Shermer’s false equivalencies

Nicely done! Rebecca Watson rebuts a recent article by Michael Shermer that tried to claim there was a liberal war on science. It was a very silly article; it’s not that I would ever claim that the liberal side is flawless — antivaxxers and proponents of quackery are found on both sides of the aisle , we had Tom Harkin throwing money down the drain of ‘alternative medicine’, and there are New Age notions of ‘natural’ and ‘organic’ that defy reason — but the pathology isn’t usually a matter of policy on the left, where it is on the right.

And Shermer does such a poor job of supporting his claim! He repeatedly does a sneaky switch of throwing out statistics about the ignorance of the rank and file on science on both sides, and then pretending that these views reflect what the leadership is doing. In the US, we have a general problem of widespread ignorance of science; every party, every subgroup is going to be afflicted with a large number of clueless people. The real question is whether the ignorant people are effective in shaping policy. In the case of the Republicans, they are: the religious right and the Tea Party have had a profound influence on their representatives. Look at the House Subcommittee on the Environment and the Economy, for instance; it’s chaired by Republican John Shimkus, a born-again evangelical Christian who fervently believes that global climate change is a hoax. Can you name a comparably deluded Democrat who is undermining serious scientific concerns?

We liberals do not have a Broun, or an Inhofe, or an Akin, or a Jindal in our ranks. Republicans do, and even take them seriously as potential presidents.

Or look at the last roster of Republican presidential candidates. Fortunately, the least anti-science of the bunch, Mitt Romney, got the nomination…but look look at the rest of those bozos, evolution deniers and anti-environmentalists everywhere. Democrats tend to be almost as pro-corporate as Republicans, but you simply don’t see those fringe anti-science beliefs making as much headway among them. Furthermore, Democrats tend to favor pro-education policy more than Republicans — they at least do not express a desire to destroy public education.

Among the worst of the presidential candidates, though, was Ron Paul, who was one of those who does not accept evolution and also desires the elimination of the Department of Education.

Maybe Mr Shermer’s next article should be about the Libertarian war on science and reason? Now there’s a mob of delusional idiots who deserve a serious dressing down.

Root of all evil?

While I’m criticizing the South, I should also damn the whole country. They Yankees also contributed to the history of slavery: that whole second amendment thing that troubles us so much now was a sop to slavery, enabling ‘militias’ that were intended to capture escaped slaves and suppress insurrections.

…most southern men between ages 18 and 45 – including physicians and ministers – had to serve on slave patrol in the militia at one time or another in their lives.

And slave rebellions were keeping the slave patrols busy.

By the time the Constitution was ratified, hundreds of substantial slave uprisings had occurred across the South. Blacks outnumbered whites in large areas, and the state militias were used to both prevent and to put down slave uprisings. …slavery can only exist in the context of a police state, and the enforcement of that police state was the explicit job of the militias.

So many of the high ideals of this country were poisoned by compromises to allow deep inequities. And the founding fathers were complicit.

The honorless party

Republicans. Bleh. Yesterday, while one Virginia Democrat, Henry Marsh, was in Washington DC for the inaugural, the state Republicans took advantage of his absence to ram through a redistricting plan. I really, really hate the way both parties play games with districts to gain an advantage, but to do it by waiting until a civil rights veteran isn’t looking is rank cowardice and more than a little skeevy.

But they had new depths to plumb. On Martin Luther King Day, they adjourned the senate session in memory of General Thomas J. ‘Stonewall’ Jackson, traitor and defender of slavery. Hey, Southerners: you lost the war, your ancestors betrayed the country, and they did it all for the cause of institutionalized racism. Get over it. It’s past time to stop romanticizing and celebrating an evil cause.

Oh, right, it was the inauguration today

Hey, this guy Obama can give a pretty good speech. There were parts of his inaugural address that I really liked. This bit, for instance, is a clear swipe at the Republican party and part of a genuine political vision for the future that I wish the Democrats could always enunciate so clearly.

We, the people, still believe that every citizen deserves a basic measure of security and dignity. We must make the hard choices to reduce the cost of health care and the size of our deficit. But we reject the belief that America must choose between caring for the generation that built this country and investing in the generation that will build its future. For we remember the lessons of our past, when twilight years were spent in poverty and parents of a child with a disability had nowhere to turn.

We do not believe that in this country freedom is reserved for the lucky, or happiness for the few. We recognize that no matter how responsibly we live our lives, any one of us at any time may face a job loss, or a sudden illness, or a home swept away in a terrible storm. The commitments we make to each other through Medicare and Medicaid and Social Security, these things do not sap our initiative, they strengthen us. They do not make us a nation of takers; they free us to take the risks that make this country great.

But my favorite part, and I think the heart of his speech, was where he threw out a few liberal dogwhistles: Seneca Falls, Selma, and Stonewall (that is, equal rights for women, blacks, and gays).

We, the people, declare today that the most evident of truths –- that all of us are created equal –- is the star that guides us still; just as it guided our forebears through Seneca Falls, and Selma, and Stonewall; just as it guided all those men and women, sung and unsung, who left footprints along this great Mall, to hear a preacher say that we cannot walk alone; to hear a King proclaim that our individual freedom is inextricably bound to the freedom of every soul on Earth.

