Earlier today, DaveG penned a piece suggesting that Bobby Jindal was veering off into Huckabee territory (fiscal liberalism, with a dash of religious mania), and now the only true three-legged stool conservative ready to lead the GOP into the future is Sarah Palin. While I respect his analysis, I can’t help but disagree. First of all, Jindal has not signed into law the legislative pay increase. At worst he’ll let it become law without his signature. And it’s looking increasingly like, if only to save his reputation, he’ll veto the bill if the legislature doesn’t back away. But, I think it’s probably instructive to consider whether or not supporting this legislative pay increase is a big government idea. But, before I get into the meat of the argument, let me just state that I find the idea that legislators can vote for pay increases that take effect before their terms ends extremely unsavory. Moving on. First of all, it is emphatically a conservative principle that pay should adjust with the market, with performance, etc. Pay for Louisiana’s legislators is set to increase by 133% from 16k to roughly 38k. Now 16k is an awfully low salary, even for part-time employee, and it was set 28 years ago. The average job pays more then double what it paid 28 years ago, with inflation at roughly 3-4% a year. In this context, a 133% increase does not seem so outlandish. But, there are some who’d contend that Government ought to somehow different from the private sector. Legislators and other government officials are, so the line goes, expected to serve the public out of the sheer goodness of their hearts. Oddly enough, this is thought to be a conservative principle in some circles, but there’s something profoundly unusual about a conservatism that demands that certain individuals sacrifice, in the service of the public good, their material prosperity. I suspect this is an example of fiscal conservatism run amok, i.e “I’m so dedicated to fiscal conservatism, I’m willing to adopt collectivism”.
Now, to be sure, their other compensations, beyond the merely financial, that go along with government service. Power and influence are rather serious compensations. Some level of fame perhaps. These have to be factored into the equation. No one’s suggesting that Government officials should be paid exactly what they could be making elsewhere in the private sector. But, they should be adequately compensated for their services, and these legislators haven’t been. I’d be content with either a veto of the bill, and a renegotiated bill with a slightly smaller increase, which will only go into effect after the next state election. I’d also be relatively content if Jindal simply let the bill pass into law. Neither course strikes me as particularly “liberal”.
Now let me address DaveG’s next contention, that Jindal’s support for a law that gives localities the option to introduce supplementary material questioning evolution. Let’s assume that DaveG is quite right, and that Intelligent Design (or Creationism) is unscientific and almost certainly false. I’m not particularly interested in contesting either proposition. Even with this strong framing of the issue, I find myself relatively unimpressed with the complaints from conservative ID opponents. Currently, large portions of our nation’s schools are teaching that Herbert Hoover was a staunch fiscal conservative, who worsened the depression because he failed to intervene, and we were only truly removed from the muck when FDR chartered a bold New Deal. You often hear the term “laisezz-faire” bandied about in reference to Hoover. This is line chanted in high school’s across the country. I even heard a history teacher say, recently, “Hoover supported the Laisezz-faire economic policies sort of like McCain, while Obama supports the FDR approach”.
As history, this is atrocious. Egregious. Not only wasn’t Hoover a staunch fiscal conservative, but he was vocally opposed to laisezz-faire economics. Hoover intervened a ton to try to stave off the Great Depression, especially towards the tail end of his presidency and FDR secretly modeled much of the New Deal on Hoover’s policies (though, he admittedly took them farther). Nor does the history often pick up that we were still in a Depression, nearly 9 years after FDR was elected, when World War II began. We’re also often taught that Nazism and Communism were diametrically opposed and that Hitler bitterly opposed socialism. Again, as history, this is ghastly. Hitler was opposed to Communism because it was, in theory, a thoroughly international project, while Hitler’s was explicitly nationalistic, and because it eventually predicted a withering away of the state (again, something Hitler wasn’t likely to favor). It is the height of dishonesty to teach that Hitler’s distaste for Communism was largely rooted in an opposition to the economic socialism. It is a fiction perpetuated, I suspect, to avoid placing all of the 20th century’s bad actors on the political left. Why aren’t the conservative ID opponents up in arms about such institutionalized lies being taught in public schools?
