Klinghoffer: Discoveroids Reach Out to Liberals

There’s no way to describe this one. You need to actually read it to see the depths to which the Discoveroids are willing to descend. It’s by David Klinghoffer, posted at the blog of the Discoveroids — both he and they are described in the Cast of Characters section of our Intro page.

The title of this nightmare in Newspeak is Teaching the Evolution Controversy Is a Good Liberal Cause. This may signal a new Discoveroid strategy — rebranding their creationism as a liberal idea. Here are some excerpts, with bold font added by us and David’s links omitted:

We have often pointed out the deceptiveness of Darwin advocates who identify skepticism on orthodox Darwinian evolutionary theory with creationism and with sectarian religious perspectives.

Yeah, we’re the deceptive ones. The mess continues:

Their goal is to fool people who haven’t thought about the issue into swallowing the easy but totally bogus reasoning: “Support for academic freedom equals support for teaching students that the world is under ten thousand years old. Therefore anyone who accepts the age of the universe as being reckoned in the billions of years will naturally oppose even the best, most carefully and responsibly formulated AF [academic freedom] bills.”

We’ve seen that over and over again. The Discoveroids insist they’re not creationists (although all their fans most definitely are) because they’re not young-Earth creationists. But there are loads of old-Earth creationists — William Jennings Bryan was one of them — and that’s exactly what the Discoveroids are. Let’s read on:

The stupidity and illogic of this way of thinking is as obvious, so you might hope, as it is sadly effective.

The absurdity and duplicity of the Discoveroids’ denial that they’re creationists is also obvious — and fortunately it’s not very effective. It certainly didn’t fool Judge Jones in Kitzmiller v. Dover Area School District. We continue:

Another effective yet erroneous tactic of the Darwin lobby is to link science skepticism inexorably with a right-wing political outlook. The message there is: “If you consider yourself liberal, moderate or anything other than a conservative Tea Party zealot, you must be opposed to AF legislation.”

We see a lot of that, yet our readers know that your humble Curmudgeon is a Republican – but definitely not the crazed Michele Bachmann type. We are not alone — see Conservatives and Intelligent Design, in which we quote Charles Krauthammer and George F. Will — not exactly left-wingers — praising the Kitzmiller decision. Here’s more from Klinghoffer:

Guys like Paul Krugman (pictured above), the New York Times columnist, are insistent that conservatives and Republicans are ignorant and anti-intellectual.

You don’t want to know your Curmudgeon’s opinion of Krugman. We’ll skip Klinghoffer’s quote from him. Moving along:

Unlike those ignorant Republicans, liberals support critical thinking — yet they oppose encouraging students to think critically when it comes to evolution? The absurdity of this is evident too, or it should be.

Klinghoffer is delighted about the confusion generated by the Discoveroids’ intentional choice of the ambiguous expression “critical thinking.” Another excerpt:

[I]f you just step back from it for a moment, well-formulated AF [academic freedom] laws should be a very natural liberal, progressive thing to support. We’re talking about protecting teachers who want to enlighten their students by acquainting them with both sides of a legitimate scientific controversy.

We should have warned you that Klinghoffer’s essay was a vomit-inducer, but you probably knew that in advance. On with his article:

Zogby polling, indeed, shows that Democrats are even more in favor of protecting teachers who teach evolutionary theory’s “strengths and weakness” than Republicans are — by a margin of 82 to 73 percent.

BWAHAHAHAHAHA! They’re still touting that four-year old phoney poll. We debunked it here: Discovery Institute: Equal Opportunity Creationism. Klinghoffer’s not done yet:

We need to do more to deliberately claim and use appropriate language in characterizing the case for academic freedom, which is really about modestly reforming science education. There’s a serious argument to be made, backed up by intuition, that this is in fact a fine liberal cause — while it is the anti-AF activists, like our friends at the National Center for Science Education, who are the reactionary defenders of a calcified status quo.

Good luck trying to recruit liberals to the Discoveroid cause. The old William Jennings Bryan days when creationists were mostly in the Dem party are largely gone. Loads of them — but certainly not all — have oozed into the GOP. And now we come to the end:

Even if you’re a conservative on other issues, on this one, if you support academic freedom, it’s right and fair to call yourself a progressive.

This is an interesting outreach effort. We don’t think it’ll be very successful, but one never knows. There are plenty of crazy Republican creationists, but not enough for the Discoveroids. The Dems aren’t immune to nutty ideas, so maybe Klinghoffer knows what he’s doing.

Afterthought: We’ve previously posted about the similarity of evolution to the natural, unguided way the free market develops (Adam Smith’s invisible hand), and how that contrasts with state-controlled economies which are “intelligently designed” from the top. See Evolution, Intelligent Design, and Barack Obama. In that sense, intelligent design does fit into the political outlook of the Dems. Maybe the Discoveroids have figured that out, and now realize that their greatest potential is in that direction.

Copyright © 2013. The Sensuous Curmudgeon. All rights reserved.

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