It goes without saying that when Americans consider the history of this young nation, one area in which we take special pride is the way we've been a global leader in scientific discovery and technological advancement. In some of our finest hours, the United States has undertaken the pursuit of knowledge as a national mission -- the famed "space race" against the Soviet Union was, if anything, an urgent battle between competing ideologies, with our national security at stake. And even in our worst moments -- like the aftermath of the financial crisis -- we still dreamed of big solutions, like clean energy and bullet trains, as essential components of economic recovery and a restoration of national pride.
Unfortunately for those who think big, the path to lucrative tax breaks and federal grant funding run through legislative committees chaired by old men who tend to be a little bit afraid of clouds and who never learned to set the clocks on their VCRs correctly.
Still, it's not everyday where one of the nation's representatives fumbles the ball on the whole question of "Where do babies come from?" But that's what Todd Akin did this week, when he advanced an odd theory -- sadly, one promulgated by an actual medical doctor -- that posited that women could not get pregnant from a rapist's seed because their bodies had some sort of elaborate, hormonal fail-safe system that had never, ever, ever been observed in the natural world but it sure sounds awesome so, why not?
Well, Akin's outburst ended up completely roiling the 2012 race, as his party's presidential standard-bearer was forced to "distance" himself from the peculiarity of Akin's remarks without completely blowing up the pro-life platform plank Akin was arguing in favor of when he spit his weird theory about female hormones. Meanwhile, the right's ideological army was torn asunder by those who wanted Akin to quit his Senate race so that someone else could take on the Democratic incumbent, and others who stood firm behind Akin and his right to believe whatever he likes.
But all that 2012 stuff? That's really the only thing that made Akin's junk-science enunciation unique. The truth is, in the halls of power, the crackpots have always served alongside the sane, peddling bad science and taking a wall-eyed view of technology. Akin is just the latest and, perhaps, greatest from the former camp. Those who came before him are the subject of this week's Huff Post List.
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