Wednesday, January 04, 2006
Unconstrained by Reality
One of the charming features of the times we live in now, is that we are constantly treated to high-minded lectures about racism, women's rights, and defense of science from those on the right who, until very recently, were as unalterably opposed to equal rights for anyone but white men as they were to science.
In RSR's youth, these right-wingers found themselves located within the comforting confines of what was then referred to as the lunatic fringe. Today, the type who once cut their political teeth erecting billboards demanding the impeachment of Earl Warren for ruling that separate is not equal, feel absolutely no compunction about railing against activist judges even as they label as racists, the supporters of affirmative action.
Likewise, hardened opponents of the ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment in this country, now urge us to send our young people off to war in various benighted parts of the globe in order to fight for the rights of women. Those who question the wisdom of these adventures are called traitors.
Now we have a group called the Christian Educators Association International decrying the Dover ruling that teaching intelligent design is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of church and state.
"If the educational community had held this position earlier in our culture, we might still be teaching students that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the Earth," asserts Finn Laursen, executive director of the group.
You have to love that.
In 1600, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake by a Medieval Church that convicted him as a heretic for daring to assert that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Today, the theocratic heirs to that decision feel absolutely free to say that resistance to replacing science with their peculiar brand of religion in the classroom endangers science education.
How comforting it must be to live in a universe utterly unconstrained by reality.
In RSR's youth, these right-wingers found themselves located within the comforting confines of what was then referred to as the lunatic fringe. Today, the type who once cut their political teeth erecting billboards demanding the impeachment of Earl Warren for ruling that separate is not equal, feel absolutely no compunction about railing against activist judges even as they label as racists, the supporters of affirmative action.
Likewise, hardened opponents of the ill-fated Equal Rights Amendment in this country, now urge us to send our young people off to war in various benighted parts of the globe in order to fight for the rights of women. Those who question the wisdom of these adventures are called traitors.
Now we have a group called the Christian Educators Association International decrying the Dover ruling that teaching intelligent design is unconstitutional because it violates the separation of church and state.
"If the educational community had held this position earlier in our culture, we might still be teaching students that the earth is flat or that the sun revolves around the Earth," asserts Finn Laursen, executive director of the group.
You have to love that.
In 1600, Giordano Bruno was burnt at the stake by a Medieval Church that convicted him as a heretic for daring to assert that the Earth revolves around the Sun. Today, the theocratic heirs to that decision feel absolutely free to say that resistance to replacing science with their peculiar brand of religion in the classroom endangers science education.
How comforting it must be to live in a universe utterly unconstrained by reality.
