Invincible Ignorance

In a show of hands, a number of Republican Presidential candidates indicated they did not believe in evolution. Others waffled.

How can this be? Is this not the 21st century! It used to be!

With only reluctant exception, the candidates also say they do not believe that human activity has anything important to do with climate change. If every Nobel Prize winner in Economics said that this is the time for governments to borrow a lot of money and provide jobs for millions of people--as FDR once did--the Republican Presidential aspirants would say, "No!"; that governments are the problem, and that government jobs (police, fire, parks, roads, regulations, food safety, the military, etc.) are not real jobs.

The earth is flat. There was a flood over all the earth. Jesus is coming on a cloud to drill for oil in the Everglades. The Bible is a road atlas, and God told Michele Bachmann to run for office, and for Mitt Romney to wear special underwear. Rick Perry is John the Baptist in boots.

"Science says the earth is billions of years old," they say, "but God says, right here in the Bible, on page 1, that. . . ." Their audiences cheer for executions in Texas by the hundreds, for denying health care to anyone who cannot, or has not, paid for it, and for water-boarding suspects.

They believe that ancient mythology should be taught in our public schools as an alternative to what we know is true: i.e., that the universe is very old, it is evolving, and CO2 emissions are raising hell with the global climate.

If those people have their way, Republicans will become a party in defense of ignorance. Deliberate ignorance. Arrogant ignorance. Dangerous ignorance.

I don't really care whether Michele Bachmann is happy to have Marcus as the head of their household, but HPV vaccinations do not cause mental retardation. I don't care whether Mitt Romney thinks an angel landed on a hill in New York, or whether Rick Perry thinks the earth was created in six days, nor do I care that John McCain wets a finger to gauge the wind before he decides whether evolution is real. I do care that they are willing to deny the best of what we know to be true.

Catholics have a marvelous medieval term: invincible ignorance.

Comments

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