August 18, 2011
the birth of a nation
The majority of Republicans in the United States do not believe the theory of evolution is true and do not believe that humans evolved over millions of years from less advanced forms of life. This suggests that when three Republican presidential candidates at a May debate stated they did not believe in evolution, they were generally in sync with the bulk of the rank-and-file Republicans whose nomination they are seeking to obtain.
I don’t see how this isn’t a fundamental problem for the future of American democracy.
(via @fivethirtyeight)
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A large proportion of creationists hasn’t been much of a problem for American democracy in the past 235 years; I’m not sure why it’s suddenly an issue.
Because that didn’t have an effect on public policy as directly, and now an entire political party is comprised of asshats.
File this under “Not good”.
Deron, what’s the proof for this new more direct effect on public policy compared to the last 235 years Joel mentions? As an isolated fact I don’t think this view has any effect on the future of American democracy.
1. All political parties are comprised of asshats. There’s a significant selection bias.
2. Are you suggesting that the 2010s are politically more evolution-unfriendly than, say, the 1920s?
Rich, perhaps the effects of this way of thinking are so pervasive we have become blind to them, but all you need to do is look at the change in rhetorical assumptions about global warming by the Republican leadership in the past five years to see how a disbelief in physical proof has become normative for the entire political party. That becomes policy. The same as with the debt ceiling debate. Religion and stupidity and politics are so closely entwined now that an entire political culture has adopted denial of reality. I live in a state permeated by that new reality.
I think it’s extremely worrying. The denial of evolution is more than just a rejection of one thing; implicit within that is the rejection of science generally. Hence the right-wing tendency to dismiss climate change and the increasingly hostile attitude of the Republican presidential candidates to the EPA.
I’m with Deron and Jamie on this. The problem is not that many in the past have clung to views that fly in the face of scientific understanding–it’s that vast numbers these days have been generally led to believe that any uncomfortable view may simply be denied or explained away with non-arguments. The irony is that this is the “relativism” so long decried by religious conservatives. American conservatives have been radicalized because they have cast themselves for so long as embattled when they weren’t, and have now decided that “the end justifies the means” fits in very well with a vision of ruthless strength brought to “god’s” service for the country. Many Americans vote on the basis of sentiment–and the systematic right-wing undermining of the American education system is putting more and more people in a state of empowered ignorance that leaves them ripe for rhetorical manipulation.
A couple of distinctions I would draw between the decade of the Scopes trial and our time: In 1925, the concepts put forth in On the Origin of Species had been circulating for only 65 years or so. Also, in 1925, I don’t believe that the majority of Americans graduated high school.
So we are this many more years on down the pike, and more people have racked up more years of formal education —
and yes, it does feel to me as though to deny the principles of evolutionary biology is to take an aggressive (or perhaps defensive) stance that has to do with much more than how living things develop over time.
I would expand that rejection to include any difficult-to-acquire knowledge. I’m thinking specifically of history, philosophy, and politcal theory, where Republican candidates (and especially M. Bachmann) are willing to say just about anything and charactarize it as fact, or at least as intelligent analysis. What’s more galling is that nobody in the media seems willing to call any of them out for it (aside from the comedic media, anyway).
We live in a consumer economy, and the same people who have been conditioned for so long to embrace the notion that more is always better now see the very idea of factual information as a limit placed on their right to satisfaction.
I think that I believe that one of the main reasons aggressive anti-intellectualism has been dominating right-wing electoral politics for the last decade or two is that it works. If you are just smart enough, you can really kick someone’s ass with stupidity.
I guess I don’t see why thinking or caring about any of it matters. I don’t mean that flippantly. Does it matter? Knowing what you think matters, but hearts and minds aren’t changed through anything but relationship any more.
This matters very much in a long term sense. In the history of science great ideas have tended to confer a competitive edge upon those who most ardently pursue their implications. Evolution is an idea (or set of ideas) that continues to reshape science in powerful ways. When the pool of potential innovators in a nation is significantly reduced by ideological pressures, it becomes less likely that that nation will match well against others who aren’t similarly self-burdened. This is the sort of advantage that is difficult to see in its own time: usually it’s one’s great grandchildren who will be looking back to spot the point at which weakness entered. A nation that largely doesn’t “believe” in evolution will not survive in the context of others that do, thus demonstrating another thing that evolution could have taught them.
And it matters in the sense that if people who have the intellectual ability to recognize the pattern choose not to, or are speechless, the pattern is more quickly perpetuated.
These poll results are from 2007. I wonder what the numbers would look like today. My recollection is that creationist candidates didn’t do all that well in 2008.
I’ve been thinking a lot about this type of thing in the past few weeks, having accidently caught a few minutes of network news in the past few weeks. I don’t think that people who see the problem aren’t speaking up, I think it’s that nobody wants to listen. We want our elections to be more like reality TV.
Sober talk about sober issues don’t get ratings.
It’s in the Entertainment aspect of politics that we forget that these are the same people that need to run a government.