I have promised myself that November would be a month of positivism, with every post dealing with the subject of how we put conservatism back into the driver’s seat in this country. Today’s essay is meant to be considered in that vein, and please take it as such.
Today’s essay is a difficult journey for me, partly because I know, even before I start, that I’ll manage to anger pretty much everybody at some point. There are three distinct groups who will be mad at me, and to that I say, nuts to you, I have a right to my opinion, and I’m stating it anyhow. To those of you on the liberal side, group number one, not everyone right of center is a member of the religious right. Your complete refusal to even consider seriously any of the arguments made, about anything in the known Universe that does not comport with your world view has blinded you so totally, that you have labeled any who do not agree as a cartoon figure, fit for nothing more than sophomoric lampooning. What’s even worse than that however, is the absolute position of unbridled ignorance of the subject matter at hand, which combined with the arrogance of your belief system, makes you guilty of the most egregious sins with which you smear those of us who are right of center.
To those of you who view conservatism totally through the prism of religious qualification, considering yourselves to be the only true conservatives, group number two is your moniker for the purposes of this essay, I appreciate your adherence to your faith, and believe wholeheartedly in your right to exercise it freely in our nation. What I will never accept however is your intenton to inflict that faith upon the territory reserved for scientific discovery, which is taught to my children and grandchildren as a part of their educative process. There is a place for teaching religious dogma, and it is not in a science class room. I am not saying that religion not be taught as an elective class in school, nor am I suggesting that my views be inflicted upon your children. I believe that control of our schools should be taken away from the federal behemoth, and that local boards should be given complete autonomy to teach what ever the parents of each individual school district want taught. To further that concept just a little more, I wish to see the Friedman solution enacted, where each child receives his or her parent’s tax donations in the form of a voucher to be used at the school of their choice, where the entire curricula is designed according the dictates of the free market. With that being said however, your insistence on attempting to label creationism as a, “scientific theory,” entitled euphamistically, “Intelligent Design,” is moronic at best, and criminally perjurious at worst. it is nothing more than a ruse, designed to fake the rest of us out by convincing us that your religious dogma is suddenly a seriously considered scientific theory, and quite frankly the effort at this trickery is no more reasoned nor tough to spot than the old, “got your nose trick,” which usually won’t fool anyone past the age of 18 months.
To those of you who make up the smaller government, free marketeers, hawkish, or the opposite of hawkish libertarian wing of our diverse group, trying to shun the religious right and not attempting to find some way to allow them to have their say while considering their position thoroughly makes us guilty of exactly the same intolerance with which we paint them. Our standards for ourselves should be higher than that, and I say this partly because this is the group that I call home. Exactly how have we allowed ourselves to get to that place in our nation where religious freedom came to be defined as no religious people allowed, excepting of course for Muslims, who are suddenly free to get their religious dogma included in schools all over the nation? What is perhaps most disturbing about our refusal to allow the religious right their say is that it demonstrates a lack of our own, in terms of our commitment to the Constitution. When allowed to work properly, that document has served our nation well. While it is true that lately, the, “living document,” crowd has gained success in instituting changes in the interpretation, those successes are temporary so long as permanent changes are kept at bay. There is not one single School District in the country that has failed to replace entirely, any school board that has introduced creationism into the science curricula at the earliest possible moment. That ladies and gentlemen is the perfect example of how our system is supposed to work, and has. More importantly, it has worked irrespective of, and faster than any federal mandate. If there are a group of people who wish to educate their children in such a manner, they should have the same opportunity to find a school that caters to such, and should not be forced to subsidize a public school system while they send their child to a private school.
To add the exclamation to the, you-are-not-holier-than-thou point, I would just like to add that the creationists and the global warming scare mongers are opposite sides of the very same anti-science faith based coin. While you two disparate groups are aligned on opposite sides of the political aisle, and revel in pointing at the other side wagging your fingers while chiding them for their practice of substituting evidence free faith for actual knowledge based on empirical evidence, realize that you are in fact the very same animal. There is no real difference between you. I will tell you up front that while faith is a wonderful thing, and it imparts to its adherents many wonderful gifts in return for the discipline, it is not science. I believe in God. I just do not believe in a purposefully deceptive God.
With those disclosures out of the way, I want you all to recognize this one fact. Creationism being taught in public schools as science is the single biggest issue which drives people away from the conservative movement to find an uncomfortable solace in the party on the left. It does not matter to those who fear it that not one group who has sought such has ever enjoyed a lasting success, the mere mention of it for many of our citizens trumps all other political considerations, and that is a powerfully dangerous concept to ponder.
I can not tell you how many times I have been involved in a debate with one of my leftist friends when the topic centered on economics. In more instances than I can count, I received tacit agreement on the concept of free market economics. Agreement was reached on the clarity of history’s lens showing that the leftist policies being enacted today more often than not cause the very problems that the political left claims to care so much about. I’ve also solicited many admissions to the provable fact that limiting centralized authority has done a far superior job in curing those perceived ills than any other form of governance or economics ever put into practice by any society at at time in world history. In peeling back the onion to find the real reason for the schism, one subject tends to stand out, with one group receiving the blame. The religious right is blamed, and abortion is not the issue mentioned. Teaching Creationism as science in our schools is the only real deal breaker, not for everybody but for a lot of folks.
Consider the implications of that momentarily. For many of our fellow citizens, having thier children get an actual decent education in terms of what is taught as science and math is worth the price of economic suicide and the abridgment of our constitutional freedoms. There is something in that which we can actually use to bolster our position. There is opportunity here, and it is much greater than any being touted by the political consultant class.
The quality of education in our nation has been deteriorating steadily since the infliction of the Department of Education. The public school districts which spend the greatest amount of money per student are coincidentally the worst performing districts in the nation. Common Core is an educational disaster waiting to happen, if it hasn’t already. Math, Science, English, and History are being deemphasized for other subjects such as conflict resolution, diversity studies, Socialist Dogma, which is being touted as citizenship. The crowd who is willing to eschew their actual beliefs in free enterprise in favor of a decent education for their children might in fact be interested in insuring that those kids get that quality education. Despite the efforts and success at painting our side to be anti-science cartoons, attentive parents are still able to notice that their children are coming home from school every day with little more ability to do basic math than when they left each morning.
The fact is that creationism provides an avenue to paint the caricature, and in many instances, it is the only thing that prevents actual consideration of the other side’s track record in terms of educative failure. One of the things that we on the right must come to grips with and accept is that life is not fair. Our preferred system of economics and governance will always be compared with Utopia, and the other side will not. At the same time, we must become smart enough to turn that same microscope around to shine light upon the alternatives offered. Rather than getting into arguments where we exemplify the caricatures painted, we need to find a way to communicate the positive aspects of what we are trying to accomplish.
Here is a talk presented by Dr. Kenneth Miller, a devout Christian, who is also a cellular biologist. If you have the two hours to spare, you might be interested in hearing his perspective on how his religious beliefs and his expertise on evolutionary science are not mutually exclusive. He is the author of the Best Selling Book, “Finding Darwin’s God.”
