June 2008 Gallup Poll:
"There is a significant political divide in beliefs about the origin of human beings, with 60% of Republicans saying humans were created in their present form by God 10,000 years ago, a belief shared by only 40% of independents and 38% of Democrats."
October 2009 Pew poll:
"The decline in the belief in solid evidence of global warming has come across the political spectrum, but has been particularly pronounced among independents. Just 53% of independents now see solid evidence of global warming, compared with 75% who did so in April 2008. Republicans, who already were highly skeptical of the evidence of global warming, have become even more so: just 35% of Republicans now see solid evidence of rising global temperatures, down from 49% in 2008 and 62% in 2007. Fewer Democrats also express this view – 75% today compared with 83% last year."
"It's not that Americans are rejecting science per se, Miller maintains, but longstanding conflicts between personal religious beliefs and selected life-science issues has been exploited to an unprecedented degree by the right-wing fundamentalist faction of the Republican Party. In the 1990s, the state Republican platforms in Alaska, Iowa, Kansas, Oklahoma, Oregon, Missouri, and Texas all included demands for teaching creation science. Such platforms wouldn't pass muster in the election, Miller says, but in the activist-dominated primaries, they drive out moderate Republicans, making evolution a political litmus test. Come November, the Republican candidate represents a fundamentalist agenda without making it an explicit part of the campaign. Last year, Miller points out, former Senator John Danforth, a moderate Missouri Republican, wrote in a New York Times opinion piece that for the first time in American history a political party has become an arm of a religious organization. The United States is the only country in the world where a political party has taken a position on evolution."Gross L (2006) Scientific Illiteracy and the Partisan Takeover of Biology. PLoS Biol 4(5): e167. doi:10.1371/journal.pbio.0040167
July 2009 poll by Research 2000:
Do you believe that Barack Obama was born in the United States of America or not?
Yes No Not sure
Dem 93 4 3
Rep 42 28 30
Ind 83 8 9
Northeast 93 4 3
South 47 23 30
Midwest 90 6 4
West 87 7 6
August 2006 World Public Opinion poll:
"Belief in the existence of Iraqi WMD before the war has tended to follow party lines. Overall four out of ten Americans thought that Iraq still had such weapons or a program to develop them, the WPO poll found. This included six in ten Republicans (60%) but less than one in four Democrats (23%)."
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What, we get quotations without interpretation? That's hardly fair.
ReplyDeleteemrys
Interpretation is left as an exercise for the reader. :p
ReplyDeleteAnother data set presented without interpretation: http://pewforum.org/docs/?DocID=490
ReplyDeleteAnd another: http://www.rasmussenreports.com/public_content/politics/current_events/bush_administration/22_believe_bush_knew_about_9_11_attacks_in_advance
ReplyDeleteHow far contemporary Republicans have fallen that they aren't even following Reagan's lead on astrology. :p
ReplyDeleteThe wording of the 9/11 question is ambiguous. Was there intelligence indicating an imminent hijacking threat? Absolutely.
ReplyDeleteIf the 9/11 question is ambiguous, so is the WMD question. After all, the inspectors did find chemical weapons in Iraq before the war started, it just wasn't anything manufactured after 1991.
ReplyDeleteNot in context with the rest of the survey:
ReplyDelete“As you may recall, before the war with Iraq the UN agency that was inspecting Iraq said that there was no clear evidence that Iraq had a major program for developing weapons of mass destruction. Is it your impression that this UN agency has since been proven to be correct or incorrect about whether Iraq had a major program for developing weapons of mass destruction?”
And:
ReplyDelete"Sixty percent of Republicans continue to believe that Iraq had WMD (41%) or a major program for developing them (19%). Among Democrats, just 23 percent share these views, while 78 percent believe that Iraq had only some limited WMD-related activities but not a program (50%) or no WMD activities at all (28%)."
That's just pointing out that given a moving elevator and two guesses a republican will not be able to figure out the direction of movement. Theses people don't like the "real world" and deny it wherever possible.
ReplyDeleteNote that they all fly on planes, use computers and go to the doctor when ill despite the fact that these actions are are inseparable from complex science. They KNOW they are denying the truth and they do it anyway. They think they will get some benefit from sticking with the policies of conservatives even when they know it's wrong.
If that isn't a definition of evil I don't know what is.