MAGA is outraged over President Trump's announcement that he'll allow 600,000 Chinese students to attend U.S. universities, which touches on several of the movement's most potent third rails.

While astronomer Carl Sagan would likely be the first to scoff at the idea of him being a fortune teller, the man certainly had a prescient way of looking ahead during his lifetime. Sagan was the original host of "Cosmos" back in 1980 and it became the most watched show in public television history. Few science communicators have been able to match his talent for stoking wonder about the universe and our place in it.Shortly before his death in 1996, Sagan appeared on "Charlie Rose" and made a dire warning about how the average Americans' lack of skeptical, scientific thinking could lead to disastrous consequences. - YouTube www.youtube.com Today, we can see the problems that are happening due to America's anti-science streak whether it's anti-vaxxers, conspiracy theories or climate change deniers. Sagan was right, America will suffer due to a lack a lack of scientific skepticism."We've arranged a society on science and technology in which nobody understands anything about science and technology, and this combustible mixture of ignorance and power sooner or later is going to blow up in our faces," he told Rose. "I mean, who is running the science and technology in a democracy if the people don't know anything about it?" We need science education for a functioning democracy. Giphy He then warned that our lack of critical thinking leaves us vulnerable to those who wish to exploit our ignorance."Science is more than a body of knowledge, it's a way of thinking," he says. "A way of skeptically interrogating the universe with a fine understanding of human fallibility. If we are not able to ask skeptical questions to interrogate those who tell us that something is true, to be skeptical of those in authority, then we're up for grabs for the next charlatan—political or religious—who comes ambling along."Sagan believes that a democracy cannot function without an educated populace. Education is key to critical thinking. Giphy "It's a thing that Jefferson lay great stress on. It wasn't enough, he said, to enshrine some rights in the Constitution and the Bill or Rights, the people had to be educated and they have to practice their skepticism and their education," he says. "Otherwise, we don't run the government, the government runs us."Part the problem we face in the present is that what constitutes education, including science and technology education, is being debated at the highest levels. Institutions of higher learning are undergoing attacks by the government, traditional education is being devalued by powerful parts of the political world, and positions that were traditionally filled by public servants with credentialed expertise are now being filled by political loyalists instead. Critical thinking has also taken a beating. People believe themselves to be "critical thinkers" simply because they go against scientific consensus, but that's not how critical thinking and skepticism really work. When political ideologies take precedence over genuine scientific inquiry and investigation, we all lose out. Carl Sagan was ahead of his time. Giphy Some might even say we've already reached the place Sagan tried to warn us about. Of course, that's up for debate as well, but regardless, Sagan certainly seemed to have his finger on the pulse of humanity's tendencies. Hopefully people will heed his words and put science education in its rightful place as part of a thriving democracy.. This article originally appeared five years ago.

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This could be the next stage of history. With the experts and the science having led us to a place of disaster, the principles, arts, and ethics of old can lead us back to a better place. 

by Alex Berenson, Unreported Truths: Arguing over Sydney Sweeney’s looks, throwing sandwiches at federal agents, and now Zohran Mamdani’s struggles to manage a 135-pound bench press. This stuff shouldn’t matter, but it does. Culture me harder, daddy. That seems to be the Democratic party motto these days. The left keeps finding exciting new ways to […]

by Victoria Taft, PJ Media: Now comes the fire sale. If foreign corporations want to buy burned-out properties, can those sales be stopped? Should they be stopped? When the feared firestorm hit Pacific Palisades, Malibu, and Altadena in Southern California last January, the Los Angeles mayor was MIA, the “public safety” guy in charge—the vice […]

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