Dover, PA

Barton, of course, is the former junior-high math teacher from Waco, Texas, (now of Aledo), who collected “quotes” from the “founders” to “prove” that there should not be separation of church and state in the U.S., and that a rugged, Old Testament Angry God type of Christianity was what the founders had intended as the government for this nation, regardless what they wrote in their various constitutions and laws over 100 years (somehow they just kept forgetting to put that in there!).

Barton has purveyed his book into a bit of an empire — should that be “purloined” instead? — speaking to militias, paint-ball activists, Second Amendment fanatics and creationists. He is also the Vice Chairman of the Texas Republican Party.

I think Barton thinks that title means he is in charge of all vice in the party.

And if you want to really get scared, read Justice Rehnquist’s dissent in Wallace v. Jaffree, which appears to be ripped wholesale from Barton’s writings. How did that happen?

Since Bush per appointed Thomas, Scalia has only been the 2nd scariest Justice. For example, check out his opinion in the Newdow case:

I accept that the Free Exercise Clause, which clearly protects an individual right, applies against the States through the Fourteenth Amendment. … But the Establishment Clause is another matter. The text and history of the Establishment Clause strongly suggest that it is a federalism provision intended to prevent Congress from interfering with state establishments. Thus, unlike the Free Exercise Clause, which does protect an individual right, it makes little sense to incorporate the Establishment Clause.
…
But even assuming that the Establishment Clause precludes the Federal Government from establishing a national religion, it does not follow that the Clause created or protects any individual right. For the reasons discussed above, it is more likely that States and only States were the direct beneficiaries. … Moreover, incorporation of this putative individual right leads to a peculiar outcome: It would prohibit precisely what the Establishment Clause was intended to protect–state establishments of religion.

So, get ready for good ole State Establishments! Madison was really a big fan of State Establishments, you see, and in no way intended the Establishment Clause as a proetction of the Individual Rights of Conscience.

Brendan,
Your response typifies what is wrong with the opposition to those who would forcefully inject religion into public education. The extreme over-reaction to this is a waste of effort and a red herring for education reform. Does anyone really care if a few schools transform their curriculum to a more religious based one? These school typically are rural, are good performers on standardized tests, and make sure their students are as good or better prepared than most other schools in the US.

In other words, a few school districts choosing to make their students have to, at worst, play a little catch in Biology in college is a long way down the list of what needs to be corrected in the US education system. We have millions of kids who will never even get close to the quality of education these ID students will get. They will be pre-destined to clinging to the bottom rung of our society. And what is everybody up in arms about? Not the fact that millions go to crappy schools who spend $10,000 a year per student only to have them graduate them unable to read, but that a few hicks out in the sticks want to add a few ID seminars to Biology.

Discussing poor performing education districts in the US would be a far more useful topic to bring up than this, which amounts to an excuse to bash on red state’rs.

Brendan,
But the political debate in the US can only handle a few major topics at the same time. The US public forum quickly narrows down to a few keystone topics. I blame this on God for giving us culture before we had evolved far enough to handle it, but either way the public debate on single topic is usually a place of few ideas, just the sound bytes that tug the heart strings.

So getting everyone fired up over ID in school takes up valuable real estate that could be used for something like making sure African Americans, Native Americans, Latinos, and anyone else hamstrung by our educational system in the early years of their life, gets a real education.

Ed, Brendan, and Craig seem to have an argument with Mr. Brad Neal. Neal is under the impression that whatever the Court decides is the “real” law of the land, while Ed, Brendan, and Craig are all clearly worried about the possibility of the Court getting things wrong. Perhaps, once the 4 of them have worked this out, we could have a real conversation on the subject.

Incoherence is one thing. But combined with the pretention to some sort of sophistication it becomes quite another.

And Pharnygula: no. Not really. Or at least, not in this case.

The way in which the Dover case turned out shows a bungled strategy by the ID folks. Perhaps just as well. Criticism of Darwinism can’t be sustained in this environment of conservative strategies, think tank manipulations, and Bible Belt wishfulfilments.
The net result is that critique of Darwin’s theory has suffered a setback.
Time to do it right.
What can’t the ACLU change gears and conduct the ‘Darwin on Trial’ case?

