The Left Goes to War Against Science, Surrenders on Terror

Two ongoing trends I chronicled during 2009 highlight an ironic situation: Leftists remain tough on their domestic political opponents, while lax when it comes to our real common enemies.

As we recently saw with the Christmas airplane-bombing attempt, leftists seem bent on treating terrorists with kid gloves, insisting they receive rights normally reserved for U.S. citizens (even when this means failing to extract timely information that might save lives).

Conversely, leftists play “hardball” when their opponents are not terrorists or criminals, but instead, American businesses and industries.   One such example is the left’s battle against Bisphenol A (BPA), a chemical used for more than a half century to make plastics more durable.

Though clearly less consequential than the war on terror, the Left’s war on BPA serves as a microcosm of the larger attempt to use “junk science” and litigation to redistribute wealth from job-producing American industries into the hands of trial lawyers and liberal special interest groups.

In this regard, the Left’s attempts are reminiscent of their past battle against the insecticide DDT. In the 1960s, many developing nation’s had nearly wiped out malaria, but it came back after DDT was banned.  It did not matter that DDT was harmless to humans – and actually saved lives — the Left attacked it, ultimately causing 50 million preventable deaths.

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