Blue Streak Science Podcast

On the day of his inauguration in 1961 President John F. Kennedy proclaimed that the torch of American idealism had been passed to a new generation. He called on Americans of all walks of life to come together in self-sacrifice to fight tyranny, poverty, disease, and even war itself. And growing up I thought my generation was going build upon those brave efforts...that we would be a generation to lead the world by example. We could have ridden that wave of the 1960’s...the successes of civil rights legislation, desegregation, environmentalism, gender equality, and sexual and reproductive rights. But something happened in the 1980’s. Just as my generation began embarking on their careers our country took a hard turn to the right, to the religious right. It was the goal of Reverend Jerry Falwell and his self-anointed Moral Majority to elect right-wing Christian politicians to evangelize in the halls of Congress, the White House, and even in the Supreme Court And boy howdy did they succeed And so it has been for