Ultimately, I think there are two reasons for the disconnect. First, religion is seen as something unique in American life. It has a pivotal place in our history, which makes people understandably wary when it seems to, even in the most tangential ways, enter the political arena. But, I think this wariness often goes too far. For instance, it is inexcusable that a child can leave high school without reading about St. Paul. As a sheer historical figure, his importance is unprecedented. But, while the high school student might be found memorizing the eight-fold path, they’re unlikely to be given more then a passing reference to Paul. Americans treat religion (especially Christianity) with a hypersensitivity that has not always reflected well on us. And second, science is treated as something apart. If someone butchers history or literature, well at least that’s debatable, and anyway where’s the real harm? If someone butchers science, then our entire world will come crashing down upon us. In a sense, this is certainly correct. If I’m an engineer, and instead of following established physics principles, I design a plane in a way that seems aesthetically pleasing, things are sure to go badly. Errors in science often have enormous, obvious implications.
But, I wonder if we’re not doing a disservice to history and English and philosophy, and those categories that aren’t so “hard” and are presumed to be broadly debatable. Is it really an intellectually rigorous viewpoint to insist that, after all, reasonable people can disagree about whether Hoover favored government intervention? And are the implications of such a misreading really so slight? Could not a student, presented with such “knowledge”, come to the conclusion that fiscal conservatism was the problem and government intervention the solution? Where does that viewpoint, widely disseminated, take a society? Where does it leave it? And are crashing planes really much more significant? Is the crumbling edifice of a society preferable to the crumbling edifice of a building?
But, beyond this, it’s not even clear that Intelligent Design is that sort of science. If a scientist misunderstands thermodynamics, he’ll ruin cars. If a scientist mistakenly adopts intelligent design, he’ll ruin paper trying to articulate “hogwash”. Perhaps he’ll persuade others to do the same. But, there’s no reason to believe he, or his students, will end lives or dash scientific pursuits more broadly. Especially given the sorts of things ID and evolution are; ideas that potentially go to the very core of our existence. A man who adopts ID, in the face of evidence for evolution, does so, in part, because he thinks his world view depends upon it. It’s a limited mistake with limited implications (incredibly limited, in this case, because evolution and ID are rarely involved in applied science). I’ve never heard of a man deciding that energy can be created and destroyed because he feels his world view depends upon it. He’d be a strange creature indeed. But, he’d also be a rather tame one. I’d keep him away from my cars, and hope he could find some science to do that made sense. I wouldn’t throw a hissy-fit, and proclaim the end of the world. Some will, quite rightly, point out that a failure to address history properly doesn’t justify a similar failure in science. Duly noted. But, before you toss well-meaning people out of a movement, maybe you should consider that you’re overreacting a bit, that ID isn’t a monumental threat to our national well-being, and that you’ve stood tacitly by as schools propagated far more dangerous falsehoods.
June 29th, 2008 at 10:59 pm
I would like to put this out there and hope all of you see this and someone comes up with an answer and puts it out there for all the world to see. Why is it that during the Rezko trial, in which he was convicted on 16 of 24 counts, the prosecutors had planned to link Obama to Rekzo and the Illinois governor and the judge approved it I might add, but they did not follow through? They were going to bring him up in all the shady dealins and all the money that Obama had received as did the governor, and there was no opposition from the trial judge. I posted a weblink on this yesterday. In case you did not see it here it is again:
http://www.xanga.com/SwordAndSacrifice/662872555/federal-indictment-looms-for-obama.html
Monday, June 23, 2008
FEDERAL INDICTMENT LOOMS FOR OBAMA
June 29th, 2008 at 11:01 pm
Heh. This is why I’m not particularly concerned about the evolution/ID debate… The public schools do such a lousy job that it’s unlikely the kids will learn a damned thing one way or the other.
Anyway, I’ll just say that Bobby Jindal’s religious kookiness won’t bother me too much if he proves that he can turn Louisiana around. As of right now, he hasn’t had the time to do that yet, so there’s not much reason for him to be under VP consideration — at least that’s the way it seems to me. It will be interesting to see how things stand in several years. Maybe he turns out to be a great executive who advances the cause of small government and free-market economics and personal responsibility — all that good stuff — in which case I won’t mind how often he does battle with supernatural spirits in his spare time.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:19 pm
First, of COURSE a history teacher should be prevented from presenting something ahistorical in a public school history class. You’ll never hear DaveG articulating anything to the contrary, I assure you.
Secondly, anything that doesn’t comport with the scientific method doesn’t belong in a science class. Full stop. Paragraph. This is a deal breaker for me. If the Republican Party becomes the vehicle to teach young people that science is based on something other than the scientific method, using my tax dollars to boot, I will cease to be a Republican. There are plenty of Ed Rendells out there who sound more like Jack Kemp than any Republican politicians these days anyway. I’ll grab the low hanging fruit of the DLC if the price of not doing so is supporting a party that is held hostage to the insecurities of a few religious people.
