Using Technology to Deepen Democracy, Using Democracy to Ensure Technology Benefits Us All

Monday, March 21, 2005

Out the Know-Nothings!

[via the Gadflyer] Paul Waldman has made a crucial proposal.
I propose that every Republican politician be asked this simple question: Do you believe that the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago? In other words, is everything we have learned about the age of the universe, our planet, and the life thereon nothing but an elaborate hoax?

They'll have two choices. First, they can acknowledge the truth, and offend their most rabid supporters. Or they can say they do in fact believe the earth is less than 10,000 years old, in which case they will have proclaimed for all to see their antipathy toward the very notions of science and rationality.

Or they might take a third path – trying not to answer the question. They shouldn't be allowed to get away with that. Here's a sample question journalists can use as a follow-up: "Did you take biology in high school? Are you familiar at all with the mountain of evidence in support of evolution? Do you know about these things called "fossils," that, for instance, show earlier stages of human evolution? OK – so if you know about all that, are you saying it's all a hoax?" ...

If you think the earth was created less than 10,000 years ago, you're either spectacularly ill-informed (probably not your fault) or willfully ignorant. If you had the benefit of an education at, say, Andover, Yale and Harvard and you think this, you've simply rejected rational thought. Schizophrenics can at least say they did not choose their delusions.

We absolutely need to get politicians on the record on this. The view that God exists and has guided the process of creation and evolution -– or even set it in motion and stood back –- is not incompatible with a[ scientific] understanding of the world. The view that the entire accumulated knowledge of physics and biology is some kind of sinister scam, on the other hand, is not.

My suspicion is that if you looked into their heart of hearts, even most of the Republican caucus of both houses would admit that of course the earth is not 10,000 years old. But they don't have the guts to say so and alienate their fundamentalist supporters. They shouldn't be allowed to weasel out of it.

It's hard to bear the disgusting sanctimony of the so-called "champions of life" who are presently crawling and leering over the long-dead body of Terri Schiavo (finally, a woman so inert that even your typical hayseed conservative patriarch needn't feel threatened by her!) as they cynically and sensationalistically manipulate widespread scientific ignorance for almost unbelievably irresponsible short term partisan-political gains.

This is no suprise of course from the wretched crew of Know-Nothings who still smugly advocate the disaster of abstinence-only education, who would eagerly build a prison for every school they kill, who want to hound scholars into retirement for making arguments with which they disagree, who are systematically dismantling the independent press (such as it is) for endless progaganda and payola, who would replace every measure of accountability and transparency in government for a culture of State Secrets Under a Strong Executive, and who blithely persist in climate-change denial, presumably hoping that they'll be safe themselves from any upcoming heavy weather chaos, whiling away their Golden Years (should they fail to be Raptured up on schedule) with their family and friends in gated communities well-stocked with all the scarcer choicer commodities and distractions denied the rest of us.

But those who are willing to sell out freedom of expression and the pursuit of consensus science today and who would pander instead to the ignorant and fearful should simply be made to say so and face the consequences: they should be actively and absolutely shunned by those of us who defend freedom of thought and its fragile accomplishments because we know better.

I doubt many of these smugly sanctimonious so-called foes of the science in whose wealth they would otherwise soak would be much pleased to find themselves confined to the company of the ignorant people to whom they are pandering for power. Beltway Republicans endlessly insulated by technological comforts and medical marvels from any actual connection with the faith-based world they are building might be given pause were they confined to the prescientific swamps, or the company of their snake-handling inhabitants, that best exemplify the dazzling "culture of life" in which they are striving to imprison the future.

No comments: