By Paul Agle

Anyone who has read George Orwell’s 1984 isn't too surprised with this country’s current direction. But many people are hazy on the "how" and the "why.”

According to the National Association of Scholars, in 2018, the ratio of Democrat to Republican professors at liberal arts schools was 10.4:1.  If you exclude West Point and Annapolis, it is 12.7:1.  Since there are about as many Republicans as Democrats, this far exceeds the bounds of a prima facie case of discrimination.

The uber-liberals we identify as progressives are at the core of the problem. To be blunt, they are dishonest, evil and delusional.  Their viewpoints are not supported by facts and cannot survive exposure to debate or examination.

Normal people, when faced with factual evidence, may often change their political positions. Progressives double down.  When shown that they are factually incorrect, they conclude that the facts are wrong.  And 25-30% of the professors at universities are unethical and dishonest on subjects relevant to the progressive viewpoint.  What makes this worse is that about one percent of scientists publish 41 percent of the papers.

The current situation is a version of Lysenkoism (the facts must serve the state).  Although progressives realize that the facts are not in their favor, they have come to the conclusion that the only solution is to change the facts. By taking over academia, psychology, the law, and the media, progressives have achieved complete control of the narrative.  Inconvenient studies are not launched or published.  The law is applied in ways that favor progressives by a legal segment of the population that is liberal, if not full-on progressive. Psychology has become Abnormal Psychology by definition.  The APA (American Psychological Association) is not representative of the parent population, because there are no conservatives (less than 3%).  

The media has become the propaganda organ for progressive/bureaucratic/foreign interests.  The Washington Post has become the "Amazon Advocate.”  The Politifact and Fact Check sites check news stories' compliance with the progressive narrative.  Journalist and Gamechanger Salon have shown that "news" is a coordinated media/Democrat Party enterprise.  What is worse than the bias is that news is no longer factually accurate and uses "1984" style terminology, such as "mostly peaceful protest.”  The mainstream media no longer even pretends to be an objective oracle of truth.

Climategate exemplifies the science problem.  The emails between the heads of national climate centers openly discussed the following:

• packing peer review panels with “warmunists” (scientists who are so hopelessly biased that they can only produce pro-global warming science studies).
• getting an objective journal editor fired and replaced with a “warmunist” (which they did).
• how they might de-credential (remove the degree) of an objective scientist. 

Academic studies (that "science" you keep hearing about) are dicey under the best of circumstances.  However, if study authors and review panels are hopelessly biased, with the implied threat of career injuries, you what you get. Academic studies on contested topics should be regarded as opinion pieces instead of factual evidence.  

Furthermore, the NSF and EPA put out RFPs (Request for Proposal) that direct science toward progressive/bureaucratic interests and contain such loaded language in many cases that it is obvious which result is wanted.  Progressives aren't really liars, since they don't care what the facts are.  It is a weird "Alice in Wonderland" view where belief triumphs over reality.  And they have found that the "stick" of intimidation is an effective tool to achieve their ends and that the right will not stand up to intimidation.

New channels and sources for information need to be cultivated. We need to create a Republican tech infrastructure.  Viewpoint neutrality needs to be imposed on social media by antitrust action or removal of the "Section 230" exemption. The corruption of integrity in academia needs to be fixed.  People who discriminate against conservatives, Christians, and Republicans in academia need to be punished and removed from positions of authority.  

We can't have progressives, who have no regard for the facts, doing science studies.  If a scientist isn't honest, and the peer reviewers are his buddies, why should we give them taxpayer grant dollars for a study that we can't trust?  Furthermore, many of the grant-making staff at the EPA and NSF should simply be fired and we should start from scratch.

Pushing back against the "attack on facts" has to become a Republican priority.  It isn't clear that democracy can survive the tsunami of misinformation.

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Paul Agle is a farmer (Michigan), digital hardware engineer, software engineer, 6 time marathoner, 40 year Gaithersburg Resident, 30 year Republican volunteer, a close observer of the human condition and a member of the Montgomery County Republican Central Committee.