One of my favorite movies of all time is Inherit the Wind. It dramatizes the famous Scopes Monkey Trial in which a Tennessee teacher, John T. Scopes, was charged with the crime of teaching evolution in a public school. The trial became the focus of national attention with the anti-evolution forces bringing in famed populist William Jennings Bryan to lead the prosecution while the defence was conducted by Spencer Tracy Clarence Darrow, a leading Chicago attorney of the time. The highlight of the film is when Darrow, in an unusual move, calls Bryan to the stand for a dramatic examination in which he makes Bryan look like a pompous, old fool. Darrow would go on to lose the court case but win in the court of public opinion. (Of course the names of the characters were changed for the film. And if you look closely, you'll see song and dance man Gene Kelly doing a dramatic turn as a cynical reporter covering the trial.)
The story, and the trial on which it's based, took place in 1925. I wonder what Darrow's reaction would have been had he been told at the time that eighty years later the same kinds of battles would still be going on.
The school board in the community of Dover, PA recently became the first in the U.S. to mandate the teaching of intelligent design in public school biology classes -- intelligent design being the modern, pseudo-scientific version of creationism. And just to add a 21st century spin to the story, the man who led the charge on behalf of the change in curriculum seems only too happy to invoke the War on Terror™ in the course of imposing his views.
"This country wasn't founded on Muslim beliefs or evolution," Buckingham, a stocky, gray-haired man who wears a red, white and blue crucifix pin on his lapel, said at the meeting. "This country was founded on Christianity, and our students should be taught as such."
Cute, eh? There's a trick William Jennings Bryan could have used.
Never mind the fact that teaching students about the founding of America would be better done in history class, not in biology which is supposed to be about science. And never mind the fact that the framers of America's founding documents went out of their way to try and insure that there would be no state religion, mindful as they were of the fact that many who had come to live in the new world did so to escape religious persecution.
The link is to a story at Salon that will require you to sit through an ad for a day pass if you're not a subscriber. The story will describe how defenders and opponents of evolution alike are jockeying for position in front of the cameras and microphones every chance they get because, as happened in Tennessee in 1925, this story has garnered national attention.
On Dec. 14, the ACLU announced that it was representing 11 Dover parents in a lawsuit against the town. The school board's intelligent-design policy, their complaint said, had violated the First Amendment's Establishment Clause, "which prohibits the teaching or presentation of religious ideas in public school science classes."
But the story also describes why this one may not be the ultimate showdown. The school district is almost broke and can't afford the legal fees that would come with a loss in court. And the real movers and shakers behind intelligent design seem ready to back away for now.
Buckingham may have started the Dover crusade himself, but the Center for Science and Culture laid the groundwork years before. The group provides the "scientific" and philosophical arguments to bolster the opponents of evolution in local political struggles.CSC operates out of the Discovery Institute, a Seattle think tank that's funded in part by savings and loan heir Howard Ahmanson. As Max Blumenthal reported in a 2004 Salon article, Ahmanson spent 20 years on the board of R.J. Rushdoony's Chalcedon Foundation, a theocratic outfit that advocates the replacement of American civil law with biblical law.
The Center for Science and Culture also aims, in a far more elliptical way, to put God at the center of civic life. Originally called the Center for the Renewal of Science and Culture, CSC usually purports to be motivated by science, not religion. At times, though, it's refreshingly candid about its true goal -- a grandiose scheme to undermine the secular legacy of the Enlightenment and rebuild society on religious foundations.
...
On Dec. 14, CSC put out a statement calling Dover's policy "misguided" and saying it should be "withdrawn and rewritten." The statement quoted CSC's associate director John West as saying that discussion of intelligent design shouldn't be prohibited but it also shouldn't be required. "What should be required is full disclosure of the scientific evidence for and against Darwin's theory," said West, "which is the approach supported by the overwhelming majority of the public."
...
Matzke, from the National Center for Science Education, is convinced that the CSC wanted to wait for a better test case and a friendly Supreme Court, which they'll get if Bush is able to nominate a few new justices.
It seems the forces of creationism have learned a thing or two since Bryan's time. They'll pick their battles carefully but they're not going away.
Since 2001, the National Center for Science Education, a group formed to defend the teaching of evolution, has tallied battles over evolution in 43 states, noting they're growing more frequent.
They're well funded, organized and just waiting for an opportunity to revenge the humiliation of William Jennings Bryan. And in addition to whatever propaganda value they can wring out of the current national fear of Muslims, they've got the fair-and-balanced school of journalism going for them, too. That's the one where, in the interests of ?balance?, intelligent design is entitled to presentation alongside evolution in the media stories as if it's a legitimate, scientific theory. Even though it's not.
Folks like Ann Coulter have had a lot of luck lately channeling the spirit of Joe McCarthy. Witness this characterization of the ACLU by one of the anti-evolution spokesmen:
Jarboe, who introduced himself as a former assistant professor of chemistry at Messiah College, a nearby Christian school, was convinced that the parents were being used by the ACLU to further its sinister agenda. Like a great many members of the Christian right, he sees the ACLU as a subversive, possibly demonic institution. Quoting James Kennedy, an influential Fort Lauderdale televangelist, he called the ACLU the "American Communist United League." "I maintain it's a communist front," he said.
So perhaps those of us in the reality-based community should try a little magical thinking of our own. Maybe we should all join hands, have a séance and see if we can reach the dear, departed spirit of Clarence Darrow. After all, he has some experience in dealing with these people. I'm beginning to think we're going to need him.
Look at it this way, o friends to the north. As we Murricans dumb ourselves down, your schoolkids grow up to become more competitive. Soon you'll take us over and force us to have a national health system and bummer stuff like that.
