A September issue of one of the world’s premier scientific journals, Nature, includes an editorial entitled “Science Scorned.” The subheading reads, “The anti-science strain pervading the right wing in the United States is the last thing the country needs in a time of economic challenge.”

Right wing radio personality Rush Limbaugh tells his listeners, “Science has become a home for displaced Socialists and Communists,” that climate-change science, the 40-plus year endeavors of thousands of researchers in dozens of disciplines from over 100 countries, is “the biggest scam in the history of the world,” and “The four corners of deceit: government, academia, science and media. Those institutions are now corrupt and exist by virtue of deceit…” earning for himself a damning indictment as an extremist ideologue by a premier advocate of the Enlightenment principles that founded the country.

Sadly, echoes of these extremist sentiments resonate throughout the political conversation on both the national and local levels. Candidates and politicians blatantly challenge science-based environmental regulation, often referring to oversight as a job-killing trade-off between the environment and business in a zero sum game in which loss in one is the other’s gain. The reality, of course, is much more complicated, but sound bites don’t lend themselves to complication. Lax regulation has been the product of decades-long anti-government talk. Spectacular failures of regulation, however, put the lie to the claim that free markets compel industry to effective self-regulation; the gulf oil catastrophe or the financial collapse don’t support that claim. Effective regulation is a necessary function of government.

What are the roots of this scorn for government and poisonous political discourse? The Princeton historian, Sean Wilentz, talked recently about the conservative bulwark William F. Buckley. Wilentz said Buckley was a lifelong McCarthy conservative, opposed to New Deal reforms, but with the integrity to challenge the extremism from the anti-Woodrow Wilson John Birch Society. The Bircher’s conspiracies involved the Federal Reserve and the income tax as proof of a slide to Socialism, a political philosophy Buckley thought dangerously approaching a turn toward Fascism. The modern manifestations of these extremist ideas, according to Wilentz, are found in Glenn Beck’s embrace of the Bircher’s writings and his advocacy of these ideas in the Tea Party movement.

Buckley coached Goldwater to distance himself from the extremists because their ideas were rendering Republican candidates unelectable. Buckley’s support of Nixon and Reagan held the extremists at bay, exposing the fallacy in what many considered the Bircher’s anti-American ideas, and in the process promoted tempered opposition, a necessary condition for effective, functioning government. The moderate Republicans that exist in government today are what is left of Buckley’s legacy in this regard. Buckley is said to have understood the vast difference between Americans with progressive ideas and Communists. The extremism that failed to recognize this difference, to make this “crucial moral and political distinction,” poisoned political debate. Goldwater did not heed Buckley’s sage advice, tolerated the extremists, and lost handily to Lyndon Johnson.

The extremists, held at bay for a time by moderate Republicans, have been resurrected with a vengeance and their message has become the predominant message of the GOP today. Limbaugh and Beck exemplify these extremist views, as do messages coming from some candidate’s running in Maine this fall.

Dean Scontras, 1st district challenger to Chellie Pingree, is an extremist who would criminalize abortion in all cases, even when performed to save the life of the mother. His economic views echo the extremist views that reforms to the health care system represent a slide toward Socialism and tyranny, and that growth in government spending is out of control and threatens future generations.

The numbers describing all government spending – local, state, and federal (including the bailouts and stimulus spending) – as an honest observer would find from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis, tell a different story. Growth in total government spending in the last two years of the Bush administration, 2006 to 2008, was greater than growth in spending from 2008 to the present. Scontras’ extreme rhetoric skews perceptions and taints public discourse.

Paul Lepage has echoed extremist views about climate science, government regulation, and welfare reform, another darling cause of the disgruntled right. Never mind that attacks on social safety nets, especially during hard economic times, actually stifle economic activity, reduce demand, and hamper job creation.

How does a successful Republican incumbent such as Gary Plummer navigate this poisonous political landscape? His environmental record with the Maine League of Conservation Voters is currently at a 30 percent level, in part having voted this session against keeping pharmaceuticals out of Maine’s drinking water supplies, and a measure encouraging native fish species to repopulate Maine waterways. Undermining state regulatory oversight in land use and toward business garnered his support in some House votes. Comparing his legislative record to other Republicans in the Maine House I must consider Rep. Plummer a thoughtful moderate but he no doubt feels the pressure from the extremists of his party.

And what of the pro-developer bloc Peter Busque helped leverage into Town Council seats last year? In the face of the Great Recession the Council has found cuts to critical services and an increase in taxes their “reality of governing.” That could be considered a small sign of hope, I suppose. When extreme forces pit party against party, progressive against conservative, extremists against moderates, it is the reality of governing that can put the lie to extremist views. The shame of it, though, is the time wasted, opportunities squandered, inefficiencies realized by the lack of compromise and consensus. To conservatives of the Buckley mold, the Republican Party falling down this rabbit hole of extremism must be painful to watch.

The Great Recession has forced cuts in services due to loss of tax revenues, cuts promised by the extremists as a matter of policy. If the consequences of the recession has swelled the ranks of the poor by the millions, I shudder to think what those ranks will look like if the extremists get to do so deliberately.

Steve Demetriou lives in Windham.