Third, what really gets my goat on this and similar topics is the way that some religious people actually want government to basically subsidize their religion. Behind every call for ID in science classes and faith based initiatives lies the belief that if the state doesn’t actively act to preserve religion, it will die. Sorry, but religion isn’t Amtrak or ethanol. Nor should it be. The state should neither interfere with nor subsidize religion. If religion is so weak that it will collapse absent government propping it up, then maybe that says something about religion.
Fourth, atheist Camille Paglia agrees with you that an appreciation of Western Civ is impossible without understanding the historical roots of Christendom, and that public schools run from this like the plague. Paul of Tarsus is most certainly one of the most influential figures of the last two millennia. But try to teach public school students about him in an objective manner and watch the lawsuits come in from both sides.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:20 pm
Bobby Jindal = Bayou Ghost Buster
June 29th, 2008 at 11:23 pm
Great piece Matt…Though I am not a proponent of ID or the struggle to see it implemented in our nation’s schools, I agree that the debate over evolution and ID has gone too far. I recently graduated high school and can distinctively remember American History class and the supposed “truths” my teacher taught about the 1920′s, the lead up to the Depression, and the New Deal. You do an excellent job to point out these tired assumptions rolled out in today’s schoools.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:27 pm
LOL. “There is no Obama, only Zool.”
June 29th, 2008 at 11:36 pm
Jindal isn’t ripe yet, and he isn’t Huckabee.
Palin and Romney remain my veep favorites, and maybe Pawlenty grows on me, even though there’s no chance we win Minnesota.
On another note, atheist guru Richard Dawkins admits to believing in intelligent design in Ben Stein’s movie, Expelled. He just sees a different designer (aliens). ID belongs in the school discussion with certain boundaries drawn.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Dave,
Pat Ruffini responded to your post…
June 29th, 2008 at 11:43 pm
Dave,
Here’s the link:
http://www.thenextright.com/patrick-ruffini/should-we-be-worried-about-bobby-jindal
June 29th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
link isn’t working, Aron.
June 29th, 2008 at 11:44 pm
I was speaking of #8, not #9
June 29th, 2008 at 11:56 pm
Funny how we all compare people to the dreaded populist Huckabee.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:30 am
Aren’t we forgetting about the guy who just recently campaigned on the 3 legged stool of conservatism? Has Romney left the radar for some people already? This guy will either be McCain’s running mate or the favorite for the GOP nomination in 2012.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:34 am
For those who think Palin and Jindal aren’t ready yet, James Madison was 38 when he drafted the Constitution. Alexander Hamilton was 32 when he helped Madison and teamed with him on The Federalist. Abe Lincoln hadn’t really done anything of note when he was elected.
I think Romney, along with Pawlenty has been mentioned as the favorite.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:26 am
Thank you, Matthew…
Many folks forget that the beauty of the Reagan coalition was that he called us all to set aside our differences for the cause of conservatism. If you are a fiscon and don’t care about social issues, you need to recognize that you need the socons in the tent in order to get a majority so your fiscal issues are addressed. If you are a socon and don’t really care about fiscal issues, you welcome fiscons in to get your issues taken care of.
I am much more of a fiscon than a socon. I don’t really care about gay marriage that much. The whole ID/creationism debate doesn’t stoke an ounce of interest in me. I do care deeply and passionately about abortion, but that may be the only one.
But I firmly recognize the need to have socons in my party in order to build a conservative majority in this country once again. Something DaveG would do well to remember.
June 30th, 2008 at 2:14 am
DaveG:
Secondly, anything that doesn’t comport with the scientific method doesn’t belong in a science class.
The origins debate has less to do with repeatability and more to do with historical inference. For instance, abiogenesis (life from non-life) has never ever ever ever ever ever ever been observed. But it’s in science classes and it is the fundamental assumption underlying evolution.
In fact, one can make the case that the Darwinian paradigm is hurting us more then it helps us. One reason why we send expensive rovers to Mars is to see if abiogenesis occurred on Mars. That to me is a colossal waste of money and resources. They should at least do back-of-the-envelope probability calculations to see if abiogenesis is even possible before wasting all that money. But because they are driven by the Darwinian paradigm, they are desperate find any evidence that abiogenesis has occurred.
All the while, students all across America are taught that abiogenesis and undirected evolution are facts in our science classrooms.
June 30th, 2008 at 5:59 am
#1 – I don’t know how truthful that write up is, but it seems to me it should be getting a lot more press. I’d like to hear others opinions on this.
