Pair of conservative science authors on C-Span 2 (Book TV), on now

[LeftishBrit]

1. Well. There's a grain of truth; some leftists are anti-science. But so are lots of people who aren't

leftists.

On the whole, the Right seems to me to be far more anti-science. Global warming denialism; opposition to stem cell research; insistence on health policies based on religion rather than science; creationism - all of these are right-wing rather than left-wing attitudes. Even the more moderate Right, who may not hold all these views, are often impatient with science as something that costs money, requires long-term investment, and does not come up quickly with simplistic solutions - unappealing to the 'fiscal conservative' with a desire for 'efficiency'.

And many of the antiscientific theories that get ascribed to 'the left', such as being anti-vaccine, are not restricted to the left. In fact, while some leftists are suspicious of vaccination, the strongest opposition has tended to come from right-wingers: in the UK, the Daily Mail and other tabloids; elsewhere the religious right-wingers of a variety of faiths, and the anti-government nuts. The form that anti-vaccination takes tends to differ between leftists and rightists: leftists tend to base it on a suspicion of 'big Pharma' and rightists on a suspicion of 'big government'. However, what infuriates me about some anti-vaccination leftists is not so much the view itself - much as I disagree with it and even consider it dangerous - but the fact that they are willing to team up with anti-vaccination rightists, and to quote the right-libertarian, anti-government, anti-healthcare views of the likes of Ron Paul, Mercola, etc. There should be a vaccination against right-wing ideology!