Comment on New Yorker article at:
http://darwiniana.com/2005/12/01/evolution-a-social-crisis/#more-187

Sure, it serves as a placeholder for a broader range of issues, and there is a slippery slope, that makes the issue much more, than if a few rural students get a bit about ID in biology class.

But it is also such a big issue because it keeps the party base riled up.

No, not the conservative base, the liberal base.

It is a social wedge issue for liberals. This stuff is poison to the Republican party outside of a very narrow segment. Republicans would mostly just like the issue to go away. It sells like Ratkabobs in the NE and West Coast and it really doesn’t bring in extra votes else where. Those folks are voting GOP anyway.

It is a great social wedge issue for the left.

Notice the preposterous juxtaposition/segue between evolutionary biology and interpreting the constitution. Because, you know, interpreting the constitution is every bit as much a scientific enterprise as evolutionary biology. Stupid conservatives, against the science of evolution and against the science of Roe v Wade.

Actually given the general positions in regards to the science of the constitution, Brad Neal’s, ‘In light of last night’s apparent change from a ‘standards-driven’ school district to the ‘living-word-driven’ school district’, is a nice bit of irony. You know, penumbras and all.

NonyNony, I wouldn’t be that optimistic. The intelligent design movement is growing, not just in the US, but in places like Europe, Australia, and Asia.

More to the point, people don’t realise this really is a situation where the frog is being boiled to death and doesn’t realise that the water is heating up. Cast your minds back guys. Read a history book. Thirty five years ago, the radical Christian right weren’t a political force. They weren’t even a powerful force in religious circles. Most people had never heard of them. The few that had thought they were a joke.
Now they have one of their boys in the White House and they are very close to taking over the Supreme Court.

And…gulp…what people don’t realise is that the current loonbats are just the first wave. They are…double gulp…the moderates.

The next wave are the really scary ones.

The loonies who we currently face are ‘Pre-millenialistists’. They ‘believe that humanity is inevitably headed for Armageddon, which will most likely arrive with a nuclear blast, whereupon Christ will appear in the Second Coming.’ After this (i.e. after the famous rapture) God would establish his kingdom of heaven on earth, homosexuals, Moslems and Democrats will be exterminated and so forth. So far so bad.

But the next wave of Christian extremists are postmillenial (or Reconstructionists). That is: they believe ‘Christ will not return until the church claims dominion over government, and most of the world’s population accepts the Reconstruction brand of Christianity.’ (i.e. first the Christians have to take over, and THEN the rapture etc. will happen: the premillenialists think it’s the other way round).

The whole article (from which i took these quotes) and which talks about this movement is worth reading .

Before I make my next statement could I just make clear that I am not comparing Bush to Hitler or the US to Nazi Germany or anything like that, ok?

But…watching the TV documentary ‘The Nazis: a warning from history’ one of the key points was that the internal structure of the party was such that when ideas started, there was an inbuilt tendence for them to become more and more radical as time went on. Unlike most parties, the Nazis did not ‘sell out’ or ‘compromise’ or make deals with existing political forces. Instead they became progressively more and more extreme.

In the same way, the religious right in the States has an inbuilt tendency not to compromise, and not to return to the middle ground but to progressively become more and more radical, more and more opposed to the status quo. Every generation since the 70s has been more and more radical than the generation before, and the numbers have grown. Does this mean that in thirty years time the US will be like Iran? Hardly. Or at least, I hope not. But the threat is real and it is there. So I think we have a lot to gain by nipping these things in the bud, and standing up to these people in situations like Dover and not just sitting back passively and assume that things will be ok. ‘First they came for the evolutionists’ etc.

One thing working in the theocrats’ favor is that they have so many useful, “reasonable” fellow travelers.