It is now our generation’s task to carry on what those pioneers began. For our journey is not complete until our wives, our mothers and daughters can earn a living equal to their efforts. Our journey is not complete until our gay brothers and sisters are treated like anyone else under the law –- for if we are truly created equal, then surely the love we commit to one another must be equal as well. Our journey is not complete until no citizen is forced to wait for hours to exercise the right to vote. Our journey is not complete until we find a better way to welcome the striving, hopeful immigrants who still see America as a land of opportunity — until bright young students and engineers are enlisted in our workforce rather than expelled from our country. Our journey is not complete until all our children, from the streets of Detroit to the hills of Appalachia, to the quiet lanes of Newtown, know that they are cared for and cherished and always safe from harm.

There were a few bits I did not care for at all. One was the too frequent invocation of god, of course: when you’re calling on this generation to work for a better world, don’t undercut it all by calling on or crediting a magical being.

Worst, though, was his claim that “A decade of war is now ending” and “enduring security and lasting peace do not require perpetual war”. This is not a president who can make any claim of contributing to world peace, or that he’s even diminished American militarism. I heard that and wondered whether he was going to be just as hypocritical with regards to his fine words about equality and justice.

But maybe he’ll do better this term: maybe he actually will recall all the troops, shut down the terrorism by drones, and actually improve security at home.

The radical King

Perhaps it is a good idea today to remember what Martin Luther King was really about, rather than the sanitized conciliatory sweet little Negro memorialized in this holiday.

America began perverting Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s message in the spring of 1963. Truthfully, you could put the date just about anywhere along the earlier timeline of his brief public life, too. But I mark it at the Birmingham movement’s climax, right about when Northern whites needed a more distant, less personally threatening change-maker to juxtapose with the black rabble rousers clambering into their own backyards. That’s when Time politely dubbed him the "Negroes’ inspirational leader," as Gene Roberts and Hank Klibanoff point out in their excellent book Race Beat.

Up until then, King had been eyed as a hasty radical out to push Southern communities past their breaking point — which was a far more accurate understanding of the man’s mission. His "Letter from a Birmingham Jail" is in fact a blunt rejection of letting the establishment set the terms of social change. "The purpose of our direct-action program is to create a situation so crisis-packed that it will inevitably open the door to negotiation," he wrote, later adding, "We know through painful experience that freedom is never voluntarily given by the oppressor; it must be demanded by the oppressed."

North Dakota, chickenshit capitol of the world (plus a bonus poll!)

Professors Molly Secor-Turner and Brandy Randall of North Dakota State University were recently awarded a $1.2 million federal grant. Good news, right? The state should be happy, the university should be happy.

NDSU is turning it down and returning the money.

WHY? Because this is a grant to provide comprehensive sex education to teenagers in the Fargo area, in collaboration with Planned Parenthood. The state legislature, stacked as it is with regressive conservative jerkwads, freaked out and went scrambling to find a legal way to forbid it. And the president of the university, Dean Bresciani, is going along with it.

“Whether technically or not, in my evaluation, it’s not respecting the intent of our Legislature,” he said. “And that’s close enough to me. We’re not looking for loopholes to work around our Legislature; we work in respect of our Legislature.”

Bresciani said the recent discovery prompted him to freeze the funding. If the money can’t be redirected appropriately, he said, it will be returned to the federal government.

“What we’ve found is a very specific codicil of the law that makes it clear that it cannot be with Planned Parenthood,” he told Hennen. “And unless we can work around that, and again I’m not holding out hope on that, we’ll have to go to the direction of returning the resources.”

I have some words for you, Bresciani: your mission, as the president of a major university, is to improve the knowledge of the citizens of your region. Your faculty know that. Your students are going to your school for that purpose. When your legislature is actively working to undermine the mission of a university, it should be your job to oppose them. I know, they hold the purse strings; but that’s why you get paid the big bucks, because you have the difficult job of negotiating with idiots to serve a higher purpose. If you’re just going to cave in and do their bidding, well, the legislature could save even more money by simply hiring a dullard who would say “yes” to everything they ordered. Or did they already do that?

Oh, wait. Maybe that’s too many words, too long, too difficult. How about one word?

Chickenshit.

That’s a chickenshit move by a chickenshit administrator serving a chickenshit legislature.

Better?

What’s also rotten, as the paper makes clear, is that the North Dakota legislature is dishonestly strong-arming the university. There is no specific law that says the university cannot receive this federal grant. Here’s the stretch they made:

In 2011, North Dakota lawmakers approved a law effective as of July 2012 that requires K-12 schools in the state to ensure any sexual health curriculum “includes instruction pertaining to the risks associated with adolescent sexual activity and the social, psychological, and physical health gains to be realized by abstaining from sexual activity before and outside marriage.”

However, the NDSU professors awarded this grant previously told The Forum that law wouldn’t apply to their program because it was to be taught outside of the schools and only to those teens who voluntarily agreed to participate with parental consent.

Not only is that a chickenshit law, it doesn’t apply. And man, but North Dakota really wants to keep their young people ignorant.

Oh, look. The paper has a poll to go with the article.

Do you agree with the NDSU president’s decision to freeze funds for a sex ed program in partnership with Planned Parenthood?

Yes 37.7%

No 54.1%

Don’t know 8.3%

Look at all the poor people

The Wall Street Journal ran an article on the effect that the proposed tax plan would have on real people — you know, not just the rich people, but also the working poor. And they illustrated it with a picture of what they consider the poor.

poorpeople
Look how sad they all are!

So…a single mother with two children makes $260,000 per year. A retired couple living on a measly $180,000 per year.

Jebus. These people are completely out of touch with reality. The article is supposed to be talking about the effects on “affluent and poor”, but apparently they never heard of anyone making less than $100K.