Eisenhower on ClimateGate: "the Scientific-Technological Elite"

Most of us know that President Eisenhower, in his farewell speech, warned of the danger of the "military-industrial complex". Regardless of your particular stand on military spending, there is no doubt that he was substantially right about the enormous abuse of power and fraud in the defense industry.

Less known is the Eisenhower's second warning in the speech.

Today, the solitary inventor, tinkering in his shop, has been overshadowed by task forces of scientists in laboratories and testing fields. In the same fashion, the free university, historically the fountainhead of free ideas and scientific discovery, has experienced a revolution in the conduct of research. Partly because of the huge costs involved, a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity. For every old blackboard there are now hundreds of new electronic computers. The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever present -- and is gravely to be regarded.

Yet, in holding scientific research and discovery in respect, as we should, we must also be alert to the equal and opposite danger that public policy could itself become the captive of a scientific-technological elite. [emphasis mine]

A remarkably succinct and accurate prediction of the situation we face today.

ClimateGate is the tip of the iceberg of the corrupt influence of our scientific elite on public policy, ranging from censorship of honest discussion of evolution in our schools to the 'Cap and Trade' boondoggle based on fabricated global warming science to the fraud and political power-play shaping up in Copenhagen to self-enriching pressure by scientists and industry to exempt human embryonic stem cell research from traditional ethical constraints on destroying human life.

We ignore Eisenhower's warning, and the overwhelming evidence before us now, at our own peril.

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