June 30th, 2008 at 6:35 am
#14 Very few of our politicians these days are anywhere near as smart and educated as Madison, Lincoln and Hamilton. Look at their writing. They had brilliant minds. Can you imagine an essay contest with our current leaders? Someone would have to ghost-write their entries.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:36 am
Matthew, I think you missed an obvious conclusion… butchering history and other “soft” sciences is far more dangerous than butchering “hard” science.
Mao, Stalin, and Hitler are just a few modern examples.
I have encountered more Marxists in economics departments at American Universities then in my travels in Eastern Europe. Students in American survey history courses get far more versed in the supposed virtues of Margaret Sanger than in any aspect of The War of 1812.
I have little hope that scientific advancements in evolutionary theory will save us from the socialism we are steadily declining into. Actually, I have quite the opposite expectation, as the three brutal tyrants above used the devaluation of human life to expand their socialist empires.
The irony, as a conservative, is that if we got the government out of the evolution advocating business, we could save billions of dollars a year in taxes. I’m not just talking about the public schools… look at the NASA budget.
It made sense during the Cold War to explore and advance space technology. That knowledge is directly transferable to weapons technology (although the creation of NASA actually handicapped sustainable space travel being developed by the military branches).
But, spending billions to go scratch in the dust of Mars… to help find the origins of the universe? If that’s the goal – and it is – give me back my taxes.
I say give the military back control of space development for military purposes. Privatize the remainder of NASA; if there is value in finding ice on Mars, let the marketplace say so.
June 30th, 2008 at 8:44 am
Matt – I normally read all the way through your posts before I respond but I generally tend to agree with you about 95% of them. But, I stopped after the paragraph concerning Legislator’s pay. Here in NH our state reps and senators make $100 per session. So, to me, $28K seems ridiculous.
I’ll now read the rest of your post and comment if I feel it will benefit the conversation.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:57 am
Students need to learn about the concept of Intelligent Design (i.e. – the widespread and, thus far, undisprovable belief that a higher being created the universe). If you don’t want to teach it in a science class, that is fine with me, but it needs to be taught, it needs to be given weight as a credible theory as to the origin of the universe, and it needs to be mentioned that science has been unable to either dissprove it, or to offer up an alternative.
MY concern isn’t that religion would collapse without a government endorsement, but that the way evolution is taught (as proven fact that is unquestionable), and the lack of, well, actual thinking skills in many children (to see that evolution doesn’t contradict the existance of a God), would lead many to believe that there is no higher being. Even if parents send the opposite message, children see more of school than they do of their parents.
June 30th, 2008 at 10:34 am
It’s a limited mistake with limited implications (incredibly limited, in this case, because evolution and ID are rarely involved in applied science).
Actually, evolution is involved in applied science every day in thousands of labs worldwide. It’s very useful. On the other hand, ID is useless in science, and leads to nothing but intellectually lazy contrarianism that wastes other scientists’ time.
June 30th, 2008 at 11:29 am
Big S, you don’t know your history. Modern Western science was founded upon Judeo-Christian presuppositional foundations from the Bible. The scientific method today, with an emphasis on logical experimenation and mathematical formulation, still operates on those assumptions.
Below are a few key scientists who operated from a biblical worldview. A biblical worldview of the natural order, which includes the concept of an original intelligent designer is that:
1. Nature is real, not imaginary
2. Nature is a “thing,” not a God
3. Nature is worth studying
4. Nature is unified and orderly
5. The natural order is mathematically precise
6. Human minds can discover and understand the natural order
Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519) – Hydraulics, Anatomy
Johannes Kepler (1571-1630) – Celestial Mechanics, Astronomy
Blaise Pascal (1623-1662) – Hydrostatics, Fluid Pressure
Robert Boyle (1627-1691) – Chemistry, Elements, Gas Volume & Pressure, Scientific Method
Isaac Newton (1642-1727) – Calculus, Laws of Gravity & Motion
John Woodward (1665-1728) – Paleontology
Carl Linnaeus (1707-1778) – Systematic Biology Classification
Georges Cuvier (1769-1832) – Comparative Anatomy, Vertebrate Paleontology
Michael Faraday (1791-1867) – Electromagnetics, Field Theory
Charles Babbage (1792-1871) – Computer Science
Louis Agassiz (1807-1873) – Ichthyology, Glacial Geology
James Joule (1818-1889) – Reversible Thermodynamics
Gregor Mendel (1822-1884) – Genetics
Louis Pasteur (1822-1895) – Bacteriology, Germs cause Disease, Law of Biogenesis
Lord Kelvin (1824-1907) – Thermodynamics, Energetics
William Ramsay (1852-1916) – Isotopic Chemistry
Science made the advances it did in Western Civilization because of the presupposition that the first cause of life is an intelligent designer who designed intelligent life in His image.
