Conservative Hatred of Science Even at Its Most Basic Level

We all know that conservatives hate science. Conservatives want you to get all your truth straight from Donald Trump, without questioning it. Even the Bible has given way to Trump as the authority for all knowledge among conservatives.

One reason conservatives hate science is that science forces you to question your assumptions, your definitions, and it forces you to seek information to test your beliefs.

But they hate science at an even more basic level than this. For centuries, all scientific research and communication has used the metric system. This system is very logical, and is based on the Earth, water, and powers of 10. Scientists have universally, even in America, adopted this system to avoid miscommunications. When two different entities use two different systems of measurement, the result can be disastrous and costly, as happened in 1999. A Mars probe got all the way to Mars then crashed, because the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used the metric system while Lockheed Martin, a contractor, used the “English” system, which the English no longer use.

Only three countries in the world reject the metric system: Liberia, Myanmar, and the United States.

Conservatives hate science all the way back to the very basics of measurement. They hate the metric system. At least Tucker Carlson, who represents the extreme right wing of Republicans who hold sway under Donald Trump, hates it. On June 5, 2019, Carlson said, “Almost every nation on Earth has fallen under the yoke of tyranny—the metric system...The United States is the only major country that has resisted...Esperanto died, but the metric system continues, this weird, utopian, inelegant creepy system that we alone have resisted.”

Actually, it is not we alone. Standing with us are the other two most wealthy, stable, and free nations on Earth: Liberia and Myanmar.

Carlson’s guest, James Panero, went further. He called the metric system “the original system of global revolution and new world orders.” Now there he has a point. The metric system was born out of the French Revolution. Carlson’s response was, “God bless you.”

What next? Maybe Trump can slap tariffs on imports from any country that uses the metric system.

If Carlson intended this as a joke, I have seen no indication of it.

But here is a fundamental(ist) point that the conservatives have missed. I wonder what fundamentalist Mike Pence would say about this. Fox and Friends seems to think that God wants us to use feet, inches, pounds, etc. But the Bible uses no such measures! The Bible uses the cubit as the basic measure of length. Any nation that does not base its measurements on cubits has fallen under the condemnation of the Almighty.

I’m not going to touch that one with a 25-cubit pole!