"Astonishingly, the United States is on course to ...

2006-05-11T05:48:00.000Z

"Astonishingly, the United States is on course to fall behind in science and technology." Some of us are not astonished. But in the next paragraph you acknowledge this.

It has been clear for forty years that too many Americans want to be movie stars, big league athletes, guitar players and rich by many other means. These people do not want to be "geeks."

There was a period that began after World War II and lasted until the revolt of the sixties when America took the "lead" in science because the rest of the scientific world fell to its knees and most of the prominent scientists and mathematicians came to the United States to build our university system.

This period lasted for only about twenty years and we have lived on the intellectual capital of one or two generations ever since.

Those who study this period of history know these facts well and have been alternately lamenting this slow decline and exhorting young people to become scientists and engineers.

President Bush knows these facts well too because he was born in 1948. But he was president of his fraternity at Yale and the scion of a rich family and probably knows nothing at all of higher mathematics and science and what is means to dedicate one's life to them. For Bush, success comes from knowing the right people and not from knowledge of the right things. In fact, he is the chief fundamentalist and know-nothing who is presiding over this American slide into oblivion.

In 1945, Europeans thought that their civilization had committed suicide and so they passed the torch to America and Russia. Russia collapsed in 1989. America is in the process of collapsing.

Is there any way to stop this collapse into massive class differences, mindless electronic diversions and wholesale lottery playing that is euphemistically called the American Dream?

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"Astonishingly, the United States is on course to ...