It's not surprising to see this coming from a conservative. In fact, the whole conservative belief system is that society is not important and only individual a

It's not surprising to see this coming from a conservative. In fact, the whole conservative belief system is that society is not important and only individual attributes have any value. Pick any conservative original idea and you can pinpoint the moment when it tries to make the public/social irrelevant and the individual worthy and perfect. Especially when it comes to science this view is stupid: there is no scientific knowledge that is based on individual achievement. Newton already knew this: "standing on the shoulders of giants". In isolation, the smartest person in the world wouldn't be able even to start grasping what we already have in terms of scientific development, and the situation is even worse for scientists of the future. Exactly the same can be said of most technology fields such as computing. The whole idea that there is any individual merit outside of participation in the scientific and technological community is just baloney.