--wrote in an email statement which barely conceals his own opinion: "As for my views on cloning, let me put it this way. The president's position--which is to ban all cloning--was made for a number of ethical reasons, and I do know that he had the best, most up-to-date science before him when he made that decision." Jack Gibbons, a former head of the Congressional Office of Technology Assessment, calls Bush's proposed ban "an attempt to throttle science, not to govern technology." Harold Varmus, the former NIH director, believes that "this is the first time that the [federal] government has ever tried to criminalize science." Another potentially costly decision is the Bush administration's post-September 11 restrictions on the ability of foreign scientists to immigrate to the United States--restrictions which many scientists argue go far beyond reasonable precautions to keep out terrorists. In December 2002, the National Academy of Science, the National Academy of Engineering, and the Institute of Medicine issued a statement complaining that "recent efforts by our government to constrain the flow of international visitors in the name of national security are having serious unintended consequences for American science, engineering and medicine." Indeed, MIT recently abandoned a major artificial-intelligence research project because the school couldn't find enough graduate students who weren't foreigners and who could thus clear new security regulations.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:31 AM

Unscientific Method Like Gingrich, Bush favors investments in scientific research for the military, health care, and other areas that garner strong public and industry support. Indeed, the White House quickly points to such funding increases whenever its attitude toward science is questioned. But for an administration that has boosted spending in a great number of areas, more money for science is less telling than how the Bush administration acts when specific items on its agenda collide with scientific evidence or research needs. In almost all of those cases, the scientists get tuned out. Ignoring expert opinion on matters of science may never cause the administration the kind of political grief it is now suffering over its WMD Iraq policy. But neither is it some benign bit of anti-elitist bias. American government has a history of investing in the capabilities and trusting the judgments of its scientific community--a legacy that has brought us sustained economic progress and unquestioned scientific leadership within the global intellectual community. For the short-term political profits that come with looking like an elite-dismissing friend of the everyman, the Bush administration has put that proud, dynamic history at real risk. Some time ago, Ronald Reagan pointed out that one couldn't trust the Soviet government because the Soviets didn't believe in God or in an afterlife and therefore had no reason to behave honorably, but would be willing to lie and cheat and do all sorts of wicked things to aid their cause. Naturally, I firmly believe that the president of the United States knows what he is talking about, so I've done my very best to puzzle out the meaning of that statement. Let me begin by presenting this "Reagan Doctrine" (using the term with all possible respect): "No one who disbelieves in God and in an afterlife can possibly be trusted." If this is true (and it must be if the president says so), then people are just naturally dishonest and crooked and downright rotten. In order to keep them from lying and cheating every time they open their mouths, they must be bribed or scared out of doing so. They have to be told and made to believe that if they tell the truth and do the right thing and behave themselves, they will go to heaven and get to plunk a harp and wear the latest design in halos. They must also be told and made to believe that if they lie and steal and run around with the opposite sex, they are going to hell and will roast over a brimstone fire forever. It's a little depressing, if you come to think of it. By the Reagan Doctrine, there is no such thing as a person who keeps his word just because he has a sense of honor. No one tells the truth just because he thinks that it is the decent thing to do. No one is kind because he feels sympathy for others, or treats others decently because he likes the kind of world in which decency exists.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:32 AM