Bigmackattack, except for the harshing of Brendan, I agree. “The Theocrats are coming” is a nice 5 second sound clip to scare those who spend two seconds a day thinking about their leaders, but it wastes our limited debate on barely important issues. We have countless kids who will be forever denied the american dream simply because they live in the bad side of a big city. No one is worrying about the kids being toutght ID, because the schools teaching it are, while being silly, making sure their kids are educated. Education rarely makes the national stage, and when it does, there should only be one topic, and that is the plethora of kids whose lives are ruined before they are 12.

Right, so let’s start “fixing” the problem by making it worse, letting the fundies further gut science education. Is this some kind of Marxian “contradictions of public education” stratagy, jet?

I have news for you. Biology education for quite a few years now has already been seriously damaged because the cretinists and their useful idiots have intimidated many teachers and nearly all textbook publishers out of giving students any serious introduction to evolution- the conceptual core of biology. To anyone concerned with scientific literacy (or the lack thereof in the US population) this is a BIG BIG problem, one that is on or nearly on a par with the plight of inner-city schools in terms of serious problems in public education.

I think I’m being piled on here, but that’s pretty normal. But I’ll reply to Joe O, because I think he got it backwards. Private schools and vouchers are a way for students to filter schools, not the other way around.

Harry b – Oh yes you just see so perfectly the hypocrisy in the “wealthy liberal” Democrats. What about the wealthy conservative Republicans? Any hypocrisy there, sleeping with the loony right so they can get their tax cuts (and so, incidentally, do nothing to fix schools with high concentrations of low income kids in them) ?

a — the hypocritical wealthy Republicans make no pretence of being in my side. No-one on the left makes alliance with them. No-one on my side has any illusions about them. So why worry about their hypocrisy?

“It’s impossible now to be an orthodox Republican and support science…”

I don’t want to be rude, but that is a bit of magical thinking. I’ll be locked in a moving van for the next couple of days so won’t see any responses, but I’m blown away by this.

-DDT Myth – Republicans aren’t denying science. They are interpreting environmental group’s actions as a “ban” on DDT. And when you add up all the pressure against DDT, and the fact that outdoor spraying is still quite effective in many areas, you can get a fairly good argument here. It certainly isn’t cut and dried that they’re wrong. See Lambert’s site for the catfights in the comments.

-Stem cells – These have nothing to do with science and is a purely moral argument. A trade-off between morals and science.

-Abstinence-based sex ed – If you are going to argue against abstinence-based sex ed, you aren’t just going up against the Reps, you’re going up against the WHO. Not many argue that abstinence ed doesn’t have a place in fighting AIDs and solving poverty.

(The big one)
-Climate Change – No one doubts that humans are causing some fraction of the change in the Earth’s climate. But there is still plenty of argument as to what that percentage is. If it is 50% do policies like Kyoto make sense? If it is 75% do they make sense? If it is 35%?

It is quite amusing how liberals treat Republicans like some sort of 18th century shaman cult emerging from some desert island with no knowledge of all the nifty new ideas the “educated” people have found.

Jet, I think you illustrate my point perfectly. Given that your line on ID “why worry, there are bigger fish to fry”, is effectively the same as “give them equal time if they want it”, you’re arguing prettu much the straight Republican party line, which disagrees with science on every point. I’ll give you some credit for agreeing that climate change is real and at least partly human-caused, but note that large sections of the Republican leadership, not to mention the right-wing blogosphere, haven’t accepted either point.

I’m not going to rehash the main talking points, which we’ve covered before, but on stem cells, you might want to read Mooney’s book regarding the bogus scientific claims about the number of viable stem cell lines.

If you can find a WHO source advocating abstinence-only sex education (and I’m sure you know that’s what is meant by “abstinence-based”), please point to it.

“It is quite amusing how liberals treat Republicans like some sort of 18th century shaman cult emerging from some desert island with no knowledge of all the nifty new ideas the “educated” people have found.”

I wouldn’t associate shaman cults with the 18th century, myself. Actually, “cargo cult” is a much better metaphor. As has been discussed here before, today’s Republicans love technology, they just imagine the science behind it as a kind of magic which can be controlled by the appropriate use of ritual incantations and so on.