Ben Stein wants to "ruin American competitiveness"

We all know that Ben Stein thinks that “science leads you to killing people”. The following is a quote from a 2002 article Stein wrote for Forbes magazine, in which he offers “a few suggestions on how we can ruin American competitiveness and innovation in the course of this century”. Forbes’ readers probably thought that Stein’s “suggestions” were meant as satire, but in light of recent events, it is clear that he was in fact serious about doing his part to tank America’s economic future (presumably to avoid all the people-killing caused by sound science education).

12) Elevate mysticism, tribalism, shamanism and fundamentalism–and be sure to exclude educated, hardworking men and women–to an equal status with technology in the public mind. Make sure that, in order to pay proper (and politically correct) respect to all different ethnic groups in America, you act as if science were on an equal footing with voodoo and history with ethnic fable.

Ben Stein, “How to Ruin American Enterprise”, Forbes 12/23/2002

EDIT: Someone in the comments has argued that Ben Stein’s Youtube snippet and quote above must have been taken out of context. You can actually watch the entire TBN interview here. If anything, the thing is even more embarrassing in context, with Stein exposing his abysmal scientific ignorance for half an hour before casually condemning half a century of scientific progress as murderous. If you don’t have the stomach for the whole thing (and I don’t blame you), you can go to the quote itself just after minute 28.