Instead, according to the Reagan Doctrine, anytime we meet someone who pays his debts, or hands in a wallet he found in the street, or stops to help a blind man cross the road, or tells a casual truth -- he's just buying himself a ticket to heaven, or else canceling out a demerit that might send him to hell. It's all a matter of good, solid business practice; a matter of turning a spiritual profit and of responding prudently to spiritual blackmail. Personally, I don't think that I -- or you -- or even President Reagan -- would knock down an old lady and snatch her purse the next time we're short a few bucks. If only we were sure of that heavenly choir, or if only we were certain we wouldn't get into that people-fry down in hell. But by the Reagan Doctrine, if we didn't believe in God and in an afterlife, there would be nothing to stop us, so l guess we all would. But let's take the reverse of the Reagan Doctrine. If no one who disbelieves in God and in an afterlife can possibly be trusted, it seems to follow that those who do believe in God and in an afterlife can be trusted. Since the American government consists of god-fearing people who believe in an afterlife, it seems pretty significant that the Soviet Union nevertheless would not trust us any farther than they can throw an ICBM. Since the Soviets are slaves to godless communism, they would naturally think everyone else is as evil as they are. Consequently, the Soviet Union's distrust of us is in accordance with the Reagan Doctrine. Yet there are puzzles. Consider Iran. The Iranians are a god-fearing people and believe in an afterlife, and this is certainly true of the mullahs and ayatollahs who comprise their government. And yet we are reluctant to trust them for some reason. President Reagan himself has referred to the Iranian leaders as "barbarians." Oddly enough, the Iranians are reluctant to trust us, either. They referred to the ex-president (I forget his name for he is never mentioned in the media anymore) as the "Great Satan" and yet we all know that the ex-president was a born-again Christian. There's something wrong here. God-fearing Americans and god-fearing Iranians don't trust each other and call each other terrible names. How does that square with the Reagan Doctrine? To be sure, the God in whom the Iranians believe is not quite the God in whom we believe, and the afterlife they believe in is a little different from ours. There are no houris, alas, in our heaven. We call our system of belief Christianity and they call theirs Islam, and come to think of it, for something like twelve centuries, good Christians believed Islam was an invention of the devil and believers in Islam ("Moslems") courteously returned the compliment so that there was almost continuous war between them.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:35 AM

Both sides considered it a holy war and felt that the surest way of going to heaven was to clobber an infidel. What's more, you didn't have to do it in a fair and honorable way, either. Tickets of admission just said, "Clobber!" This bothers me a little. The Reagan Doctrine doesn't mention the variety of god or afterlife that is concerned. It doesn't indicate that it matters what you call God -- Allah, Vishnu, Buddha, Zeus, Ishtar. I don't think that president Reagan meant to imply a Moslem couldn't trust a Shintoist or that a Buddhist couldn't trust a Parsee. I think it was just the godless Soviets he was after. Yet perhaps he was just being cautious in not mentioning the fact that the variety of deity counted. But even if that were so there are problems. For instance, the Iranians are Moslems and the Iraqi are Moslems. Both are certain that there is no god but Allah and that Mohammed is his prophet and believe it with all their hearts. And yet, at the moment, Iraq doesn't trust Iran worth a damn, and Iran trusts Iraq even less than that. If fact, Iran is convinced that Iraq is in the pay of the Great Satan (that's god-fearing America, in case you've forgotten) and Iraq counters with the accusation that it is Iran who is in the pay of the great Satan. Neither side is accusing the godless Soviets of anything, which is a puzzle. But then, you know, they are Moslems and perhaps we can't just go along with any old god. I can see why Reagan might not like to specify, since it might not be good presidential business to offend the billions of people who are sincerely religious but lack the good taste to be Christians. Still, just among ourselves, and in a whisper, perhaps the only people you can really trust are good Christians. Yet even that raises difficulties. For instance, I doubt that anyone can seriously maintain that the Irish people are anything but god-fearing, and certainly they don't have the slightest doubts concerning the existence of an afterlife. Some are Catholics and some are Protestants, but both of these Christian varieties believe in the Bible and in God and in Jesus and in heaven and in hell. Therefore, by the Reagan Doctrine, the people of Ireland should trust each other. Oddly enough, they don't. In Northern Ireland there has been a two-sided terrorism that has existed for years and shows no sign of ever abating.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:36 AM