June 30th, 2008 at 12:39 pm
I agree with Heath to a degree. Science only developed in societies that held to Monotheism and Creationism.
This is despite the fact that other societies were more economically prosperous and had longer periods of civilization in which to develop science. The majority of the world’s civilizations were Polytheistic or Henotheistic, when science was developed in Europe and the Middle East.
However that’s got nothing to do with evolution. Practically no work can be done on DNA, RNA or epigenetics, without an understanding of Neo-Darwinian evolution.
The government has no responsibility to protect kids’ religious beliefs from science. That’s the parents responsibility. Evolution is the fundamental concept of biology. The field really makes no sense without it. If a school is going to teach biology it needs to teach evolution. It’s just as important as the concept of the ‘atom’ in chemistry.
June 30th, 2008 at 1:40 pm
I don’t really care about gay marriage that much. The whole ID/creationism debate doesn’t stoke an ounce of interest in me. I do care deeply and passionately about abortion, but that may be the only one.
But I firmly recognize the need to have socons in my party in order to build a conservative majority in this country once again. Something DaveG would do well to remember.
I have voted for strongly pro-life candidates before and will again. I have no problem with the GOP being a pro-life party.
But the idea that so-cons will abandon the GOP absent a pro-ID plank is just a bridge too far. First, I don’t think it’s true. If it is true, we have bigger problems. Because I simply won’t belong to a party that asks me to pay to tell lies to children. I do have some principles, after all. I’ll gladly turn in my party ID if that’s the price of admission.
June 30th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
Dave,
I, too, have no problem belonging to a predominantly pro-life party. However, I will not belong to any party that has a litmus test on abortion, or seeks to ostracize Republican politicians or the third of the party that supports allowing women to ultimately make decisions regarding their own bodies. I would also add that a candidate like Huckabee, Jindal or Palin, who would force a 12-year old girl who’s been brutally raped and impregnated by a crack addict with AIDS to carry that kid to term is an obvious dealbreaker in my book.
As for a pro-ID plank, I’d give Bill Maher and Chris Hitchens a run for their money in ridiculing the GOP should they ever adopt a position so ignorant and absurd.
June 30th, 2008 at 2:18 pm
#1, Stephen, thanks. I don’t know if Fitzgerald will indite Snobama. That would probably lead to WW3.
June 30th, 2008 at 3:07 pm
This entire argument is ridiculous. There can be absolutely no question that the science bill that Bobby Jindal signed is conservative, no matter how you feel about evolution vs. ID.
Jindal’s signature on the bill gives more control over education to local school districts so that the people in each school district can decide how they want the subject taught.
Isn’t that what conservatism is about?
June 30th, 2008 at 8:30 pm
Practically no work can be done on DNA, RNA or epigenetics, without an understanding of Neo-Darwinian evolution.
Actually, Darwinism has impeded the very understanding of the machinery and information processing systems underlying DNA. IDers were right when they suggested that “junk” DNA may actually have an important function. Bruce Alberts, past president of NAS, said that they are going to have to incorporate “design engineering” into biology curricula because without engineering and design knowledge, it is very tough to understand the biological mechanisms and machinery undergirding life.
June 30th, 2008 at 9:58 pm
DaveG: “Because I simply won’t belong to a party that asks me to pay to tell lies to children.”
Like this one, I guess?
“We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.”
The theory of evolution is always touted as the centerpiece of biology, this in spite of the fact that it is rooted in 19th Century science. For instance, at that time, it was believed that there were at least 180 rudimentary or vestigial organs in the human body. Organs that had no use and were left over from evolutionary processes. Of course, in time it was understood that those organs were of vital use. There are still 14 organs scientists don’t know the function of, but if history is any indication, we will know what they were designed for one day.
The cell in Darwin’s time was basically thought of as a blob of jelly. Now it is known how incredibly complex, irreducibly complex a single living cell is. It is an engineering marvel. WiseGuy is right, my son is a biomedical engineer. Design is obvious in biology. You can’t understand the body at the cellular level without a knowledge of engineering and design. And where engineering is present, so is an Engineer.
June 30th, 2008 at 10:37 pm
Ronald Reagan, from the essay,Abortion and the Conscience of a Nation, 1983.
Any idea how many died in Hitler’s holocaust? At least 6 million Jews and as many others, so 12 million.
Any idea how many have died in America since 1973, when a court decided that some people were not fit to live and should be abandoned to abortion? 48,589,993. A holocaust 4 times more costly in lives lost than Hitler’s.