Over in the Village Voice this weekend the great Roy Edroso takes on the right-wing blogosphere's lame defense of "anti-science" Republicans, and pulls a grand total of zero punches, especially on their defense of Rick Perry.
"In no sense that the ordinary person would understand the term is Rick Perry 'anti-science,'" asserted National Review's Rich Lowry. "He hasn't criticized the scientific method, or sent the Texas Rangers to chase out from the state anyone in a white lab coat."
In fact, said Lowry, "Perry's website touts his Emerging Technology Fund as an effort to bring 'the best scientists and researchers to Texas.'" As if that weren't convincing enough, he also pointed out that Perry's home state "has a booming health-care sector," which proves Perry's devotion to science much as Texas' record drought might prove his devotion to dehydration.
Lowry admitted Perry has a "somewhat doubtful take on evolution," but explained that it "has more to do with a general impulse to preserve a role for God in creation than a careful evaluation of the work of, say, Stephen Jay Gould." Also, lots of Americans don't think man came from no monkey, neither. So Perry has great motives for his anti-evolution stand: God, and possible election to the Presidency.
By contrast, said Lowry, liberals only believe in evolution because they hate God. "Science is often just an adjunct to the Left's faith commitments," he wrote. "A Richard Dawkins takes evolutionary science beyond its competence and argues that it dictates atheism... They are believers wrapping themselves in the rhetoric of science while lacking all the care and dispassionate reasoning we associate with the practice of it." Scientists, huh? Rich Lowry will tell them what science is!
Ridiculous as this is, Lowry's colleague Jonah Goldberg managed, as is his wont, to make it worse.
"You only struck a glancing blow at my biggest peeve about the whole anti-science thing," Goldberg told Lowry: "Why does the Left get to pick which issues are the benchmarks for 'science'?"
What? one is tempted to ask, but Goldberg went on: "Why can't the measure of being pro-science be the question of heritability of intelligence? Or the existence of fetal pain?"
Because the measure of pro-science has to do with widely accepted scientific principles, not "Whatever we want science to mean so we can attack President Obama." Other countries laugh at us when in 2011 we have people running for the presidency that openly question evolution and climate change despite the overwhelming evidence that it exists, and the fact that is is widely accepted among scientists internationally, and in the case of evolution, has been for centuries.
Just because you don't want to believe it doesn't change the facts and evidence. It doesn't make being challenged on your stance against the facts "persecution". It means if you're a scientist, you should be able to defend your position in a scientific manner.
And when scientists do this and present reams of evidence supporting evolution and climate change, that evidence is ignored. Instead, we get that anti-evolutionists and climate deniers are the "true" scientists because they believe the evidence supports their theories. I could say the moon is made of delicious cheese too, and I could call anyone who challenged me a persecuting monster,
but it doesn't mean the moon is made out of delicious cheese.
At some point, you actually have to be right on science, and ignoring the facts means you lose the fight automatically. Dig?
Oh and yes, Edroso takes on all that plus "black people are intellectually inferior!" It's a good read.
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