While "viability" is a good word, a wonderful contemplation, and indeed very important to such things as birth into the mainstream, people choose to define what makes a person viable in ways that deny rational consensus. I believe Mr. Buckley would say the operative word here is "rightward." For example, read this NRO article from Feb. 16, '07, in which William F. Buckley, Jr. slays the "establishmentarian scientific position" and posits an Intelligent Designer - surely in today's conversation one can't get more rightward than that -
So Help Us Darwin. An excerpt:
It seems an ancient controversy, and of course it is. Fifteen minutes after Charles Darwin explained his theory of evolution, his disciples—apostles—ruled out any heresy on the subject of the naturalist explanation for human life. Young people are educated to think of the question in the grammar of the Scopes Trial, Clarence Darrow vs. William Jennings Bryan. That trial made for great naturalist theater. Mr. Bryan was not born either to become president or to explain how God could tolerate chicken pox, so Clarence Darrow wiped him into dust.But the contention continued, and has been explored from time to time under heavy lights. My own forensic involvement took place nine years ago as host of Firing Line. The two-hour, nationally televised debate on the topic “Resolved: that the evolutionists should acknowledge creation” featured seven professors. Four of them took the establishmentarian scientific position. It is, essentially, that not only is naturalism established as verified science, but any interposition into the picture—of inquisitiveness, let alone conviction that there might have been design in the evolution of our world—is excluded.
...But the intelligent liberal community should not impose on anyone a requirement of believing that there is only the single, materialist word on the subject, and that only contempt is merited by those who consent to appear at think tanks composed of men and women prepared to explore ultimate questions, which certainly include the question, Did God have a hand in creating all of this? Including the great messes we live with?
Representing the affirmative that night on television, one debater closed with this: “I’m taken with the reply of an elderly scientific scholar to an exuberant young skeptic. ‘I find it easier to believe in God than to believe that Hamlet was deduced from the molecular structure of a mutton chop.’”
He even mentions McCain in the article, as you do in your post. It is significant to me that Newt Gingrich has also weighed in on this topic, clearly taking his stand on what Mr. Buckley refers to as the liberal side of the argument.
I don't have to wonder which candidates Mr. Buckley has already culled from his primary voting prospects.
As far as I can tell many people(here at FR) generally have lost the ability to determine right from left.. Anyone with hard right credentials many think are wingnuts.. And they ARE coming from a hard left attitude.. If that can happen "HERE" on FR.. What then does the public at large think?..
Public brain washing by the News outlets, MsM and MsP, Hollywood, and federally controlled academia must very great.. Even more extensive than I have believed..
Thank you so much for the excerpt and for your insights!