But consider for a moment the difficult position of a politician who decides to make policy based on robust evidence.
"We can live in fear and make bad policy based on fear," said Patricia L. Caruso, director of the Michigan Department of Corrections, "or we can have some backbone and make policy based on what really helps our communities".
"Why does he want to make policy based on what's happening in one city for the whole of the country?
"We shouldn't make policy based on the image of students going straight from high school to college, living on campus, and graduating four years later, when the majority of college students don't do that".
Here is what politicians apparently cannot understand: it's absolutely fine to make policy based on ideology, whim, faith, principles, and all the other things we are used to.
This March, the House passed legislation introduced by Smith, called the Secret Science Reform Act, which would require EPA to make policy based only on publicly available data.
But we don't make policy based on hypotheticals, especially extreme ones.
"I am open-minded to what the military may suggest, but I can tell you, I'm not going to make policy based on a campaign rally".
Where new technologies like deep-sea mining threaten to disrupt unique benthic ecosystems, we should adapt the precautionary principle and make policy based on doing the least harm, which may include refusing to license this technology.
Pluralism has not been on the agenda of many of the leaders in these movements, at least not an understanding of pluralism that goes beyond just diversity, encompassing an energy and willingness to engage and make policy based on pluralism.
