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I went away for the weekend and the entire world exploded into conversations on Intelligent Design (I couldn't even avoid it on vacation!), as though the merits of ID were a topic on which there could be reasoned debate.

This is, to put it bluntly, insane.

Mark Schmitt is your go to reading on the subject:

Shortly after the Gingrich takeover of Congress, a colleague of mine said, "You should never underestimate the degree to which they don't give a shit. It's their strength." A decade of observation later, I think that aphorism is about 80% true. "They" -- the particular faction of the Republican party that currently holds power -- give a shit about a few things: Taxes. They don't like taxes. Lawsuits. Social Security. Regulation. The minimum wage. As a college classmate of mine's father once said, after a few martinis, "There hasn't been a good day in this country since Franklin Roosevelt became president." Those are their core beliefs. And I do believe that some portion of the right feels very strongly about abortion. The rest of it , though -- "compassionate conservatism," anti-gay-marriage, anti-small government, Medicare prescription drug benefits -- are all just rhetorical means to an end.

Intelligent Design fits into "the rest of it". It's a technique created for the purposes of (a) winning school board elections, and (b) increasing Republican party Identification/decreasing Democratic party identification by making the GOP into God's Official Party while turning Democrats into a bunch of atheists/witches/secular jews who hate Christianity/whatever, and nothing more. It's financial backers include deep pockets of right-wing infrastructure. It exploits conventions of "objective journalism" to produce articles with headlines frighteningly close to "Opinions on the Shape of the Earth Differ". It should be relegated to the dustbin of ideas somewhere near Holocaust denial, "smoking doesn't lead to cancer", and "tax cuts pay for themselves". Can we please stop taking these jokers seriously?

Of course, you play politics with the public you have, not the public you wish you had. And the "teach evolution only" position is wildly unpopular. So it's time for scientists to improve their PR and media relations skills, while in the meantime advocating elective courses in comparative religion, were you can devote a whole semester to the origins of life if you so desire. Or create a senior English/philosophy class and talk about the idea there. If it's good enough for Harvard, it's good enough for me.

Required Reading:

• Chris Mooney, The Republican War On Science, whose greatest asset may be its ability to avoid the cliched title form Witty Headline: Longer More Meaningful Description of the Book's Thesis. The book hasn't shipped yet, but the American Prospect has a chapter available online.
• "Impeaching a Self-Appointed Judge", the late Stephen Jay Gould's review of Darwin on Trial. Reading Gould makes me want to go back to school. But only for a little while.

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Last updated by Nicholas Beaudrot on 11:56 29 August 2005