Hey Moderates, Flat or Round?

Pick one. Now.

From today's Kansas City Star.

Hearing to offer evolution defender
By David Klepper
TOPEKA — Evolution will have its defender after all.
The Kansas Board of Education's science standards subcommittee met Tuesday to hammer out details of an upcoming six-day, courtroom-style hearing on the teaching of evolution. Despite a call from scientists for a boycott, a Topeka civil rights and defense attorney said he had been asked to defend the way science is now taught in public schools.
Pedro Irigonegaray said the hearings were “simply a political effort to inject a theological argument” into school curriculum.
The daylong hearings are set for May 5-7 and 12-14 in Topeka's Memorial Hall. Opponents of the way evolution is taught in school have signed up 23 witnesses. Irigonegaray said he would call witnesses too, though he wouldn't say how many...
Still, the group Kansas Citizens for Science had declared the hearings a sham and called on scientists to boycott the proceedings. Subcommittee members say they will use what they learn in the hearing to decide whether to change the way science is taught.

All three members of the subcommittee say they have concerns about evolution. Opponents of evolution say teachers should include criticism of evolution or discuss
alternatives, such as intelligent design, which argues that there is evidence of a divine creator.
...
At Tuesday's meeting, attorney John Calvert, a proponent of intelligent design and the leading advocate for the hearings, defended the school board's plan to use $5,000 in public money for his witnesses' travel expenses. He also said it was appropriate for the state to spend $5,000 to keep a written transcript of the hearings.
He called the evolution debate “probably one of the most important issues facing public education in the entire country.”
...

IMHO, you go to the trial. You play the DVD of the B/W version of “Inherit The Wind” as your only piece of evidence. You cross-examine none of their “witnesses”. And to every question – every question – the answer is, “Evolution is settled science. Anyone who does not believe Evolution is settled science is either four years old, brain damaged, or is trying to use the public school system to promote their Dark Ages agenda of ignorance and bigotry.”

This is not a debate. Say it again: ”This is not a debate." This is another example of what I call “The Tyranny of False Bisection.” The absolutely ludicrous idea that every issue has two roughly equal and roughly opposing points of view.

It lets an ambulatory shitbags like Randall Terry and Fred Phelps be “spokesmen”, as if their positions weren’t nakedly insane. It lets utterly vile and utterly wrong Holocaust Deniers stake out half the table on certain WWII panels. And it lets Evolution be considered a “controversy” that needs to be “debated.”

Evolution, women’s rights, 10 Commandments, hatred of the “Cultural Elite” (translation: Jews), Gay Rights, hatred of “Hollywood” (translation: Queers, Jews & maybe queer jews)...the list goes on and year-in/year-out, these issues pivot around the same people: The Conservative Evangelical Fundamentalists.

The reason I’m focus in on Evolution today, instead of any of the other their pet peeves, is because it is – for me -- the perfect, quick-and-dirty litmus test. Because some things in life are complicated, and some things are simple, and evolution – as an issue – is about as simple as it gets.

Evolution is settled science. And is you don’t accept Evolution as settled science, you are an idiot. Almost certainly a religious bigot. Quite possibly a rat-fuck failure of a human being. Almost certainly dangerous...but definitely and without possibility of redemptions, an idiot.

There’s a beehive of activity always going on inside of the field, but the basics are as stable as the Theory of Relativity. You have hot debates – like Phyletic Gradualism verus Punctuated Equilibrium – which very often result in pie fights and barely clothed, hot science chicks catfighting in Jello,

I mean “cultural media”.

So while there’s all kinds of spicy action going on inside of the field, no one in their right mind doubts that Evolution is settled science. It is 2005, and if you believe in Creationism or any of the various bad drag-queen wigs that Fundy’s like to dress it up in, you’re an idiot.

“Staring-contests with potatoes” idiot.
“Playing tag with a stick of butter” idiot.

And because of that, this is nothing that any Democrat or Progressive or Person With A Functional Set of Frontal Lobes should ever debate. No, I say. No No No No!

Here is where you run the Florida Defense.

This is something we need to treat with dismissal and disdain. “Oh, you mean Kansas Republicans are having another debate about the teaching that the Easter Bunny was the first governor of Pennsylvania?” Kinda pitying, kinda tasteless-retarded-child-joke, kinda sad.

Then push the question off on to the laps of the Lincoln Chafees and Olympia Snows of the world. And keep pushing until you get them to side with superstition or science.

These are YOUR PEOPLE, Moderates? Why aren’t YOU stepping in here? Why aren’t YOU taking a firm stand against what YOUR people are doing? Is it OK with you that we’re going to teach Jack Chick Cartoon Superstitions in place of Science now? Please speak right into the microphone.

The issue isn’t Us vs. the Fundies. Every time we play that game we let the spineless Moderates slink away in the haze of battle. Now we need to grab them by the scruff of their red necks and drag them on stage. This is about the monkeys in the middle – the Ostrich Republicans, Independents and Undecided’s. Those who respond the ever-louder Deranged Chorus being sung out loud and proud by the madmen who run their party and act in their name...by burying their heads ever deeper in the sand.

We can’t convince Fundies to stop being crazy or evil, but we can and should take every opportunity that presents itself to force the Moderates that have crawled in to bed with them to take a good, hard look at the who they’ve been canoodling with.

Want us to stop bugging you? Fine: its very, very easy. Either quit humping the rabid dog, or marry the rabid dog. But you can sure as shit forget about making electoral rabid dog Booty Calls, slinking away before sunrise and thinking that we’re not going to Gary Hart your hypocritical ass.

And lastly, as to why we should even care, I’ll defer to Voltaire: “He who can make you believe an absurdity can make you commit an atrocity.”

Belief in Creationism is as unmistakably the spoor of the enemies of our nation as any Mark of the Beast. It is insignia for the foot soldiers that are marching us backwards in the vanguard of the Armies of Ignorance. It is the sign over the stagnant, ignorant swamps where diseases like Tom DeLay and Bill Frist breed.