What Next for Conservatives (Creationism and spending are destroying the Republican Party)

townhall.com ^ | 11/17/2005 | George Will

[curiosity]

The storm-tossed and rudderless Republican Party should particularly ponder the vote last week in Dover, Pa., where all eight members of the school board seeking re-election were defeated. This expressed the community's wholesome exasperation with the board's campaign to insinuate religion, in the guise of "intelligent design'' theory, into high school biology classes, beginning with a required proclamation that evolution "is not a fact.''

[curiosity]

ping for the list?

[Just mythoughts]

Ha! He knows more about baseball than science.

[Atlas Sneezed]

Creationism? Big deal.

Try IMMIGRATION and BORDERS, George.

[proxy_user]

"Perhaps conservatives were naive to expect any party, ever, to resist rent-seeking temptations when in power. Just as there always was something fatally unserious about socialism -- its flawed understanding of human nature -- is it possible that there has also been something profoundly unserious about the limited-government agenda? Should we now be prepared for the national electoral wing of the conservative movement -- the House and Senate caucuses and executive branch officials -- to identify with legislation like the pork-laden energy and transportation bills, in the same way that liberals came to ground their identities in programs like Social Security?''


This is actually a flaw in capitalism. It allows wealth to increase rapidly, and everyone gets rich. Once you're rich, you can have whatever you want and do whatever you want. That's when the trouble starts.

[proxy_user]

"Perhaps conservatives were naive to expect any party, ever, to resist rent-seeking temptations when in power. Just as there always was something fatally unserious about socialism -- its flawed understanding of human nature -- is it possible that there has also been something profoundly unserious about the limited-government agenda? Should we now be prepared for the national electoral wing of the conservative movement -- the House and Senate caucuses and executive branch officials -- to identify with legislation like the pork-laden energy and transportation bills, in the same way that liberals came to ground their identities in programs like Social Security?''


This is actually a flaw in capitalism. It allows wealth to increase rapidly, and everyone gets rich. Once you're rich, you can have whatever you want and do whatever you want. That's when the trouble starts.

[redgolum]

So end the WOT and get rid of the Christians and every thing will be just fine?/sarcasm

[js1138]

That doesn't imply he is ignorant of science.

[Integrityrocks]

"..It is almost comforting that $2 billion is spent each year paying farmers not to produce..."

This coming from a liberal? Something amiss here.

[Just mythoughts]

Nobody owns science, some do own evolution and there is a difference. Will does imply ownership and that demonstrates what the gods of knowledge call ignorance.

[Publius6961]

It's hard to take any article seriously which argues that "creationism" is a threat to anything in any way.

What I am missing about this obsession?

[PatrickHenry]

Evolution Ping The List-O-Links

A conservative, pro-evolution science list, now with over 320 names. See the list's explanation, then FReepmail to be added or dropped. To assist beginners: But it's "just a theory", Evo-Troll's Toolkit, and How to argue against a scientific theory.

[little jeremiah]

Shut up, George. Since the majority of Americans (those of us outside the northest, who weren't educated in the Ivy League universities, and who don't live in DC) don't - believe - in - evolution.

I do hope you're reading this or one of your assistants reads it. Intelligent design is only provocative to liberals, atheists, leftists, and over educated elitists.

IT'S THE SPENDING AND LEFIST SUCKUP POSITIONS THAT ARE DOING THE DAMAGE.

[saganite]

Will hits the nail on the head for fiscal conservatives. I'm sick and tired of the Republicans spending like drunken sailors and any attempt to insinuate creationism into the classroom under cover of intelligent design is a big mistake.

[Jibaholic]

I am a Christian and I believe in the literal truth of the Bible (at least as original revealed), and I agree that creationism is killing the Republicans among moderate voters.

If I write a virtual reality computer program and hook up young children to it from birth, they would not be able to inductively take measurements from inside the program and induce the computer code that made the program. They would only be able to induce how the physics engine works.

The same principle applies to the universe. We can not induce God's plan.

[bahblahbah]

The conservative thing for people who want creationism taught is to create their own schools. I really wish the red states would lead the way towards a privatized education system while we have a chance.

[PatrickHenry]

Thanks. A worthy article. George Will is important. As is Charles Krauthammer, and other prominent republicans who are horrified at what creationism/ID can do to destroy our current electoral success. Religion belongs in church, not in science class or in national political campaigns.

[TheCrusader]

"It does me no injury,'' said Thomas Jefferson, "for my neighbor to say there are twenty gods, or no god. It neither picks my pocket nor breaks my leg."

Jefferson seems to have forgotten, at least for an isntant, that he has a soul to worry about. But he didn't forget on this instance:

"Of all the systems of morality, ancient or modern, which have come under my observation, none appear to me so pure as that of Jesus." (Thomas Jefferson, Letter to William Canby, 1813).

---

"But it is injurious, and unneighborly, when zealots try to compel public education to infuse theism into scientific education."

It's too bad the lame author of this article didn't bother to read American history a little more. Practically all through early American history Bible verses and Christian themes of morals and values were taught in public schools. It was actually scientists and liberal zealots who managed to supplant traditional Christian teachings in public schools with their own various theories, in particular their notions on the origin of man.

[scory]

This argument over creation vs evolution has been going on for a long (interminable really) time and Republicans and democrats have traded dominance several times during that time. So I don't see this as much of a problem. But the spending is a different matter altogether. Republicans have gone nuts on this in recent years. But democrats would do as much or more. So - - - term limits, anyone?

[rootkidslim]

And President Bush's straddle on that subject -- "both sides'' should be taught

You are saying that this statement doesn't imply ignorance of science? What is it then, "boob bait for the Bubbas?" I guess he took a page out of Clinton's book.