Friday, November 03, 2006
Freshman Political Science
Well, the folks at the Discovery Institute, having already confused religion with science are now busily confusing science with political ideology. Calling the stand of some people on the right in favor of science "misguided attempts of some conservatives to embrace Darwinism and champion it as compatible with conservative views," the Discovery Institute has announced a book by John West that argues that:Darwinism promotes moral relativism rather than traditional morality. It fosters utopianism rather than limited government. It is corrosive, rather than supportive, of both free will and religious belief.
It doesn't matter if evolutionary theory is right; if it is perceived to be against their favored view of what the world should be, it has to be opposed. West does make a limp wave at actual scientific considerations by saying that evolution is "in tension with the scientific evidence" (whatever that babble is supposed to mean) and asserting that conservatism cannot strengthen itself by relying on Darwinism’s "increasingly shaky empirical foundations," that anti-evolutionists have been predicting would bring it down any day now for only the last 150 years or so. And, of course, it remains a mystery why anyone would expect science to strengthen conservatism or liberalism.
But as an example of tossing off all ties to reality, it is hard to beat the DI lauding the "noted conservative thinker and writer George Gilder," the guy who lead thousands into bankruptcy when the dot com bubble burst but still made it all about him when he told the Wall street Journal:
The typical Gilder subscriber lost all his money and that made it very hard for me to market the newsletter.The fact that they are comparing Gilder to some real heavyweights, such as George Will, James Q. Wilson, and Larry Arnhart, just turns it from low comedy into slapstick.
