The latest issue (November 2012) of Scientific American has an excellent and very timely article by Shawn Lawrence Otto called "America's Science Problem" in the print version, and renamed as "Antiscience Beliefs Jeopardize U.S. Democracy" in the online version.

Mr. Otto's article cogently discusses the the origins of the science denial movement in the United States beginning a century ago with Democrat William Jennings Bryan (of Scopes Monkey Trial fame) who ran a fundamentalist campaign against the theory of evolution. It then goes on to discuss anti-science's persistent endurance up to today including both those Democrats who believe vaccines cause autism, and those Republicans who deny anthropogenic climate change, evolutionary biology, the meaning of the fossil record over geologic time, and big bang cosmology as well as fundamentalist concerns over control of a woman's reproductive rights and an anti-regulatory zeal against environmental protections.

It is a very good article worthy of Scientific American that is accessible to any level of reader. If you are not a Scientific American subscriber or don't have the print version already, please click the above link to read this article in full (and if you are so inclined, please consider becoming a Scientific American subscriber).

Below the orange what-not, I list the standard maximum three paragraphs from the article particularly emphasizing the conclusions of the article.