Four Years Down The Road

A lot has been made of Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal's shot in the GOP primaries in 2012, but if even Rick Moran over at Right Wing Nuthouse thinks Jindal's a loser, then he's in real trouble. Jindal reflects the basic problems with the GOP according to Moran.

Sizing up Jindal at this point is probably an exercise in futility since he will no doubt grow and change as his term in office continues. But what we know of him now is not very encouraging to me. I could never vote for someone who believes that creationism/intelligent design should be taught in schools – even if it is done in concert with the teaching of evolution with the goal of “letting the kids decide” which “theory” they wish to believe.

This kind of anti-intellectualism that promotes ID as science on a par with Darwinism is just plain loony. Imagine in Cosmology if we taught the “Steady State” theory of the origins of the Universe alongside the “Big Bang” and expansion theories, allowing students to decide which theory is “true.” The question answers itself. One theory is clearly wrong and the other is clearly correct.

If parents want to home school their kids and teach them ID or send them to private religious schools where Darwin is a dirty word, fine. They will grow up sweeping the floors of Japanese, Swedish, or Chinese bio-tech factories rather than owning them. You can deny the efficacy of evolution all you want but since modern biology is based on it (and not on ID/creationism) it stands to reason that the coming revolution in bio-technology will proceed without your children being involved. This nonsense has already affected the numbers of students entering graduate level life sciences which a recent Rand study showed will necessitate US bio-tech firms looking overseas for engineers and biologists within the next decade.

But this debate is only a symptom of what ails the GOP. Much of the base appears to be battling modernity itself. Declaring categorically – and without even a scintilla of the requisite knowledge to do so – that Climate Change is a “hoax” bespeaks an ignorance that causes most voters to blanche in horror at the prospect of electing a Republican. Scientists who advocate the theory of catastrophic climate change may indeed be wrong. They may be close minded and not open to opposing views. But “hoaxers?”

This is not the first time that eminent scientists have gotten it wrong and refused to consider evidence the the contrary. The theory of plate tectonics – the continents sitting on plates, floating on magma, that rub against each other and migrate great distances over time – was belittled for a 100 years. But no one accused proponents of the Continental Drift theory of perpetrating a scientific hoax to advance that theory at the expense of plate tectonics.

And of course he's right. The GOP is at war with itself over science and religion. There's a deeply ingrained, fanatical section of the GOP that is Luddite to the core, that rejects science as the tool of evil, believing it to be what the elitist secular Liberals use to yoke the necks of the proud, self-sufficient, God-fearing American family.

We're talking about a group of people that honestly believe all the nasty things going on in the world are the result of the final coming battle, and that faith in God and only faith in God can save us. Anything else, including the whole exercise of intellectualism in any capacity, takes away from faith and is therefore inherently evil.

It's part preying on the fears of the small-minded and part being scared into religious fanaticism. People are scared because they are being scared on purpose by these clowns, and the worse the economy gets, the easier it's going to be to convince these folks that the real problem is not Bush and the GOP ripping the American people off, but lack of God's law being imposed on all Americans.

Moran belongs to the sect of the GOP that thinks it is smarter then that, but in the end, those are just the guys with the whip hand. Can you imagine a President that doesn't believe in evolution?