This is a response to an excellent article found on ThinkProgress.com about the effects that are already happening under sequestration. The article can be found at the link here.
Don't think for a second that this result of sequestration is accidental or "collateral damage". The religiots and their fellow ignoratti in Congress knew that this would happen, and they desired it. Cutting research funding, that is to say funding for pure science, plays right into their hands in their push for religious dominance and in the ability to show their voters that they hold the upper hand in the battle against science. But it's the very voters who put these traitors in office that stand the most to lose.
Remember, there's a cycle that must occur before new technologies come to market: Pure science > applied science > engineering.
Before a product can be engineered and manufactured, scientists whose job it is to find applications for newly discovered materials or processes must take the results of pure science and study them, then create and test ways to use them. BUT before that can happen, researchers - pure scientists - must study new fields of science or push the bounds on existing fields in order to discover new materials and new processes never before encountered. That means that the raw, bleeding edge must always be out front expanding our base of knowledge. Sometimes, that research yields nothing, just like going into a jungle or rain forest somewhere to look for new sources of drugs might yield a treasure trove, or it might come up dry, but either way, you won't know until you go there. Exploration is essential not only to expand the knowledge base of science, but it is the fuel that powers the engines of our economy.
The US has lead the way in many or most fields of scientific exploration due to programs like NASA and ARPA, but since the Large Hadron Collider at CERN came online, we've taken a back seat to others in the field of physics who will now lead because some people think that research funding is wasted. They don't understand that studying monkeys for something seemingly arcane might result in a breakthrough in medicine or psychology, or something else that they would consider unrelated. They're told, and they believe, that the LHC and it's smaller cousin in Chicago, the Tevatron at Fermilab, have no value and are black holes for funding dollars. They will believe people who say we didn't go to the moon, but they line up for chemotherapy, MRIs, and use velcro, microwave ovens, cellular phones, and thousands of other technologies that have come from research into pure science.
But here's how you know that it's greed and ignorance playing out, and not reason: When they get hurt, do they call for a priest, or do they call for someone who will use medical science to rescue them?
The ultimate forms of treason and hypocrisy are failing to support funding for the science that will move humanity forward in the times of our children and grandchildren, and the use of the technologies whose research was paid for by our parents and grandparents when they simultaneously deny the funding that will benefit future generations.
The ultrawealthy will be able to afford new medicines, and take advantage of technologies that they themselves fund, and which will be denied to those not themselves wealthy. The rest of us will go without because some among us refuse to pay their part of funding for the future.
Greed. Hypocrisy. Treason.
The BRIC nations, Brazil, Russia, India, and China, are breathing down our necks and each wants to be the world's next superpower. If we stop funding, we stop leading. If we stop leading, we kill our economic engine, and that's just stupid.
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