Free Republic

One hundred years ago, a public high school teacher stood trial in Dayton, Tennessee, for teaching human evolution. His nation is still feeling the reverberations today. The law books record it as State of Tennessee v. John T. Scopes. History remembers it as the “ Monkey Trial.” The case ballooned into a national spectacle, complete with a courthouse showdown between a renowned, agnostic defense attorney and a famous fundamentalist Christian politician who defended the Bible on the witness stand.

early 80 years ago in Dayton, Tenn., an epic trial pitted the literal truth of the Bible against modern science. And when the Scopes monkey trial concluded, the presiding judge closed the proceedings as he'd opened them each day - with a prayer. In his wonderful book, "Summer for the Gods," Edward J. Larson paints a picture of America in the mid-1920's that's oddly familiar: torn between modernism and religious fundamentalism, Americans felt an old-time burning need for a burning bush. Horrified by the moral and cultural declines of the Jazz Age, they turned away from internationalism and intellectualism. Welcome...

I think we should let the evolutionists have their way. They oppose any mention of creation in government schools, even rejecting the notion of Intelligent Design. They see the Scopes Trial of 1925 as the turning point for the upsurge in evolutionary legitimacy. While John Scopes was convicted for teaching evolution contrary to state law and had to pay a $100 fine, public opinion and educational monopoly turned toward evolution.1 One way to beat an opposing worldview is to force its proponents to live consistently with the position. Since Scopes was accused of teaching from the state-adopted textbook A Civic...

Since we have recently had the Dover trial, perhaps some on both sides will appreciate some great photos of the first "Monkey Trial", including some of the primary actors.

1925 Monkey Trial ends In Dayton, Tennessee, the so-called "Monkey Trial" ends with John Thomas Scopes being convicted of teaching evolution in violation of Tennessee law. Scopes was ordered to pay a fine of $100, the minimum the law allowed.In March 1925, the Tennessee legislature had passed the anti-evolution law, making it a misdemeanor punishable by fine to "teach any theory that denies the story of the Divine Creation of man as taught in the Bible, and to teach instead that man has descended from a lower order of animals." With local businessman George Rappalyea, Scopes had conspired to get charged...

The Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 pitted EVOLUTION against CREATION. Clarence Darrow defended EVOLUTION. Darrow had previously defended Leopold and Loeb, the homosexual teenage thrill killers who murdered 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks in 1924 just for the excitement. Darrow obtained a pardon for antifa-type anarchists in 1886 who blew up a pipe bomb in Chicago's Haymarket Square which killed 7 policemen and injured 60 others. The Haymarket Statue dedicated to the fallen policemen was blown up by Bill Ayers and the anarchist group Weather Underground on October 6, 1969, prior to the "Days of Rage" protests, then blown up again...

The Scopes Monkey Trial in 1925 pitted EVOLUTION against CREATION. Clarence Darrow was the attorney who defended EVOLUTION. Darrow had previously defended Leopold and Loeb, the teenage homosexual thrill killers who murdered 14-year-old Robert "Bobby" Franks in 1924 just for the excitement. Darrow obtained a pardon for antifa-type anarchists in 1886 who blew up a pipe bomb in Chicago's Haymarket, Square, killing 7 policemen and injured 60 others. A Haymarket Statue was dedicated to the fallen policemen. The policemen's Haymarket Statue was blown up by the socialist anarchist group Weather Underground on October 6, 1969, prior to the "Days of...

ATLANTA, Georgia (AP) -- Since 2002, Dr. Kenneth Miller has been upset that biology textbooks he has written are slapped with a warning sticker by the time they appear in suburban Atlanta schools. Evolution, the stickers say, is "a theory, not a fact."

In their series, "10 Days That Changed America", the History Channel will focus on the Scopes trial. As they put it, "The sensational courtroom battle between William Jennings Bryan and Clarence Darrow over the teaching of evolution in a small Tennessee town underscored a deep schism within the American psyche -- religion versus science, church versus state, elitism versus populism."

Red in Tooth & ClawRacism, Eugenics & Other Bad Ideas from the Intellectual Descendants of DarwinOn July 21, 1925, John Scopes was found guilty of teaching Darwinian evolution in a state-funded high school in Dayton, Tennessee. He was fined $100. Scopes had ostensibly lost his battle with the state. But the side he represented was winning the greater war. I don’t say that because Scopes’s verdict was later overturned on a technicality. My contention is that the ideology he helped unleash on the public has been the source of more human oppression, suffering, and death than anyone in that Dayton...