Catholics and Protestants blow each other up every chance they get and there seems to be no indication of either side trusting the other even a little bit. But then, come to think of it, Catholics and Protestants have had a thing about each other for centuries. They have fought each other, massacred each other, and burned each other at the stake. And at no time was this conflict fought in a gentlemanly, let's-fight-fair manner. Any time you caught a heretic or an idolater (or whatever nasty name you wanted to use) looking the other way, you sneaked up behind him and bopped him and collected your ticket to heaven. We can't even make the Reagan Doctrine show complete sense here in the United States. Consider the Ku Klux Klan. They don't like the Jews or the Catholics, but then, the Jews don't accept Jesus and the Catholics do accept the Pope, and these fine religious distinctions undoubtedly justify distrust by a narrow interpretation of the Reagan Doctrine. The protestant Ku Klux Klan can only cotton to Protestants. Blacks, however, are predominantly protestant, and of southern varieties, too, for that is where their immediate ancestors learned their religion. Ku Kluxers and Blacks have very similar religions and therefore even by a narrow interpretation of the Reagan Doctrine should trust each other. It is difficult to see why they don't. What about the Moral Majority? They're absolute professionals when it comes to putting a lot of stock in God and in an afterlife. They practice it all day, apparently. Naturally, they're a little picky. One of them said that God didn't listen to the prayers of a Jew. Another refused to share a platform with Phyllis Schlafly, the moral majority's very own sweetheart, because she was a Catholic. Some of them don't even require religious disagreements, just political ones. They have said that one can't be a liberal and a good Christian at one and the same time so that if you don't vote right, you are going straight to hell whatever your religious beliefs are. Fortunately, at every election they will tell you what the right vote is so that you don't go to hell by accident. Perhaps we shouldn't get into the small details, though. The main thing is that the Soviet Union is Godless and, therefore, sneaky, tricky, crooked, untrustworthy, and willing to stop at nothing to advance their cause. The United States is god-fearing and therefore forthright, candid, honest, trustworthy, and willing to let their cause lose sooner than behave in anything but the most decent possible way.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:38 AM

It bothers the heck out of me therefore that there's probably not a country in the world that doesn't think the United States, through the agency of the CIA and its supposedly underhanded methods, has upset governments in Guatemala, Chile, and Iran (among others), has tried to overthrow the Cuban government by a variety of economic, political, and even military methods, and so on. In every country, you'll find large numbers who claim that the United States fought a cruel and unjust war in Vietnam and that it is the most violent and crime-ridden nation in the world. Face it. The populations in US Prisons doubled under Reagan due to his 100% absurd drug policies. Drug use went up and society is threatened by the bills via deficits. It needs to change and everyone but religious and political leaders says so. Reagan undid the growth of democracy on earth and simultaneously strengthened it to the terms of pre-Viet Nam in the USA to be sure. Today the simple minded Americans who think that Viet Nam was a good attempt undone by "liberals" have no idea that democracy was a free-market system of government accepted by all in the USA who saw the evils of "Old Europe." No one forced democracy on the USA which is why it succeeded. Democracy cannot be achieved at gunpoint. It was time for democracy to grow. Reagan proved the evolution of democracy by devolving democracy. Iraq is the pragmatic proof that instead of evolving to leading by example, and the fallacy of driving others to democracy by force of arms against their will is back in place. That is oxymoronic. That is the reason why anti-academic and science theocrat Ron Reagan has no lasting place in a civil society. He represents simple solutions to complex problems that have no place in this millennia. Thomas Jefferson was the complete opposite of Ronald Reagan and those who followed him. Reagen raped and defecated on the ideas of Jefferson and Madison. Let's read some and see it is true. Reagan was not the "Great Communicator." He was the "Great Manipulator" who was on the side of democracy for all of the wrong reasons. This cigarette selling hypocrite set science back for decades. Put his face on US money with a cigarette hanging out of his mouth. Let people know that he sold them and never used them because he knew that cigarettes were bad for health. Wouldn't that be wonderful to depict this man for exactly what he did? Everything that people say about him restoring "confidence" in the USA is true. He did. He restored the arrogance of power that led to Viet Nam and the ideology of demagoguery in democracy of "my country right or wrong." This led directly to Iraq. It led to the assumption that the USA was right in Viet Nam. It led to more universal scorn and contempt across the earth than has ever been seen against a country since the contempt for Hitler and The Third Reich. The sad part of it is that democracy was strengthened at home in the USA by his anti-science theocratic chicanery.  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:40 AM

