Lamar Smith, SOPA’s creator wants to insert himself into the NSF granting process. With SOPA he wanted to control free speech about ideas. With this latest attempt he wants to control which ideas get created.

Reading the text of his letter, it all sounds so innocent, he just wants to help.

If you are an innocent, all he’s asking for are the transcripts of the funding decision so he can understand where our money is going … If you are not so innocent, you realize it’s an attempt to get information that can be used to drive scientific inquiry in directions of political interest or away from areas that political interest would prefer no science be done.

Congress is not interested in being educated, they are interested in pushing an agenda and their agenda is not the pursuit of knowledge it’s the pursuit of a political line of reasoning.

Which would make Lenin oh-so-proud.

One of the weirdest properties of our age is the Republican Party’s transformation into a Leninist Bolshevik Party.

A Leninist party is one with strong central control, a single unified political position and very little internal democracy.

A Leninist party believes that everything is political. A Leninist party views objective reality as a political construct, and since it’s a political construct,  different political view can create a different reality.

A Leninist party is often indistinguishable from a religious group. Both groups believe, view outsiders as dangerous obstacles to the promised land, and have a lot of group think.

Enough with pre-amble.

Once a Leninist party’s politics take deep root, then it’s only a matter of time where politics drives scientific result and not the other way around.

For example, Stalin preferred Lysenokism instead of genetics because it lined up with his political theories. 

This latest bill is cause for concern, and more deeply distressing than SOPA ever was. SOPA controlled speech. Controlling the NSF is about controlling which new ideas we create.