Over the past year, my husband and I have watched both film versions of 'Inherit the Wind'. I would like to read a good book about the Scopes trial, free of the dramatization and fictionalization. Can anyone suggest what they think is the best book? Thanks.

When Virginia Governor Ralph Northam endorsed fourth-trimester abortions last week, nobody called for his resignation. His decision 35 years ago to masquerade, either in blackface or as a Klansman — which malefaction against taste Northam engaged in seems unclear — offends modern sensibilities to such a degree that his party, his predecessor, and nearly every presidential wannabe says he should step down. This says something more about us than him. Democrats did not always exhibit a zero-tolerance policy toward dressing up in white sheets. They once, at least in some parts of the country, demanded it from candidates. In 1924,...

The summer Trump polling spurt has nonetheless been instructive in exposing a growing problem on the political right. All too many conservatives, including some magazine editors, have been willing to overlook his hucksterism as he’s risen in the polls. They pretend that he deserves respect because he’s giving voice to some deep disquiet or anger in the American electorate. But America has rarely lacked for demagogues willing to exploit public discontents. William Jennings Bryan won three Democratic presidential nominations running against eastern elites. In 1948 Henry Wallace ran as a Soviet sympathizer while Strom Thurmond won 39 electoral votes running...

In his inaugural address Wednesday, incoming New York Mayor Bill de Blasio tried to establish an intellectual pedigree for his focus on economic inequality. He invoked Bill Clinton, Hillary Clinton, Franklin Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt, Al Smith, Frances Perkins, Fiorello La Guardia, Jacob Riis, David Dinkins, Mario Cuomo, and Harry Belafonte. It reminded me of when Democrats, eager to prove their national-security bona fides, tell audiences they hail from the party of Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy. As if there wasn’t some other Democrat after Kennedy who dabbled at war and peace, some guy from Texas. De Blasio’s speech was a bit...

Walt & Lillian Disney with Richard Nixon and his family at Disneyland, 1959 We tend to think of Hollywood as a bastion of leftism, and rightly so. Books like Ron Radosh’s Red Star Over Hollywood demonstrate the deep-seated left-wing dominance of the entertainment industry. Even with the leftism prevalent in Hollywood’s Golden Age, many unabashed conservatives found success without compromising their principles, including one of the most creative minds in the business — Walt Disney.Several biographers and writers that I’ve read have tried to declare that Walt Disney was apolitical, but I find this conclusion not to be true....

Bryan’s “Cross of Gold” Speech: Mesmerizing the Masses The most famous speech in American political history was delivered by William Jennings Bryan on July 9, 1896, at the Democratic National Convention in Chicago. The issue was whether to endorse the free coinage of silver at a ratio of silver to gold of 16 to 1. (This inflationary measure would have increased the amount of money in circulation and aided cash-poor and debt-burdened farmers.) After speeches on the subject by several U.S. Senators, Bryan rose to speak. The thirty-six-year-old former Congressman from Nebraska aspired to be the Democratic nominee for president,...

At the turn of the century, a prominent Christian led a movement to transform American culture. He stood up for the weak and downtrodden. He pointed out the connection between Darwinism and the nastier parts of American life. And, for his trouble, he was labeled a “fanatic” and a “demagogue.” The “turn of the century” I’m referring to is the year 1900, and the Christian is William Jennings Bryan. Bryan, whom the Christian Science Monitor called “a forgotten hero,” is the subject of a new biography titled A Godly Hero. Its author, Georgetown professor Michael Kazin, wrote the book “to...

"The Nation-State Is Finished" by William F. Jasper Robert Bartley, a closet one-worlder at the WSJ, used his newspaper’s "conservative" clout to seduce American business leaders into sacrificing U.S. sovereignty for trade. ‘‘What in blazes can President Bush be thinking?" That has been the general response — on talk radio and in media surveys, Internet postings and letters-to-the-editor — of many current and former Bush supporters angered and confused by the president’s immigration proposals. These folks would not have been surprised by the president’s outrageous announcement on January 7 or his remarks the following week at the Summit of the...