Reagan set the USA up for a fall. Reagan set democracy back on earth. Now the very people who needed democracy to advance socially see democracy as an evil form of racist theocracy. Reagan trashed democracy. He is a disgrace to education, respect for science, and the power of people to learn from their mistakes rather than embracing them. The evolution of Reagan to the ideologues of neo-conservatism is apparent. There is nothing conservative about idealistic theocratic ideology being bombed in being unless the USA wishes to simply run a genocide campaign against every non-Christian and non-democratic country. This is exactly how the USA are perceived today. Yes it is a fact that the will of the people at home was strengthened. The problematic answer to this philosophy and ideology based upon force of arms is that it does not work. The improvement of PR tactics at doing the wrong thing is obvious. Crisis management, cover-up and manipulative lying perpetrated by acting, being friendly, polite, and as two-faced as athlete Reagan selling tobacco and pretending to be a user of tobacco when he never smoked shows all of the wrong things about responsible capitalism and democracy. Reagan was a necessary step to the 44% of all US citizens who are in the lowest two measurable categories of literacy in English learning that Jefferson was correct in insisting that education was critical to democracy succeeding. Jefferson developed an elaborate plan for making education available to every citizen, and for providing a complete education through university for talented youths who were unable to afford it. He considered his most important accomplishment, after Author of the Declaration of Independence and the Statute for Religious Freedom, to have been the Father of the University of Virginia. Please do consider Jefferson in contrast to Reagan and his successors on this matter. Jefferson says the opposite of Reagan and Bush in every detail regarding the success or democracy. The USA could have learned from Viet Nam. Now it must learn from Iraq. Reconsider Jefferson as an option to Reagan. Jefferson belongs on Rushmore and US currency. Men like Reagan who epitomize the opposite of all that Jefferson stood for do not belong in his company. Jefferson did it the right way. Reagan and his successors did not. Read on and see. Thomas Jefferson said the complete opposite of everything proposed by Reagan. Read these quotes and see the facts. Reagan was not a Nazi, Fascist, or anything but a mindless patriot who aimed for the lowest common denominator exactly at the time the world needed more. His cynical manipulation of people and willingness to take advantage of their stupidity glares back in time as we see him selling cigarettes to make a dollar when he was smart enough never to use tobacco. Read Jefferson who appeals to the best in people and contrast him with Reagan who appealed to citizens at their worst.  [ send green star] 		 
Here are the Jefferson quotes: July 10, 2004 7:41 AM

Here are the Jefferson quotes: "I have indeed two great measures at heart, without which no republic can maintain itself in strength: 1. That of general education, to enable every man to judge for himself what will secure or endanger his freedom. 2. To divide every county into hundreds, of such size that all the children of each will be within reach of a central school in it." --Thomas Jefferson to John Tyler, 1810. ME 12:393 "Of all the views of this law [for public education], none is more important, none more legitimate, than that of rendering the people the safe as they are the ultimate guardians of their own liberty." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:206 "Education not being a branch of municipal government, but, like the other arts and sciences, an accident [i.e., attribute] only, I did not place it with election as a fundamental member in the structure of government." --Thomas Jefferson to John Taylor, 1816. ME 15:45 "Education is here placed among the articles of public care, not that it would be proposed to take its ordinary branches out of the hands of private enterprise, which manages so much better all the concerns to which it is equal; but a public institution can alone supply those sciences which, though rarely called for, are yet necessary to complete the circle, all the parts of which contribute to the improvement of the country, and some of them to its preservation." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:423 "The present consideration of a national establishment for education, particularly, is rendered proper by this circumstance also, that if Congress, approving the proposition, shall yet think it more eligible to found it on a donation of lands, they have it now in their power to endow it with those which will be among the earliest to produce the necessary income. The foundation would have the advantage of being independent on war, which may suspend other improvements by requiring for its own purposes the resources destined for them." --Thomas Jefferson: 6th Annual Message, 1806. ME 3:424  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:42 AM

