Ron Chusid’s blog Liberal Values is the first blog I check every day. Chusid is not prolific, about a post per day, but if he finds something interesting, it’s worth considering. I often find that he writes with a clarity that helps me focus my own thoughts whether I agree with him or not. His Dec 1 post, Ross Douthout Shows Rejection of Science Is Necessary To Succeed In GOP, is a typically concise analysis:
Ross Douthat has unintentionally demonstrated that one cannot be a successful Republican candidate without rejecting science (or at least hiding their beliefs) in a post on why Jon Huntsman’s campaign for the Republican nomination has been unsuccessful. Douthat says that Huntsman has failed because, “He picked high-profile fights on two hot-button issues — evolution and global warming…” He considers this to be “political malpractice at its worst.”
In other words, it is now political suicide in the Republican Party to openly acknowledge acceptance of science. Evolution is firmly established as a factual explanation for the development of complex organisms from simple organisms and is the foundation of modern biology. The science behind global warming is accepted by well over ninety percent of scientists in the field. Despite this, conservatives reject both fields of science. The typical conservative not only rejects, but is totally ignorant of the evidence for evolution, and considers creationism to be a valid alternative. Conservatives see climate change as a conspiracy and a hoax while creating their own hoax with the bogus claims surrounding “Climategate” which have been debunked by five separate investigations.
I couldn’t have said it better myself, so I didn’t.
– Iron Filing
One Comment
Beautiful. The sad part of this is that there are valid debates to be had about both issues – just not the ones conservatives attack. Climate change, for example, there is plenty of debate about how much and how fast our activities are impacting the climate, and how much and how fast we need to act. On evolution, there is even a valid debate about how far to take it – man has some unique tool using skills. We are the only species that can create compound objects, for example – while some other species understand tools, the tools they use are not built out of disparate parts. Maybe that last bit of creative intelligence is divinely inspired (I am not advancing the theory, only speculating).
But rather than have rational discussion on the areas that can be debated, conservative extremists would rather deny reality, attack basic facts, and claim “Ignorance in Strength”.