Video of the day -- standing up for reality

This is a campaign ad for Jason Westin, a Texas Democratic candidate for Congress.  Westin is a doctor, not a lawyer or businessman as most who go into politics are.  His ad reflects that, focusing on the right wing's attacks on science, knowledge, and objective reality itself.

This is a long-standing problem in American culture generally, not just politics -- and it's not entirely confined to the right wing either, though it's much worse there.  In a world where technological progress is accelerating, and national power and wealth increasingly depend upon it, the US cannot afford to lobotomize itself by disdaining the science on which technology depends.  As the USSR fell behind the West technologically because of political interference in science, so the US could fall behind better-educated, scientifically-sophisticated competitors such as Japan, South Korea, and western Europe.  In some areas, it's already happening.

I've long thought we need more political leaders drawn from science and engineering backgrounds, fields which foster a grasp of reality as it actually is, regardless of how someone wants it to be, or how some ideology or sacred text says it should be.  The same is true of a doctor's training and experience.

Found via Crooks and Liars, which has a transcript.