TENNESSEE TURNS INWARD

"NASHVILLE, Tenn. (AP) - Tennesee's Republican governor says he will let a bill become law effective April 20 that protects teachers who allow students in their classrooms to criticize evolution and other scientific theories, such as global warming." (Lucas L. Johnson, Associated Press, April 10, 2012 on msnbc.msc.com/id/47001)

 

There are historical examples of society turning against science, technical advancement and change. One instance would be the Amish who decided to freeze their culture at the early 19th Century level. Of course, as a culture, they are protected and allowed to exist by the larger one that surrounds them and as a result they do not have to compete militarily, economically or intellectually in order to sustain themselves. They also get special exemptions regarding military service, as well as not being required to participate in many ways with the surrounding society. The only reason they exist is because the culture that contains them grants them a great deal of grace, which flows from our traditions of pluralism and tolerance.

If the United States follows the example of the Amish, we will doom our society to third world status and other countries, who do not have our religious hang ups, i.e. China and India, will pick up the torch of knowledge tied to scientific methodology and let it burn brightly in their societies, which will bring them great wealth and power as their scientists create the future.

Our universities are full of students from mainland China. The two who were murdered at USC are but an example. A full 50% of the students in our Ivy League universities are from Asia. The Chinese want what we have and know the secret to our success lies in our institutions of higher learning, which support individualism, creativity and pursuit of knowledge for the sake of knowledge free of right wing and left wing orthodoxies. If we fetter our exporation of knowledge, new ideas and products created by Americans will disappear.

 

The Tennessee law, contrary to the propaganda of its proponents, will narrow our options and we will end up depending on others, while we wallow in and flaunt our self-righteousness just like the Muslim countries have done the last six hundred years. There was a time during the high middle ages when Islam was where it was at, but they lost it because their fundamentalists took over.  And look at where they are now, struggling to fit into the modern world. 

God help Tennessee for they are cursing themselves, not having a clue as to the wider repercussions of their decisions.  God help the rest of the United States as we, entranced by the misnomer, "religious freedom", consider following their example.

TRASHING FACTS AND LOGIC

Over the last year or two I have been dumbfounded by the national political discourse. In the media facts and logic seem to be blithely dismissed as outrageous charges get leveled without the blink of an eye. Even when challenged regarding wrong information, the purveyors of these errors don't seem to be the least concerned or embarrassed.

While watching Rachel Maddow the other night, she cornered a politician who made a factually incorrect statement regarding the law in the State of Massachusetts that legalizes gay marriages. Rachel read the law to the politician to prove that what he said was wrong and got the response back, "Well, that is your opinion." She came back at him stating, "No, this is not a matter of opinion. It is a matter of fact. Either what you said is there or it is not there." The politician stuck with the same line, "You have your right to your opinion and I have the right to mine." He didn't pause, hem or haw. He showed no chagrin, no blush or shred of shame.

Two weeks ago Lynn Cheney attacked several lawyers for being willing to represent people imprisoned at Guantanamo and characterized their behavior as giving comfort to the enemy. What is even more astounding is that Ms. Cheney has been trained as a lawyer and is quite familiar with how our adversarial legal system functions and the philosophy behind it. We, therefore, can only assume she was trying to undermine the public's support for the laws upon which American justice stands. While these statements horrified even right wing lawyers such as Kenneth Star, Ms. Cheney has not offerred a single word of retraction. There are a hundred other examples of this kind of behavior and I have wondered, "What is going on?"

Then I ran across a chapter in Timothy Ferris' book, The Science of Liberty, entitled "Academic Antiscience" where I read that the Post Modernist movement in our universities has been teaching that logic and the scientific method are culturally and politically bound to the white male perspective. And that "objective" reality is nothing more than a faith statement which cannot be demonstrated Therefore, the facts that logic and science profer are subjective and "no more trustworthy than those obtained through any other procedure." (The Science of Liberty, P.247.) When Ferris says "other procedures", he means things like divine revelation, anecdotal personal experiences and folk lore. Thus, scientific evidence is no more to be respected than voodoo. And what we generally refer to as objective reality is just one perspective among many, all of which should be given the same weight. Taking such a position would leave us with no grounds by which any system of thought can be critiqued. And as it turns out that is just fine with radicals from both the left and the right.

If the Post Modernist philosophy were true, then each faith system, assumed to be of equal value philosophically, would be free to compete for political power without having to justify its existence or its version of the truth. In such a world, truth becomes whatever the powerful say it is and the other people just have to deal with it. In such a world, the ultimate premium is placed on power, not truth, which makes people who espouse this kind of world prefer authoritarianism because once in power the only thing that would be of significance would be staying in power. Truth and facts don't really count because they are always subjective and capable of being twisted into whatever shape the establishment deems.

Now, take these ideas and see if they fit what we have been seeing and hearing in our media. Take a look at the Cheney's; take a look at the politicians from C Street; take a look at Fox News and anyone else who has trouble admitting to objective facts. All of a sudden, Post Modernism is an intellectual framework that makes sense of all these people. They do not believe there is any objective reality; and everytime they are challenged, they hide behind the mantra that what they are presenting is an opinion of the same value as all others.

What Post Modernism has created is a Machiavellian world in which competing subjective points of view vie to be king of the mountain. All is fair in love and war. Think Dick Cheney. As far as the radical right is concerned, this is a culture war that they intend to win any way they can. They are willing to lie, cheat, and steal their way to power. The facts do not matter; they have convinced themselves that what they are doing is righteous because in the end they will get to deem their point of view as the one point of view everyone else must embrace. And they envision that to be fundamentalist Christianity.

These are truly frightening thoughts, but Post Modernism is the only intellectual framework that explains their behavior. How do we fight this? We fight by professing and teaching the commonsense of objective reality, the value of democracy, the principles of the scientific method and the universality of logic propertly applied to all our discourse. We also need to understand that not all faith systems are equal; and we must be willing, following the example of Rachael Maddow, to call people to account and make them factually responsible. The road is not easy or fast, but it is the only way to protect the gains made by science and democracy.

FAMILY AGREEMENT

I just returned from my holiday vacation visiting relatives where arguments abound. To my surprise, my brother and I agreed on politics and economics for the first time in memory. He lives in Texas, has been a life long Republican while I live in Southern California, vote Democratic and support various progressive agendas. Until now, I have been cynical that the crisis on wall street had changed anything; but my brother ended up arguing in favor of new financial regulations deemed necessary by unbridled greed on Wall Street and further pointed out that human nature always tries to get away with whatever it can thus needing to be curbed by rules enforced by an agency with some teeth. And he was disgusted by the huge salaries paid to CEO's of financial organizations. Perhaps, the crises of the last year, despite the political turf wars taking place on the internet and in Washington, D.C., have created more common ground throughout the nation than party leaders are willing to acknowledge. I remain stunned, pleasantly so, and maybe a touch more hopeful than I was before my trip to Texas.