Tuesday, August 09, 2005

Surprise! Edjamikayshun Matters!

John Rogers, the Kung Fu Monkey, not only has a much better-named blog than me, but he's smarter and funnier. Alas. But he's probably got the best take on Bush's newfound "evolution is for the little people" stance:
I just have to say to my conservative friends ... listen, I don't want to hear SHIT when this comes back to bite us in the ass. When you're watching your children rocket downward through the Brave New Working Classes from gamma through delta straight to the epsilons, not a word. When the leader of your party turns his back on science, the product of God's 2nd greatest gift to us, reason,* when he turns from the very process which brought so much progress and prosperity to this land and encourages those would so eagerly toss aside rational thought itself ... gah, never mind voting Democrat: if my choice were between these cowards who would turn back the Enlightenment and anal-probing yet intellectually honest Martians, I would grit my teeth, vote for the Martians and learn to visualize my Happy Place during my Probe-Center appointments.

Am I reading too much into this statement? Am I making too big a deal of this? In one word, fuckno. This is just a symptom of what is, to me, the most destructive thing to occur in America in twenty years.

Even if your kids aren't directly taught ID or aren't in one of the new Bible Class districts, the overarching cultural damage has already been done. Through this group of RadicalRighties' constant rhetoric, they consistently strip away the idea that there is indeed a rigorous scientific process through which certain non-negotiable physical truths can be ascertained. They have suffused the county with with an intellectual laziness and a terrifying narcissism. Opinion has been enshrined as superior to fact. No longer need a person take into account the way the world works when forming their worldview -- they can instead hunt down "facts" and "theories" which support their own comfort zone, and what's worse, we can NO LONGER CALL BULLSHIT. Because if our leaders -- pardon me, your leaders -- don't call bullshit, who will? They have undermined the very process by which we know WHEN to call bullshit!...

Again, our motto at Kung Fu Monkey: "Everybody who wants to live in the 21st century over here. Everybody who wants to live in the 1800's over there. Good. Thanks. Good luck with that."
Go read the rest.

(via too many people to count properly. Most recently from Gristmill.)

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