How Conservatives Can Get Their Groove Back

From BigLizards

The Nuclear Winter of Conservative Discontent

Evolutionary Elucidations

Hatched by Dafydd

I have finally identified the greatest bane of conservatives, their bugaboo, their bête noire -- the great barrier that retards them from winning many of the most vital political arguments of today. But let me sneak up on it a bit: What do all these contemporary issues hold in common?

• Cap and Trade -- rather, Cripple and Tax
• The expansion of nuclear power generation

• The EPA's attempt to outlaw CO₂ (and now NO₂ as well; hat tip to Hugh Hewitt)

• Missile defense, both theater and strategic
• Nationalization of major industries
• Nationalization of health care to a single-payer, government-controlled system
• The promiscuous proliferation of "endangered species" that are, in fact, not endangered

First, each of these controversies is a wedge issue by which Republicans and conservatives can oust Democrats and liberals from Congress -- and potentially from la Casa Blanca, as well.

Second, each is fundamentally a scientific question, from climate science, to nuclear physics, to aeronautics and cybernetics, to the optimal pursuit of medical research, to economic science, to the biological sciences.

And most important, for each of these wedge issues, the Right can only win if it is more credible when speaking about scientific matters.

It's not good enough merely to be no less credible than, on a par with the Left -- in this case, a "tie" in rationalism goes to whoever is best at slinging emotional arguments; and in that arena, the Left always has the home-field advantage.

All of which leads me, by a commodious vicus of recirculation, back to the hubris-flaw of conservatives; and that is, of course, the squirrely refusal of so many prominent conservatives to accept the findings of a century and a half of evolutionary biology.

That intellectual blind spot torpedoes conservative credibilty on a host of other scientific issues:

• Sure, the Right argues that so-called anthropogenic climate change is a myth; but they don't even believe in evolution! How can we trust anything they say about global warming?
• Conservatives believe in missile defense for America; but they also believe that no species has ever naturally evolved into another, that humans were here for the entire existence of life on this planet, that the Earth is only a few thousand years old, and that each and every species had to be individually designed and assembled by God -- that natural selection had nothing to do with it. Do they also believe in the Tooth Fairy?
• Republicans say that if we're worried about burning too much fossil fuels, we should switch to using more nuclear power; they say that new reactors, such as Pebble Bed Modular Technology and Integral Fast reactors, are safe. But can we really trust the judgment of people who think that dinosaurs and humans co-existed -- like in the Flintstones?

This one bizarre religious belief -- based ulimately upon the foolish misunderstanding that accepting evolution means you must reject God -- is the single greatest cause of conservative's loss of credibility in scientific debates... a fact driven home to me every other week, when I'm accused of the same mental myopia (and also accused of being a conservative).

Worse, I'm convinced that the only reason so many conservatives think only atheists can support evolution -- is that they believe certain well-known atheists who say so!the God Delusion) Dawkins, Christopher (God Is Not Great) Hitchens, and Phillip (the His Dark Materials (Golden Compass) trilogy) Pullman have conservatives' best interests at heart? Good heavens, why would so many conservatives believe that socialist atheists like Richard (

Here's a newsflash: Those atheists are radical leftists -- and consummate propagandists. They will tell you that all evolutionary scientists are atheists; but that is a patent falsehood, as Professor Francis Collins -- an evangelical Christian who headed the Human Genome Project -- ably argues in his magnificant book, the Language of God.

The scientific evidence for evolution by variation/mutation and natural selection is overwhelming; and no respected, peer-review-published scientist in the field of biology disputes the fundamentals of the discipline. (Everyone disputes the details; that's the very nature of science.) The unanimity is so stark that the nutters at the creationist Discovery Institute are reduced to babbling about conspiracy theories to "silence dissent," a facile and convenient claim most recently pushed by noted actor, conservative columnist, and evolutionary biologist (I made up that last one) Ben Stein.

But for purely religious reasons, conservatives who are also believing Christians -- which is a huge subset -- plus some politically conservative Jews, have an irreducible simplicity as a core axiom: That evolutionary theory, which they call "Darwinism," is false. They reason backwards from this axiom to declare invalid any experiment, observation, or conclusion that supports it. And in the process, they fatally damage their own credibility to argue any case that depends upon the ability to reason logically or to understand basic scientific principles. Or even the scientific method itself.

How can they maintain that a conspiracy of silence exists to silence dissenters to the fatally discredited Globaloney thesis (which is true) if they become objects of ridicule by arguing that the same sort of conspiracy silences mythical armies of scientists who would otherwise reject evolution? They make themselves sound like Agent Fox Mulder; they make themselves laughingstocks.

Worse, they even damage my credibility, due to guilt by association; and I'm bloody sick of it. Every time I argue science with a liberal, I must spend the first 500 words defending myself from the false charge of rejecting evolution -- and the next 2,000 words mitigating the damage from the same charge -- but more true this time -- leveled against the Right in general.

Such anti-evolutionarians have become the anchor holding us back from overturning the nonsensical, bogus psdueoscience of the Left, from the banning of silicone breast implants, to the criminal idiocy of parents who refuse to allow their children to be vaccinated, to the phobic fear of nuclear power plants by liberals who had already worn out their videotapes of the China Syndrome before it even came out on DVD.

Evolution is the great counterexample cited to prove that the Right is no more rational than the Left. Thanks; the rest of us really appreciate being lumped together with Ben Stein and Michael Medved.

(This post was, of course, driven by my annoyance at Medved presenting yet another knucklehead railing against "Darwinism," citing the Discovery Institute's all-purpose catechism of "irreducible complexity"... that mutable charge that shifts from biological system to biological system, always one step ahead of the very reduction of complexity it claims cannot occur.)