The American Spectator

But those days are long gone and the barbarians are at the gates. While the Arkansas son’s “whole life is a testimony to the power of education to change class,” the current tenant of the Oval office spurns his Yalie past.

This anti-intellectualism, coupled with Bush’s “aggressively unilateralist” foreign policy is driving off “high-end immigrants” needed to run the most powerful nation on earth. Florida quotes one unnamed scientist who complains that working in America “is like trying to research and do business in the 21st century in a culture that wants to live in the 19th century, empires, Bibles, and all.”

Worse, in the aftermath of the GOP gains in 2002, the “economically lagging parts of the country now wield ultimate political power, while the creative centers — source of most of America’s economic growth — have virtually none.”

It’s a nice story, really, but it has very little to do with the economic reality on the ground in the United States today. We might say that Florida’s definition of “economically lagging” is rather too, well, creative.