A Bill for Educating the Masses "The object [of my education bill was] to bring into action that mass of talents which lies buried in poverty in every country for want of the means of development, and thus give activity to a mass of mind which in proportion to our population shall be the double or treble of what it is in most countries." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Correa de Serra, 1817. ME 15:156 "This [bill] on education would [raise] the mass of the people to the high ground of moral respectability necessary to their own safety and to orderly government, and would [complete] the great object of qualifying them to secure the veritable aristoi for the trusts of government, to the exclusion of the pseudalists... I have great hope that some patriotic spirit will... call it up and make it the keystone of the arch of our government." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1813. ME 13:400 "The less wealthy people,... by the bill for a general education, would be qualified to understand their rights, to maintain them, and to exercise with intelligence their parts in self-government; and all this would be effected without the violation of a single natural right of any one individual citizen." --Thomas Jefferson: Autobiography, 1821. ME 1:73 --A University "What object of our lives can we propose so important [as establishing a State university]? What interest of our own which ought not to be postponed to this? Health, time, labor -- on what in the single life which nature has given us, can these be better bestowed than on this immortal boon to our country? The exertions and the mortifications are temporary; the benefit eternal." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph C. Cabell, 1821. ME 15:312 "We fondly hope that the instruction which may flow from this institution, kindly cherished, by advancing the minds of our youth with the growing science of the times, and elevating the views of our citizens generally to the practice of the social duties and the functions of self-government, may ensure to our country the reputation, the safety and prosperity, and all the other blessings which experience proves to result from the cultivation and improvement of the general mind." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1821. ME 19:407  [ send green star] 		 
Education Courses July 10, 2004 7:42 AM

Education Courses "In the [elementary schools] will be taught reading, writing, common arithmetic, and general notions of geography. In the [district colleges], ancient and modern languages, geography fully, a higher degree of numerical arithmetic, mensuration, and the elementary principles of navigation. In the [university], all the useful sciences in their highest degree." --Thomas Jefferson to M. Correa de Serra, 1817. ME 15:155 "I am not fully informed of the practices at Harvard, but there is one from which we shall certainly vary, although it has been copied, I believe, by nearly every college and academy in the United States. That is, the holding the students all to one prescribed course of reading, and disallowing exclusive application to those branches only which are to qualify them for the particular vocations to which they are destined. We shall, on the contrary, allow them uncontrolled choice in the lectures they shall choose to attend, and require elementary qualification only, and sufficient age." --Thomas Jefferson to George Ticknor, 1823. ME 15:455 "This institution [i.e., the university] will be based on the illimitable freedom of the human mind. For here we are not afraid to follow truth wherever it may lead, nor to tolerate any error so long as reason is left free to combat it." --Thomas Jefferson to William Roscoe, 1820. ME 15:303 "We do not expect our schools to turn out their alumni already enthroned on the pinnacles of their respective sciences; but only so far advanced in each as to be able to pursue them by themselves, and to become Newtons and Laplaces by energies and perseverances to be continued through life." --Thomas Jefferson to John P. Emmet, 1826. ME 16:171 "In most public seminaries textbooks are prescribed to each of the several schools, as the norma docendi in that school; and this is generally done by authority of the trustees. I should not propose this generally in our University, because I believe none of us are so much at the heights of science in the several branches as to undertake this, and therefore that it will be better left to the professors until occasion of interference shall be given. But there is one branch in which we are the best judges, in which heresies may be taught of so interesting a character to our own State and to the United States, as to make it a duty in us to lay down the principles which are to be taught. It is that of government... [A new professor may be] one of that school of quondam federalism, now consolidation. It is our duty to guard against such principles being disseminated among our youth and the diffusion of that poison, by a previous prescription of the texts to be followed in their discourses." --Thomas Jefferson to -----, 1825. ME 16:103  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:44 AM

Obejctives in Elementary Schools "The objects of... primary education [which] determine its character and limits [are]: To give to every citizen the information he needs for the transaction of his own business; to enable him to calculate for himself, and to express and preserve his ideas, his contracts and accounts in writing; to improve, by reading, his morals and faculties; to understand his duties to his neighbors and country, and to discharge with competence the functions confided to him by either; to know his rights; to exercise with order and justice those he retains, to choose with discretion the fiduciary of those he delegates; and to notice their conduct with diligence, with candor and judgment; and in general, to observe with intelligence and faithfulness all the social relations under which he shall be placed." --Thomas Jefferson: Report for University of Virginia, 1818. "The reading in the first stage, where [the people] will receive their whole education, is proposed.. to be chiefly historical. History by apprising them of the past will enable them to judge of the future; it will avail them of the experience of other times and other nations; it will qualify them as judges of the actions and designs of men; it will enable them to know ambition under every disguise it may assume; and knowing it, to defeat its views." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XIV, 1782. ME 2:106  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:45 AM

