Anti-Intellectual Republican Base Tackled In Op-Ed Column
The column this weekend by Kathleen Parker underscores one of the first problems I have with much of the Republicans Party as it exists today.
It takes courage to swim against the tide of knownothingness that has become de rigueur among the anti-elite, anti-intellectual Republican base. Call it the Palinization of the GOP in which the least informed earns the loudest applause.
Parker says all the things that needs to be stated about the dumbing down of the GOP. The problem is that too few conservative care about this issue.
Scientific skepticism, the engine that propels intellectual inquiry, has morphed into skepticism of science fuelled by religious certitude. In this strange world, it is heresy to express concern about, for example, climate change – or even to suggest that human behaviour may be a contributing factor. Jon Huntsman committed blasphemy when he told ABC’s Jake Tapper that he trusts scientists on global warming.
What Huntsman next said, though refreshing and true, ensured that his poll numbers would remain in the basement: “When we take a position that isn’t willing to embrace evolution, when we take a position that basically runs counter to what 98 of 100 climate scientists have said, what the National Academy of Sciences has said about what is causing climate change and man’s contribution to it, I think we find ourselves on the wrong side of science and, therefore, in a losing position.”
Of course, plenty of Republicans agree with this appraisal, including other presidential candidates.
Nevertheless, the Republican base requires that candidates tack away from science toward the theistic position – only God controls climate.
I can’t recall one Republican candidate (and perhaps I missed the statement) that God controls the climate. To suggest, however, that the science of climate change is a settled issue also runs contrary to the naute of the open minded individual. The history of science must be filled with blasphemers to Parker, like those who thought the world was round, or those who thought germs and viruses, not witches, were responsible for disease. In her commentary she commmits the very same intellectual crime she accuses the Republicans of making: the crime of certainty.