Great post.
To bring the contrast between the U.S. and Canada on such matters into sharper focus: one of the questions asked in the Macleans year-end poll this year was "Do you think political leaders should be using their religious beliefs to guide their actions at all times, sometimes, or never?" Overall, the responses were about what I'd expect from Canadians: "At all times," 9%, "sometimes," 24%, and "never," 65%. The truly fascinating statistic, though, is what happens when you limit it to the people who had already identified themselves as evangelical or born-again Christians. Then the numbers look more like this: "At all times," 18%, "sometimes," 30%, and "never" ... wait for it ... 49%. Fire and Ice, indeed.
-J
Quoting James Kennedy, an influential Fort Lauderdale televangelist, he called the ACLU the "American Communist United League."
Er, wouldn't that be the ACUL?
Alternatively, you could actually do some research and learn your facts before you post. For example, learn about the history of the founders of the ACLU, and its true intentions.
Instead, you prefer to live in your own little fictional world, isolated from reality.
Great post, pogge.
The ACLU is all America has got right now. They are the only ones standing up consistently for the constitution and fighting the Patriot Act and Guantanamo and the presidential divine right of kings doctrine, as the same time as they take on the creationists and intelligent designers and the whole Christian Right.
Given that the ACLU is a sidebar of this article, I have to ask what you mean by further research, Paul. Are you arguing that the ACLU is indeed a communist front?
Does the left really embrace unfettered Darwinianism or just its secular triumphalism? Per Steve Sailer - "Consider the full title of Darwin's epochal book: "The Origin of Species By Means of Natural Selection or the Preservation of Favoured Races in the Struggle for Life." The left fears Darwinian science because its dogma of our factual equality cannot survive the relentlessly accumulating evidence of our genetic variability...East Africans outdistancing the world's runners, massive Samoans flattening quarterbacks, lithe Chinese diving and tumbling for gold medals, or muscular athletes of West African descent out-sprinting, out-jumping, and out-hitting all comers...and scientific inquiry didn't stop the former Attorney-General of Ontario, Ian Scott, from ordering a lengthy police investigation of the U. of Western Ontario psychologist Jean-Philippe Rushton. His supposed crime? Publishing a Darwinian theory of the causes of human biodiversity."
And Rushton's Darwinian theory-"Blacks, according to Rushton, have larger genitals, making them more promiscuous, and smaller brains, making them less intelligent than whites and Asians. Using 60 different measures, Rushton ranks the races along an evolutionary scale with blacks at the bottom and Asians at the top."
Does the left support the ACLU when it fights for the first amendment rights of cross burning and KKK Adopt-a-highway desires or the rights of Darwinians like Rushton?
I haven't always agreed with the ACLU's positions, but that doesn't mean I don't support them - their lawyers select cases and put forward a point of view, always based on constitutional principles, then its up to the courts to decide whether the ACLU position is in fact the correct one. They haven't always won, but they always force the courts to make a constitutionally-based ruling and that's good for all of us. On things like the Patriot Act, I do agree with them, and certainly I am glad they are watchdoging the US constitution, something the president swears to protect when he takes his oath of office, but which this president is not doing very well.
Ah, the old "Evolution = racism" canard.
False.
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA005_1.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/indexcc/CA/CA005_2.html
http://www.talkorigins.org/faqs/racism.html
As for Rushton, his works have been discredited as they have severe methodological flaws. His conclusions are not generally accepted by the scientific community.
That old leftist organization, the Roman Catholic Church never had any problem with evolution. Why do the wingnuts?
Inherit the Wind, both the play and the movie, is a very historically inaccurate depiction of the Scopes Trial. Written in the 50s, it tells us more about the 50s in New York than it tells us about the 1920s in in Tennessee. (In fact, the opening stage directions place it: "Not too long ago. It might have been yesterday. It could be tomorrow.") For an insightful account of the trial, I recommend historians Edward J. Larson's Summer For The Gods, which will correct your incorrect assumption that there was a decisive win in the Court of public opinion at the end of the Scopes trial.
I think the biggest disservice the play/movie does is in its stereotypical depiction of the Dayton locals, who in real life encouraged the trial so as to put the town on the map. No effigies or Scopes or Darrow were burnt there and Darrow found the locals open to different interpretations of the bible and unfailingly friendly. Scopes was never put in jail, but was facing a small fine.
As long as the left portrays "these people" -- and their symbolic figurehead Bush -- as dumb and intolerant, we will continue to (mis)understimate them and their power and lose elections.
That was a great piece, Thank you Pogge! The Politcal actions of the "born-again" Canadian Christians have been much less successful than their American Counterparts, still it appears they are rising here too.
In BC the governing Liberal party recently nominated a Born-again christian, Mary Polak. Polak lost in the by-election, not because of her views but because she and the liberal party ticked off a large number of Indo Canadians in the riding.
The vital part of all this is she is supported by the Liberals and will likely be a Candidate in a more "white" riding in Langley.
Score one for the ACLU!
Great news!
In partial answer to JKelly, the greater disservice is the one done to people of deep faith by adherents of organizations that claim to be churches and yet seem more concerned with radical social and political engineering that would rob others of their faiths. And it never hurts us to watch a play that is a formally and thematically heightened morality drama rather than a documentary, although it matters to our understanding that we also get the social history right -- long time since I saw the movie, but if it really misrepresents Dayton, then we need that commentary too.
And to echo thickslab, in answer to Desmond Jones, Social Darwinism isn't Darwinian science. Rushton's (North American, social scientific) categories are laughable: what have his primitive notions of three "races" to do with a scientific description of species?