Specific Subjects "I hope the necessity will, at length, be seen of establishing institutions here, as in Europe, where every branch of science, useful at this day, may be taught in its highest degree." --Thomas Jefferson to John Adams, 1814. ME 14:151 "What are the objects of an useful American [college] education? Classical knowledge, modern languages and chiefly French, Spanish, and Italian; Mathematics, Natural philosophy, Natural history, Civil history, and Ethics. In Natural philosophy, I mean to include Chemistry and Agriculture, and in Natural history, to include Botany, as well as the other branches of those departments." --Thomas Jefferson to J. Bannister, Jr., 1785. ME 5:186, Papers 8:636 "It would be time lost... to attend professors of ethics, metaphysics, logic, etc. The first of these may be as well acquired in the closet as from living lecturers; and supposing the two last to mean the science of mind, the simple reading of Locke, Tracy, and Stewart will give him as much in that branch as is real science." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1820. ME 15:265 "Agriculture... is a science of the very first order. It counts among its handmaids the most respectable sciences, such as Chemistry, Natural Philosophy, Mechanics, Mathematics generally, Natural History, Botany. In every College and University, a professorship of agriculture, and the class of its students, might be honored as the first." --Thomas Jefferson to David Williams, 1803. ME 10:429 "In my view, no knowledge can be more satisfactory to a man than that of his own frame, its parts, their functions and actions. And Botany I rank with the most valuable sciences, whether we consider its subjects as furnishing the principal subsistence of life to man and beast, delicious varieties for our tables, refreshments from our orchards, the adornments of our flower-borders, shade and perfume of our groves, materials for our buildings, or medicaments for our bodies. To the gentleman it is certainly more interesting than Mineralogy (which I by no means, however, undervalue), and is more at hand for his amusement; and to a country family it constitutes a great portion of their social entertainment. No country gentleman should be without what amuses every step he takes into his fields." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1814. ME 14:201  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:47 AM

--Languages "I do not think [languages] very essential to the obtaining eminent degrees of science; but I think them very useful towards it. I suppose there is a portion of life during which our faculties are ripe enough for this, and for nothing more useful." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Priestly, 1800. ME 10:146 "We generally learn languages for the benefit of reading the books written in them." --Thomas Jefferson to ----, 1825. ME 16:107 "I have never thought a boy should undertake abstruse or difficult sciences, such as Mathematics in general, till fifteen years of age at soonest. Before that time they are best employed in learning the languages, which is merely a matter of memory." --Thomas Jefferson to Ralph Izard, 1788. ME 7:71 "In general, I am of opinion, that till the age of about sixteen, we are best employed on languages; Latin, Greek; French, and Spanish, or such of them as we can... Of the languages I have mentioned, I think Greek the least useful." --Thomas Jefferson to J. W. Eppes, 1787. ME 6:190 "The French language, become that of the general intercourse of nations, and from their extraordinary advances now the depository of all science, is an indispensable part of education for both sexes." --Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Burwell, 1818. ME 15:167 "The Spanish language... and the English covering nearly the whole face of America, they should be well-known to every inhabitant who means to look beyond the limits of his farm." --Thomas Jefferson to Peter Carr, 1788. ME 7:44  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:49 AM

--Classical Education "When we advert that the ancient classical languages are considered as the foundation preparatory for all the sciences; that we have always had schools scattered over the country for teaching these languages, which often were the ultimate term of education; that these languages are entered on at the age of nine or ten years, at which age parents would be unwilling to send their children from every part of the State to a central and distant university, and when we observe that... there are to be a plurality of them, we may well conclude that the Greek and Latin are the objects of these colleges... and that they are intended as the portico of entry to the university." --Thomas Jefferson to Wilson C. Nicholas, 1816. ME 14:452 "To whom are these [classical languages] useful? Certainly not to all men. There are conditions of life to which they must be forever estranged, and there are epochs of life, too, after which the endeavor to attain them would be a great misemployment of time. Their acquisition should be the occupation of our early years only, when the memory is susceptible of deep and lasting impressions, and reason and judgment not yet strong enough for abstract speculations." --Thomas Jefferson to John Brazier, 1819. ME 15:209 "[The Latin and Greek] languages... constitute the basis of good education, and are indispensable to fill up the character of a 'well-educated man.'" --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1824. ME 19:444 "[As to] the extent to which classical learning should be carried in our country... The utilities we derive from the remains of the Greek and Latin languages are, first, as models of pure taste in writing. To these we are certainly indebted for the rational and chaste style of modern composition which so much distinguishes the nations to whom these languages are familiar... Second. Among the values of classical learning, I estimate the luxury of reading the Greek and Roman authors in all the beauties of their originals. And why should not this innocent and elegant luxury take its preeminent stand ahead of all those addressed merely to the sense?... Third. A third value is in the stores of real science deposited and transmitted us in these languages, to wit: in history, ethics, arithmetic, geometry, astronomy, natural history, etc." --Thomas Jefferson to John Brazier, 1819. ME 15:208 "I think the Greeks and Romans have left us the present models which exist of fine composition, whether we examine them as works of reason, or of style and fancy; and to them we probably owe these characteristics of modern composition. I know of no composition of any other ancient people which merits the least regard as a model for its matter or style. To all this I add, that to read the Latin and Greek authors in their original is a sublime luxury; and I deem luxury in science to be at least as justifiable as in architecture, painting, gardening, or the other arts." --TJ  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:50 AM

--Religion "The want of instruction in the various creeds of religious faith existing among our citizens presents... a chasm in a general institution of the useful sciences. But it was thought that this want, and the entrustment to each society of instruction in its own doctrine, were evils of less danger than a permission to the public authorities to dictate modes or principles of religious instruction, or than opportunities furnished them by giving countenance or ascendancy to any one sect over another." --Thomas Jefferson: Virginia Board of Visitors Minutes, 1822. ME 19:414 "After stating the constitutional reasons against a public establishment of any religious instruction, we suggest the expediency of encouraging the different religious sects to establish, each for itself, a professorship of their own tenets on the confines of the university, so near as that their students may attend the lectures there and have the free use of our library and every other accommodation we can give them; preserving, however, their independence of us and of each other. This fills the chasm objected to ours, as a defect in an institution professing to give instruction in all useful sciences... And by bringing the sects together, and mixing them with the mass of other students, we shall soften their asperities, liberalize and neutralize their prejudices, and make the general religion a religion of peace, reason, and morality." --Thomas Jefferson to Thomas Cooper, 1822. ME 15:405 The Educational Setting "Man is an imitative animal. This quality is the germ of all education in him. From his cradle to his grave he is learning to do what he sees others do." --Thomas Jefferson: Notes on Virginia Q.XVIII, 1782. ME 2:226 "[One of] the disadvantages of sending a youth to Europe [for an education is]... he is fascinated with the privileges of the European aristocrats, and sees, with abhorrence, the lovely equality which the poor enjoy with the rich in his own country." --Thomas Jefferson to John Banister, Jr., 1785. ME 5:186, Papers 8:636 National Considerations "In a republican nation whose citizens are to be led by reason and persuasion and not by force, the art of reasoning becomes of first importance." --Thomas Jefferson to David Harding, 1824. ME 16:30 "Science is more important in a republican than in any other government." --Thomas Jefferson to -----, 1821. ME 15:339 "[We should] endeavor to keep [our] attention fixed on the main objects of all science: the freedom and happiness of man. [Thus] will [we] keep ever in view the sole objects of all legitimate government." --Thomas Jefferson to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1810. ME 12:369  [ send green star] 		 
 July 10, 2004 7:50 AM

Prospects for an Educated Citizenry "Although I do not, with some enthusiasts, believe that the human condition will ever advance to such a state of perfection as that there shall no longer be pain or vice in the world, yet I believe it susceptible of much improvement, and most of all in matters of government and religion; and that the diffusion of knowledge among the people is to be the instrument by which it is to be effected." --Thomas Jefferson to Pierre Samuel Dupont de Nemours, 1816. ME 14:491 "We have spent the prime of our lives in procuring [young men] the precious blessing of liberty. Let them spend theirs in showing that it is the great parent of science and of virtue; and that a nation will be great in both, always in proportion as it is free." --Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Willard, 1789. ME 7:329 "Preach... a crusade against ignorance; establish and improve the law for educating the common people. Let our countrymen know that the people alone can protect us against these evils [of monarchial government]." --Thomas Jefferson to George Wythe, 1786.  [ send green star] 		 
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